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May 16

Tied vs. dotted notation

People prefer the tied notation because it makes the metre clear and allegedly you can read it faster. I'm currently dealing with alternating dotted and undotted notes in common time and it really looks awkward with ties since you have to type in more notes, so it looks more complicated than it actually is. Can you sacrifice the visualization of the metre in order to reduce the overall number of notes? It's not that I'm composing something really unusual where dotted notes would obviously be better. The only note values I use are dotted and undotted quavers/eigth notes and crotchets/quarter notes and it stays in common time, but it already looks very complicated. It's just that they are often off-beat during bars. --2.245.72.89 (talk) 23:12, 16 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

You're in common time, right? Then I'd suggest the following rule of thumb; the first and third beats must always have something on them (i.e. you can't have a syncopated note that lasts halfway to it). That should help somewhat with recognition, while compromising a bit for simplicity. (Would be nice to see an example, though.) Double sharp (talk) 03:54, 17 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Can this rule be ignored when the left hand of a piano has a continuous accompaniment, which shows how the notes fit together? I don't know if it's only my preference, but I usually count dotted values as three units anyway whether they are written with dots or ties. --2.245.148.102 (talk) 17:27, 17 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I don't know if this is helpful, but as a singer, when the rhythms are usually beat-aligned and occasionally not, it can be helpful if the latter are written with ties as a heads-up. When the rhythms are frequently misaligned so that I'm expecting that anyway, it's often easier to read without the ties, especially if the same rhythmic pattern occurs both aligned and misaligned and ties would obscure that. That's true when I'm sight reading, at least. If I already know the piece, it probably doesn't matter much. I may be biased because a lot of what I sing is early music that had no bar lines in the first place, often written in Mensurstrich notation. -- BenRG (talk) 02:04, 18 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I'm very sketchy on reading music, but unless I am mistaken, note values cannot cross over bar lines; which is why ties are used when they need to. If a note value doesn't cross a bar line, it can be dotted. For example, needing to hold a note for 3 1/8th notes time on the 4th beat of a measure would require a tie rather than a dotted quarter. If the same note occurred on the first beat, it could be dotted. Though someone with more music background than me should chime in. Tie (music) notes the bar line convention, and also notes that it can appear in the middle of a bar where the first note falls off-beat and the second note falls on-beat. --Jayron 32 08:18, 18 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

You're right that notes can't cross a barline in (conventional) modern notation (though that isn't the only reason for using ties rather than dots - it's about making the rhythmic structure clear), but in the past it was not so unusual for this to happen: e.g. with a minim intersected by a barline. Slightly less bizarrely it's quite common in some older music (I particularly associate with vocal music of the Tudor period or thereabouts) to see a rhythm dot (indicating a 50% increase in duration) on the other side of barline after the note it belongs to. See here for some discussion of the general point. AndrewWTaylor (talk) 10:56, 18 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I've seen examples of notes crossing the barline as late as the 19th century, for example in Alkan's Trois morceaux dans le genre pathetique. (Which also has a fascinating example of a quintuplet which starts in one bar and ends in another – there is also a Scriabin étude that does this.) In some cases it may even clarify things, like the case of tuplets crossing the barline. Unfortunately, most notation programs will not like this notation very much. ;-)

Oh, and I've sometimes seen the dot placed in the same position the second note would be, if we replaced the dotted note with a tie. So you could have a dotted minim in 4/4, where the dot is written on beat 3. Now, I don't really like this so much, because it's easier to read the note and the dot together. It does make sense though for notes crossing the barline.

There's another situation where you have to use ties instead of dots: if you need a note lasting 5 eighth notes, there's no single note that will do it: you have to do something like tie a half note to an eighth note. (George Crumb thought of defining a notation for this – IIRC it's a half note with a dot on the left and a dot on the right – but it doesn't appear to have caught on.) Double sharp (talk) 14:25, 18 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I'm talking about ties within the bars. Is this notation acceptable in common time? You can't see the start of beats 2, 3 and 4.

${\tempo 4 = 80 <f' f''>8. <e' e''> <ais ais'>4 <b b'>8. <d' d''>}$

Or should you write it like this to see the beats clearly?

{<f' f''>8. <e' e''>16~ <e' e''>8 <ais ais'>8~ <ais ais'> <b b'>8~ <b b'>16 <d' d''>8.}

--2.245.152.25 (talk) 14:00, 19 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

- No, the first is not acceptable, in general. The purpose of notation is not to present the reader with a puzzle; the purpose is to make the music readable and playable at a glance. Don't do it. --jpgordon^{::==( o )} 14:17, 19 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
- I'd much prefer the second one, showing the beats clearly, even if there was a regular accompaniment: for me, I find it very important to know where the beats are supposed to fall, because it aids sight-reading. (First impressions tend to stick – especially the wrong ones!)
- The only situation I would prefer the first one (that I can think of) is if the intended grouping of the bar was 6/16 + 4/16 + 6/16, in which case that notation would indeed clarify things. For straight 4/4, it is going to need to be rewritten to facilitate performance. Double sharp (talk) 14:22, 19 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]