And why don’t we fix it already?

  • gigastasio@sh.itjust.works
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    15 hours ago

    The term “quarter note” or “fourth note” applies to the note because there are four of them in a whole note. In other words, the names of the notes apply to their subdivisions respective to each other, not the time signature.

    • foggy@lemmy.world
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      14 hours ago

      Yeah. OP should be asking why a whole note only fits 1 bar of 4/4 (or 2/2, 1/1, 8/8, 16/16, etc).

      • gigastasio@sh.itjust.works
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        10 hours ago

        I had the idea that a way to solve this would be to create a symbol that means, “play this note for the entire duration of the measure, regardless of meter.” As far as I know such a symbol doesn’t exist in standard notation.

        • foggy@lemmy.world
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          12 hours ago

          It’s because it wouldnt help for sight reading the way you might think. Especially where there’s multiple voices like in complex piano parts. For example if you want one note to for 8 eighth notes in 4/4, but some to go for 10. Now we have to choose to use current notation or the new fangled “whole measure” or even “rest of measure” notation, and if using new fangled, we still use old notation for edge cases.

          It’s hard to fight the status quo.

      • Slatlun@lemmy.ml
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        6 hours ago

        You’re getting down voted because your comment is confusing music with musical notation. You can’t hear whether someone is playing a whole note or a quarter note. You can keep rhythm and say that note was 4 times longer than the last one. 1/4 notes will always be 1/4 the length of a whole note in the same song (assuming no time signature or tempo changes), but they don’t define a certain length of note in real time.

          • Slatlun@lemmy.ml
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            3 hours ago

            It is an indicator that you’re heading in the right direction or not on topic for your question. You don’t have to have an emotional response to data for it to relevant. You seem to be the kind to wallow in ignorance though since you ignored everything except the first thing I said.