Re: Explicit default duration?

[David Kastrup]

Mats Bengtsson <matben@kth.se> writes:

>    On 2023-01-23 00:36, David Kastrup wrote:
>
> We have q for "repeat last chord with default duration" and 4 for
> "repeat last pitch with specific duration" but not "repeat last pitch
> with default duration".
>
>    To me, the most natural solution would be to extend q to mean last
>    pitch/chord (i.e. last "sounding music event") with default duration.
>    Over the years, I have several times misremembered the exact meaning of
>    q and tried to use it to repeat the last pitch, and instead got a
>    repetition of a chord that happened much earlier in the score.

For one thing, I think that ship has sailed in terms of dealing with
existing sources writing, say

{ \partial 8 g8 | <c' e' g'>4. g8 q4. g8 | q2 r4. \bar "|." }

which were a large motivation for the current q behavior.  The current
behavior also very much facilitates "oom-pah" basses like

{ \clef "bass" c,4 <c e g> g, q | c, q g, q | }

Also, having to approach the concept of "anything with default duration"
with a variety of different constructs feels like beating around the
bush.

I am not saying that 0 is the best choice here.  It merely appears to be
rather cheap.  I thought of * and / but the first renders sequences like
c4*2 ambiguous and the second would at least become a mess in chord
mode.

-- 
David Kastrup