What is the placement attribute of <non-arpeggiate> good for?

[lemzwerg]

As the title says. Looking into musicxml.xsd I see that the definition of <non-arpeggiate> explicitly contains

<xs:attributeGroup ref="placement"/>

so it seems that its inclusion is intentional. However, putting an arpeggio bracket 'below' or 'above' a chord makes no sense to me. What am I missing?

[mscuthbert]

I don't think you're missing anything and your observation that it doesn't seem to do anything makes sense to me. My initial thought was that it probably came from a grouped entity that included placement, but I don't see that in the history. It has definitely been around since at least v.1.0.

What if 4.1 notes that placement does not have any known effect for <non-arpeggiate> and may become deprecated in a future release.

Another thing that I would like to make explicit is which of the top/bottom the color, position, etc. of this goes (top? bottom? first?) and whether the top and bottom should use the same optional-unique-id or different ones.

[lemzwerg]

What if 4.1 notes that placement does not have any known effect for and may become deprecated in a future release.

Sounds good. Dito for your suggestions to improve the documentation.

[lemzwerg]

BTW, I've filed issue #541 to track this – also covering <arpeggiate>, which has the same issue.

[mdgood]

This sounds good. I have no recollection of why this was there. I'm guessing that it was my (mis)interpretation of what was possible in MuseData.

[lemzwerg]

I have another question: Does an arpeggio always span the whole chord? The documentation is not very clear on this IMHO. I have never seen a chord where the wavy line doesn't cover all notes of it (contrary to arpeggio brackets), but this is just me...

[mdgood]

No, you need to use an <arpeggiate/> element on each note of the chord. Arpeggios sometimes only cover part of a chord, usually the lower notes of a chord, though I don't have an example to share at the moment.

[lemzwerg]

No, you need to use an <arpeggiate/> element on each note of the chord.

I'm confused now. Your 'no' is an answer to my question, I guess, but then you say that <arpeggiate> needs to be on each note of the chord, which sounds like a contradiction.

If I understand you correctly, the following is possible, right (using pseudo-MusicXML for brevity)?

<note>
  <pitch><step>C</step><octave>4</octave></pitch>
  <notations><arpeggiate/></notations>
</note>
<note>
  <chord/>
  <pitch><step>E</step><octave>4</octave></pitch>
  <notations><arpeggiate/></notations>
</note>
<note>
  <chord/>
  <pitch><step>G</step><octave>4</octave></pitch>
  <notations><arpeggiate/></notations>
</note>
<note>
  <pitch><step>C</step><octave>5</octave></pitch>
</note>
<note>
  <chord/>
  <pitch><step>E</step><octave>5</octave></pitch>
</note>
<note>
  <chord/>
  <pitch><step>G</step><octave>5</octave></pitch>
</note>

[mdgood]

That's correct. I meant you need to use the <arpeggiate/> element on each note of the chord that's part of the arpeggio.

[lemzwerg]

OK, thanks for the clarification.

[lemzwerg]

Aaand another question. Consider nested arpeggio brackets like the following (this might happen as an editorial advice to help resolve, say, a chord in Baroque violin music under special circumstances).

I suppose it would be straightforward to use the number attribute of <non-arpeggiate> to implement that, right? If so I suggest to extend the description of number to cover multiple arpeggio brackets for a single chord.