I have an MXL file from some test suite in which the first measure says Division is 8 (i.e. 8 units per quarter note).
Measure 4 is in 3/4 time and has the following rest:
<note>
<rest measure="yes"/>
<duration>24</duration>
<voice>1</voice>
</note>
I would expect to see <dot/> here. As 24 divided by 8 is 3, am I supposed to infer that this note should be dotted? Does this mean I'll have to write code for a special case where <dot/> is missing but the note is clearly supposed to be dotted?
I'm confused by this representation. I wish they'd made the type attribute mandatory myself... If anyone could explain how dotted and tuplet durations are supposed to be represented, I'd appreciate it.
Why should that note be dotted? If the division is 8, that means 8 units represent a quarter note. So 24 represents three quarter notes which in the case of 3/4 time is an entire bar rest.
As for tuplets I was curious about that also. Here is an example taken from the music xml site's tutorial piece 'apres un reve'. This is also in 3/4, with 24 divisions. The time-modification attributes specify the ratio of the tuplet, in this case a triplet of three eight notes.
<time-modification>
<actual-notes>3</actual-notes>
<normal-notes>2</normal-notes>
</time-modification>
The time modification above shows that three eighth notes take the duration that two normally would.
<note default-x="92">
<pitch>
<step>E</step>
<alter>-1</alter>
<octave>5</octave>
</pitch>
<duration>8</duration>
<tie type="stop"/>
<voice>1</voice>
<type>eighth</type>
<time-modification>
<actual-notes>3</actual-notes>
<normal-notes>2</normal-notes>
</time-modification>
<stem default-y="-40">down</stem>
<beam number="1">begin</beam>
<notations>
<tied type="stop"/>
<tuplet bracket="no" number="1" placement="above" type="start"/>
</notations>
</note>
<note default-x="122">
<pitch>
<step>D</step>
<octave>5</octave>
</pitch>
<duration>8</duration>
<voice>1</voice>
<type>eighth</type>
<time-modification>
<actual-notes>3</actual-notes>
<normal-notes>2</normal-notes>
</time-modification>
<stem default-y="-42">down</stem>
<beam number="1">continue</beam>
<lyric default-y="-80" number="1">
<syllabic>single</syllabic>
<text>que</text>
</lyric>
</note>
<note default-x="162">
<pitch>
<step>C</step>
<octave>5</octave>
</pitch>
<duration>8</duration>
<voice>1</voice>
<type>eighth</type>
<time-modification>
<actual-notes>3</actual-notes>
<normal-notes>2</normal-notes>
</time-modification>
<stem default-y="-45">down</stem>
<beam number="1">end</beam>
<notations>
<tuplet number="1" type="stop"/>
</notations>
<lyric default-y="-80" number="1">
<syllabic>begin</syllabic>
<text>char</text>
</lyric>
</note>