The spacing of the notes

It seems that many books have dealt with this problem. Although it can lead to interesting algorithms, we think it is not in practice an important point.

In fact, each column of notes has not necessarily the same spacing and, in principle, this spacing should depend on the shortest duration of the simultaneous notes. But this cannot be established as a rule, for at least two reasons:

  1. spacing does not depend only on the local notes, but also on the context, at least in the same bar.
  2. in the case of polyphonic music, exceptions can easily be found. Here is an example:


    \begin{music}
\relax
\computewidths
\generalmeter{\meterfrac{4}{4}}\relax
\d...
...s
\temps\Notes\hu k\enotes
\temps\Notes\ql f\enotes
\finextrait
\end{music}

    where it can be clearly seen that the half notes at beats 2 and 3 must be spaced as if they were quarter notes since they overlap, which is obvious only because of the presence of the indication of the meter 4/4.

Therefore, we preferred to provide the composer/typesetter with a set of macros, the spacing of which increases by a factor of $\sqrt{2}$ (incidentally, this can be adjusted):

normalshapemediumseries\notes ... & ... & ... normalshapemediumseries\enotes % to 2.5cm1 spatial unit
normalshapemediumseries\Notes ... & ... & ... normalshapemediumseries\enotes % to 2.5cm
1.4 spacial unit
normalshapemediumseries\NOtes ... & ... & ... normalshapemediumseries\enotes % to 2.5cm
2 spatial units
normalshapemediumseries\NOTes ... & ... & ... normalshapemediumseries\enotes % to 2.5cm
2.8 spatial units
normalshapemediumseries\NOTEs ... & ... & ... normalshapemediumseries\enotes % to 2.5cm
4 spatial units
normalshapemediumseries\NOTES ... & ... & ... normalshapemediumseries\enotes % to 2.5cm
5.6 spatial units

The size of the spatial unit ( normalshapemediumseriesnormalshapemediumseries\elemskip) can be freely adjusted. In addition, MusicTEX provides a means of adjusting the note spacing according to an average number of elementary spaces within a line (macro normalshapemediumseriesnormalshapemediumseries\autolines).