Various music questions

[Tobbeh99]

I have some questions I want to know the answer to:

1) Does a grace note have to has it's stem/beam upwards? I've only seen those with upward stems.
2) How do you write a reverse trill?? like a trill with the notes B-A-B-A etc.?
3) If you have a song in 7/8, do you always have to mark tempo as 8ths or as quarter+quarter+dotted quarter? I wonder since I have song where marking it as 8ths looks way too fast, and marking it as quarter+quarter+dotted quarter makes it way too slow. I have it marked as quarter=87, but I don't know if it's ok? Here is the song: [ZIP] 

Spoiler

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=79fe0wNariU

[close]

4) if I'm making a song in C major, but at one time have a Ab with a upper mordent above it, does that mean that it's supposed to be played Ab-Bb-Ab or Ab-A-Ab or Ab-B-Ab?

5) If I have a song with the parts A B and C. In part B there is a repeat bracket, and in part C there is a note "D.S. al fine" which leads to a Segno in part A. My question is: After playing till part C when you go back to the Segno in part A, should you still play through the repeat bracket in part B one more time, or should you ignore them??

6) Are the key signatures C#-major and Cb-major(containing 7#/b's) correct, and if so, are they ever necessary??

7) What are the differences between the > accent and the ^ accent?? Or is there any? I've heard some people saying the ^ accent is shorter than the > accent, and others saying the ^ is stronger than the > accent. So I'm not sure about the differences.

[Maelstrom]

I don't think you can give a 7/8 song a quarter tempo. It just doesn't work.

[Tobbeh99]

I mean to make it so you're supposed to feel it like 1 2 3, but the last quarter is slightly longer(punctuated).

[mikey]

he's talking about the tempo marking I think, you know q=80 or whatever, you can't do that

[Olimar12345]

1) I don't think the grace note stem direction is that important, but you usually see it going upwards. Don't sweat it.

2) Probably the easiest way to notate it for both you and the performer would be to put a grace note before the trill of the upper pitch, then put the trill on the lower sustained note.

3) A quarter note tempo value would be perfect for 7/8, especially if it was in a more standard subdivision of 2+2+3. (I can't see your file on my phone) It would be like conducting in 3/4, but the third beat would get an extra eighth note.

[Jompa]

4) it would mean Ab-B-Ab, but I guess if one sees it in music one should take note of the songs harmony to make sure that's an ok note to have, as most keys that use Ab also has Bb, not B. But technically: Ab-B-Ab

[MaestroUGC]

Mordents, trills, turns, and any other ornaments assume the normal scale for the surrounding notes, unless a prior accidental exists. So yes, your mordent would be Ab-B-Ab, since you are in the key of C. Anytime you want to do some strange stuff (Chopin did this a lot) that uses a lot of accidentals for these ornaments, you're better off just writing them out.

[JDMEK5]

3) A quarter note tempo value would be perfect for 7/8, especially if it was in a more standard subdivision of 2+2+3. (I can't see your file on my phone) It would be like conducting in 3/4, but the third beat would get an extra eighth note.

Okay but what if someone wants to use the metronome marking for a metronome? It would work fine for the first measure but every second measure starting with 2 would have the click on the off-beat. That kinda defeats the purpose.

[Olimar12345]

Okay but what if someone wants to use the metronome marking for a metronome? It would work fine for the first measure but every second measure starting with 2 would have the click on the off-beat. That kinda defeats the purpose.

Subdivide it. You would set it to the eighths. Putting the metronome marking in quarters is fine since there are dominant quarter note beats.

[Jompa]

3) You can:
-Mark it as eight note = 174
-Mark it as quarter quarter dotted quarter = 24 (this would then be the whole measure - in other words: a tempo seven times slower than the eight note tempo).
-Mark it as quarter = 87, but that would mean the performer would have to use hard hard math to make it into eight note tempo.

I'd say the eight note marking is the best choice, but all work.

[Tobbeh99]

5) If I have a song with the parts A B and C. In part B there is a repeat bracket, and in part C there is a note "D.S. al fine" which leads to a Segno in part A. My question is: After playing till part C when you go back to the Segno in part A, should you still play through the repeat bracket in part B one more time, or should you ignore them??

6) Are the key signatures C#-major and Cb-major(containing 7#/b's) correct, and if so, are they ever necessary??

7) What are the differences between the > accent and the ^ accent?? Or is there any? I've heard some people saying the ^ accent is shorter than the > accent, and others saying the ^ is stronger than the > accent. So I'm not sure about the differences.

[MaestroUGC]

5) I don't think you'd play the repeat when following a D.S., but I can't really think of any examples that do what you said. You could always put a note to skip the repeat on that third time through, if that's what you're going for.

6) Correct? Sure, but a bit excessive in most cases. You'd be better off opting for their parallels, Db and B respectively.

7) Both of those a right, actually.

[Tobbeh99]

Here's my concern, it's Red Wings' Theme from Final Fantasy IV.
As you can see, it includes both a repeat bracket and a Segno, I want to make it so that you should play the also repeat bracket on the Segno-repeat.

[MaestroUGC]

Right, well at any rate it actually does play the repeat, so you're covered there.

[Tobbeh99]

Y, on the MUS./Midi files, because I made it so. But I wonder if you read it, would you read it so that you should play the repeat on the on the Segno-repeat? If not, is there a a better/more clear way of notating that kind of stuff when you got a repeat bracket within a larger repeat??