Diminutions

This is essentiually breaking a longer note into shorter notes. This is really simple in a DAW's piano roll. But still not too hard with western traditional notation. There a few different ways depending on what your needs / desires are.
  1. Cut the long note into shorter repeated notes
  2. Move the little notes up or down, leave some in place, and in some cases remove some to make rests or syncopations.
  3. Some common patterns depending on what note follows this original note - but in all cases the first note of the diminution is the same pitch as the original note.
    • If next note is a step above going up and we are breaking the original note into 4 there are two common patterns:
      1. start note - upper neighbor - lower neighbor - and start note again
      2. start note - a note a third below - then go up the scale
    • If next note is a step below going down and we are breaking the original note into 4 there are two common patterns:
      1. start note - lower neighbor - upper neighbor - and start note again
      2. start note - a note a third above - then go down the scale
    • If next note is the same same note and we are breaking the original note into 4 there are two common patterns:
      1. start note - lower neighbor - the go up the scale
      2. start note - upper neighbor - then go down the scale