The ottava object

Type: Dictionary

An ottava (octave shift), traditionally notated with a marking such as "8va", tells a musician that the affected note(s) are being rendered a number of octaves up or down from their normal appearance on the staff, for sake of readability.

Note: the "pitch" attribute of any affected note should be encoded as the sounded pitch. In other words, the absence or presence of an octave shift does not affect a note's "pitch" attribute; the octave shift only affects the note's graphical display.

Keys:

Name Type Required? Description
"end" measure rhythmic position object Yes The location of the last event that is affected by this direction.

This location must lie within the same run of measure content as this direction's start position.
"orient" orientation object No
"staff" staff number object No The staff index to which this ottava applies, if such a designation makes sense. If not provided, the value is inherited from any sequence ancestor that specified it. If no ancestor did so, the consuming software should determine the value automatically according to its own logic.
"type" The string "ottava" Yes
"value" ottava amount object Yes The type of ottava.

Examples

This object is used in the following examples:

Ottavas (8va)