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	Yes	The location of the last event that is affected by this ottava. Take care when working with grace notes. If the ottava ends on a note that is directly preceded by grace notes, use "graceIndex: 0" on the rhythmic position in order to include those grace notes in the ottava.
orient	orientation	No
position	rhythmic position	Yes	The location of the first event that is affected by this ottava. Take care when working with grace notes. If the ottava starts on a note that is directly preceded by grace notes, omit "graceIndex" from the rhythmic position in order to include those grace notes in the ottava.
staff	staff number	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.
value	ottava amount	Yes	The type of ottava.
voice	voice name	No	The voice to which this ottava applies. By default, an ottava applies to all voices in the part; using this key will narrow the scope of the ottava to only the voice you specify.

Parent objects

This object is used by the following parent objects:

part measure: "ottavas"

Examples

This object is used in the following examples:

Ottavas (8va)