RHY.5:4.3 - Supply the reference and the meaning of an omission

For a cyclic representation, make the cycle and its start recoverable when the operation uses them. For a spoken phrase, say how it relates to the maintained reference. A repeated gesture may distinguish places in a cycle without instructing the performer to emphasize them.

State what an empty position means. A position without a new attack can contain a continuing sound or silence; the difference matters when the next action depends on duration. An empty position can also leave ornamentation available, omit an irrelevant layer, or identify an unobserved interval. Retain the intended meaning.

For beat-based material, locate beats that have no new attack. Decide how the representation carries them: a sustained syllable with a continuing gesture, an explicit duration or rest, or a convention that labels the unarticulated beat. Retain the endpoint when the final duration matters. A beat can be maintained or inferred even when no sound starts there; the reference need not be another audible attack.

Choose the information available during use. A syllable sequence spoken in time with a beat gesture carries relations that the same words in an unspaced text line omit. For dictation, preserve enough of the performance to reconstruct the required timing; for sight reading, use the score and its reference as inputs. Require recovery of the distinctions needed by that task, rather than a unique mapping between bare syllable strings and every possible score.

When an expression relies on a demonstration, accessible recording or learned phrase, keep that contribution available. Written syllables can cue a prepared performer without supplying pronunciation, articulation and coordination to someone encountering them for the first time.