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Re: transpose, transposition, and relative
From: |
lilypond |
Subject: |
Re: transpose, transposition, and relative |
Date: |
Thu, 03 Feb 2005 12:42:16 +0000 |
User-agent: |
Demon-WebMail/2.0 |
address@hidden wrote:
>
> address@hidden writes:
> > So - can I respectfully suggest we have a big bug here - either in
> > the manual or in the implementation of transposition. And imho the
> > bug should be in the implementation - by changing the implementation
>
> Can I respectfully mention that I still don't understand what you're
> trying to achieve? What do you want to see in the notation, what do
> you want to hear in MIDI, and what do you want to enter in .ly ?
>
Okay. I'll try and explain. But I think I've worked out what's going on, and
why (not saying I agree with it, though).
Transposition works the way it does because certain instruments (the Horn in
particular) sometimes change pitch while playing. (Horns swap a crook, trumpets
and clarinets swap instruments.) This, obviously, is a nightmare for lilypond
if you're trying to output both a score and a soundtrack.
I'm coming at it from a very different angle. I don't give a damn about MIDI,
and I'm using lilypond as a music-typesetting program (which, indeed, I thought
it was). And I play an instrument which, in a different way, is as unusual as
the horn changing pitch half-way through a piece. Depending on the whim of the
composer (well, not quite), music for me can be written in C or in Bb. When I'm
looking at my .ly files, I can't say "that's the trombone, therefore those
notes are concert pitch". When I saw the \transpose directive, I missed the bit
about "midi only", and thought "great - I can enter the notes in Bb, and that
will tell lilypond how to convert it to C".
I *really* *don't* *want* to have half my music with a "\transpose bf c"
directive in it, and the other half with "\transpose c bf" in it. The current
option is to transpose all the Bb parts in my head as I enter them (or work out
how to get that editor to do it for me). It'd be nice if lily could do it for
me.
So I'm coming at it from the point of view that "lily is a typesetter", I have
multiple parts in multiple transpositions, and I really do not want the hassle
of having to remember which parts are in which transpositions - I want
everything internal to lily to be in C.
Now bear in mind I'm a programmer by trade, and I missed the warning about
"midi only" :-) It really seems inconsistent to me for \transposition to
convert one form of output (sound) to concert pitch, while not converting the
other (paper).
Basically, the fly in the ointment is those damn instruments that change
transposition mid-piece :-) Either we enter the notes transposed, and have
hacks to cope with outputting midi at concert pitch, or we enter the notes at
concert pitch, and have hacks to cope with outputting music as a playable part.
Coupled with the fact that a concert-pitch score makes finding accidental
misprints much easier (intentional double-entendre), I would much rather think
in concert pitch, and transpose transposing instruments on output. I also think
the current implementation of \transposition is inconsistent (yes I know - now
I understand, I think the reasons are very sensible...)
So. I understand the "why". I don't really think it's right, but the
alternative is just as bad. Can we add a property that says "apply
transposition to printed output" or "transpose notes according to transposition
on input" (either implementation would work)? And where do I start looking if I
want to encode this myself? Not having got to grips with lily internals
properly yet, I'd be inclined to adjust notes by instrumentTransposition as the
parser reads them, but I don't know how viable an approach that is.
Cheers,
Wol
- Re: transpose, transposition, and relative, (continued)
- Re: transpose, transposition, and relative, D Josiah Boothby, 2005/02/02
- Re: transpose, transposition, and relative, lilypond, 2005/02/03
- Re: transpose, transposition, and relative, lilypond, 2005/02/03
- Re: transpose, transposition, and relative, D Josiah Boothby, 2005/02/03
- Re: transpose, transposition, and relative, Graham Percival, 2005/02/05
- Re: transpose, transposition, and relative, David Raleigh Arnold, 2005/02/05
- Re: transpose, transposition, and relative, Graham Percival, 2005/02/06
- Re: transpose, transposition, and relative, Anthony W. Youngman, 2005/02/07
- Re: transpose, transposition, and relative, David Raleigh Arnold, 2005/02/07
- Message not available
- Re: transpose, transposition, and relative, Han-Wen Nienhuys, 2005/02/03
- Re: transpose, transposition, and relative,
lilypond <=
- Re: transpose, transposition, and relative, David Raleigh Arnold, 2005/02/03
Re: transpose, transposition, and relative, Graham King, 2005/02/02
Re: transpose, transposition, and relative, Mats Bengtsson, 2005/02/03
Re: transpose, transposition, and relative, lilypond, 2005/02/03