Re: (doc help, 2.19) transposition sanity check

[David Bobroff]

On Fri, 2005-08-26 at 12:27 -0700, Graham Percival wrote:
> As a string player, I always get confused when trying to deal with the 
> grammar
> of transposition.  In the below excerpt from the docs, should "a fifth 
> downwards"
> be "a fourth upwards" ?  Or "a fourth downwards" ?  Or should the 
> \transpose
> be written differently?  Or...?
> 
> 
> ----
> \hornNotes = { stuff in C (concert pitch, sounding pitches, whatever) }
> {
>   \transpose f c' \hornNotes
> }
> The line
> 
> \include "horn-music.ly"
> substitutes the contents of horn-music.ly at this position in the file, 
> so hornNotes is defined afterwards. The command \transpose f c' 
> indicates that the argument, being \hornNotes, should be transposed by 
> a fifth downwards. Sounding `f' is denoted by notated c', which 
> corresponds with the tuning of a normal French Horn in F. The 
> transposition can be seen in the following output
> ----


Actually, what it should say is:

The command \transpose f c' indicates that the argument, being
\hornNotes, should be transposed by a fifth upwards. [not downwards]

That is to say that the SOUNDING pitch in the horn part (small 'f';
fourth line bass clef) will be notated as 'middle c' (and all other
pitches will be move as well, of course).

\transpose f c' = "small f goes up to middle c"

It can get confusing if you're not clear about which direction you're
going, i.e. to or from concert pitch.  Since in this case we're going
from concert pitch to notated F-horn pitch it goes UP a 5th.

-David