Re: scoop before note

[Robin Bannister]

Lewis Overton wrote:
> I'm curious about what others are doing to print a "scoop" 

I have an occasional need for this when transposing saxophone parts, 
and then I use brackettips as you do/did [1]. 

I first did such bends in a clumsy beginners way and had to put the 
brackettips in a dedicated auxiliary voice.    
It was cumbersome to set up but obediently predictable, which was in 
contrast to my frustrating attempts trying to tame \bendAfter.    
I never perservered with bendAfter; there was no corresponding bendBefore, 
and it is important to have the same style for all bends. 

But my lowlevel Lilypond has improved, and I recently had another go, 
which turned out a lot simpler, especially the scoop: 

%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% 2.12 
#(define (scoop-stencil grob)  
 (ly:stencil-combine-at-edge (ly:note-head::print grob) 0 -1 
  (grob-interpret-markup grob (markup #:with-dimensions '(0 . 0) '(0 . 0)
    #:translate '( -2 . -2) #:musicglyph "brackettips.up" )) 0 0 ))
scoop = \once \override NoteHead #'stencil = #scoop-stencil 
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%


The key to this approach is the zero with-dimensions.   
It is of course a trick which lets notehead and stem stay together.  
And since it invites collisions, it may well be condemned by layout purists. 

But IMO it works well for the saxophone parts. 
It leaves the notecolumn spacing undisturbed; this is in keeping with my 
perception of these bends as articulations, i.e. lightweight qualifications.   
Collisions are fairly rare, mainly because the sax doesn't do chords, 
but also because these bends occur mostly on quarter and half notes;  
for beamed eighths I have a fixed override for widening the preceding stem.   
And the scoops are more or less below any accidentals.   


Cheers,
Robin

[1] http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/lilypond-user/2007-04/msg00123.html