Re: Guitar Tablature Produces Empty Midi File

[Neil Puttock]

2009/10/16 Mats Bengtsson <address@hidden>:

> If you cannot figure it out, please prepare a short example .ly file that
> illustrates your problem, and send it to the mailing list. Then it's much
> easier to provide relevant feedback.

Eluze's snippet shows the problem: tablature produces no midi output.
Looking in performer-init.ly, there are two features which prevent
this:

1. note-events for tablature are swallowed:

83 \context {
84     \type "Performer_group"
85     \name "TabVoice"
86     \consists "Swallow_performer"
87 }

2. The TabStaff context is a separate Performer_group, so it doesn't
inherit the default performers set in Staff:

94 \context {
95     \type "Performer_group"
96     \name "TabStaff"
97     \accepts "TabVoice"
98     \defaultchild "TabVoice"
99 }

I can't see any reason why midi should be disallowed here, so I've
just pushed a fix (together with a default midiInstrument setting).

Oldwhtman, until these changes make their way into the next stable
release, you can use the following \midi block:

\midi {
    \context {
      \Staff
      \name TabStaff
      \alias Staff
      \defaultchild TabVoice
      midiInstrument = #"acoustic guitar (nylon)"
    }
    \context {
      \Voice
      \name TabVoice
    }
  }

Regards,
Neil