Re: Reducing staff numbers in LilyPond

[James Harkins]

> On 16 Oct 2017 20:38, "Ken Williams" <address@hidden> wrote: 
> I honestly did not expect this kind of response, and I'm getting it from 
> multiple people.  I asked a technical question and got a whole bunch of 
> "answers" saying I'm stupid to try to achieve that effect.  Except for 
> Kieren hinting that it will probably be difficult, there has been *zero* 
> actual discussion about the technical aspects of it. 
>  
> If LilyPond or its community isn't friendly to people who want to 
> experiment with notation, I guess I'm finding that out pretty quickly. 

John Zorn once said (paraphrasing from memory), "The job of a composer is to 
put something on paper that inspires the people playing it."

I really love this. It reminds us that a musical score is a communication -- a 
relationship. If the score compromises its communication by being unclear -- if 
the players have to divert mental energy into reinterpreting the written 
material -- it takes energy away from inspiration and hurts the performance. 
(Relatedly, composers like Ferneyhough use the difficulty of their notation 
itself to create a relationship where the performers' struggle to realize the 
demand becomes part of the energy of the performance.)

I can see how some of the comments on this thread came across like, "You're 
doing it wrong," and this could seem like hostility toward the idea of 
experimenting with notation. I read it a bit differently. The commenters are 
expressing concern that you may have unpleasant surprises when you get into 
rehearsal. Some expressed this with sarcasm, which usually doesn't come across 
well in e-mail. But I think the motivation is sound: Choose the notation that 
will convey the meaning with the least chance of misunderstanding, at the very 
least saving rehearsal time, and also freeing up the performers to *make music* 
rather than think about notation.

hjh