Re: Letters as note heads

[Aaron Hill]

On 2019-01-06 9:54 pm, Kyle Wightman Baldwin wrote:
> I'm trying to create a handout where the note heads are actually 
> letters.
>
> I'm sure I'm not the first one to do this, but I'm having a hard time
> finding it.  I came across the "Easy play" note heads, but they are
> too small and I would prefer it without the actual note heads.

Just a friendly reminder that providing a "tiny example"[1] is very 
helpful to give us an idea of how far you have managed to get on your 
own.

But to address your question, you can customize any stencil as you see 
fit.  The documentation[2] provides one method of using arbitrary markup 
in place of a stencil, which would seem suitable for your needs.  
However, that specific example uses a fixed value rather than one based 
on the pitch of the note.  Here is a variation on that theme that looks 
up a string in a list to achieve what you are after:

%%%%
\version "2.19.82"

\relative c' {
  \override NoteHead.stencil = #(lambda (grob)
    (let* ((cause (ly:grob-property grob 'cause))
           (pitch (ly:event-property cause 'pitch))
           (notenames '("C" "D" "E" "F" "G" "A" "B"))
           (notename (list-ref notenames (ly:pitch-notename pitch))))
      (grob-interpret-markup grob #{ \markup
        \halign #0 \vcenter \fontsize #-2 \sans \bold $notename #})))
  \hide Stem
  c4 d e fis g a bes c
}
%%%%

[1]: http://lilypond.org/tiny-examples.html
[2]: 
http://lilypond.org/doc/v2.19/Documentation/notation/modifying-stencils

-- Aaron Hill

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