Re: Chords in LilyPond

[Wols Lists]

On 25/05/17 02:39, address@hidden wrote:
> What I think is most needed is a chord-naming mode that *just prints what
> the user typed*, formatted with the fonts, spacing, and so on that we
> expect for chord names - not translating it to an "internal
> representation" of notes plus extra data as LilyPond "music" at all.  But
> I was shouted down last time I proposed that, I think by people who
> thought I had claimed it would solve all possible obscure problems for
> imaginable hypothetical users.  As I made clear, it would only solve the
> main problem of 99% of relevant users who actually exist, and that wasn't
> enough to satisfy the list.
> 
> Failing a direct "print what I typed" mode, adding a lot of extra data to
> the internal representation while keeping the current framework is the
> hard way to get the input to match the output, but it'd be an improvement
> and we need an improvement.

I'm ploughing through the thread, so I may have missed other people
mentioning it, but I tried to get in a guitar "capo" function. If you're
rewriting the chord functionality anyway, it would be nice to get this
in. Last I mentioned it, Harm was interested but I don't know if he took
up my code?

Anyways, the idea when writing a guitar piece (actually, usually a piano
score with chords for singers) is there is a "\capo 3" sort of function
that prints "Capo 3" at the start of the piece. But it also then
modifies the chord print function so that if, for example, the user
enters a chord of C, it prints the chord name as "C (A)", transposing
the chord down three semitones.

I think actually you'll have to specify the capo as an interval - here
it would be "capo minor 3rd" however you did the syntax, because you
might want to transpose it an augmented second :-) It's easy to go from
an interval to the number of semitones, but it could be ambiguous going
the other way.

If you want to track down the source and further info, including working
(well it was when I wrote it) code, look for a thread this last February
called "13th chord". The original patches are about 6 years old though,
so I don't know how well they would apply to the latest code.

Cheers,
Wol