Re: Time bracket notation for very large scale compositions

[Kieren MacMillan]

Hi Andrew, 

> I want to know if I should be using LilyPond.

Simple answer: Yes.  =)

> The example below is from one of Cage’s Number pieces, demonstrating Time
> Bracket notation. The important challenges for a notation program are:
> - Each time bracket is centered on the page, and the system is only as long as
> necessary.
> - No barlines.
> - Notes within the time bracket are distributed evenly horizontally. There is
> no notion of tempo or meter.
> - Whole note noteheads - or any notehead I want, free of any metric
> constraints.
> - Ample vertical spacing between time bracket systems.
> - Horizontally centered headers and footers (not shown).
> - Sometimes one piece runs over several pages (a “piece” is a set of time
> brackets for one player).

All no problem. In fact, there are multiple ways of accomplishing each of these
things.

Likely what you’ll want to do is create a “framework” (similar to the
LilySchenker framework I’ve been slowing building for my own work), which
contains a whole lot of “syntactic sugar”, custom Scheme functions, etc.
Combined with the edition-engraver, this will help keep your actual note-code
quite clean/simple.

> I need to be able to generate 100% of the .ly files from C, taking as a source
> the composition in the database (which was also generated, using chance
> operations, with C code). Because of the volume of pages, hand tweaking the
> parts is not an option.

Understood.

> So:
> 1. Is LilyPond up to the job? 

Yes.

> 2. What commands are used to do the time bracket centering, meter-free
> notehead selection, bar-less notehead equidistant spacing, etc.?

Too many data points to answer well here… but either ask specific questions on
the list, or contact me off-list for more detailed answers.

> 3. Is LilyPond going to gracefully let me set music symbols where I want them,
> or will I be constantly having to fool it into compliance at every turn?

I have used Lilypond natively to draw Tonnetz graphs… so the short answer is
Lilypond is your servant, not the other way around. ;)  That being said, there
are a lot of incantations that need to be cast before Lilypond stops trying to
"help”.

> A follow-up question: If I do have to work around LilyPond’s “knowledgeable”
> music formatting “conveniences”, will these work-arounds end up being
> “corrected” in future versions, thus breaking my existing code?

Again, too many variables to answer simply. You can certainly write your code in
a way that it is highly unlikely that any future versions will be unable to
compile the piece(s) essentially identically to the original compilation.

> BTW, I am open to hiring a knowledgeable LilyPerson as a time-saving and
> inspirational resource. Reply to this email if you are interested.

Feel free to email me off-list!

Cheers,
Kieren.