Re: Gnu-music-discuss digest, Vol 1 #247 - 8 msgs

[Tim Jones]

I have two other problem areas I would like some input on.

====== problem number one =====
Transposition:  With a regular brass quintet, there are normally two 
   B-flat trumpets, a French Horn in F, a trombone (which is based 
   around B-flat, but players generally read concert pitches in bass 
   clef), and tuba (same thing, but an octave lower).

I would like to know the best way to go about this:  Please advise which 
approach has the best likelihood of success:

   1)  Compose all the music in the concert pitch, and then come up 
       with wrapper .ly files that produce separate part (like my second 
       message), but in the separate part, transposing up the trumpet parts 
       by 2 half-steps, and the French horn part by a fifth, and doing no 
       transposition for the low brass (trombone and tuba) 

   2)  Compose each of the parts as it will appear on paper, and then
       somehow get a program to transpose the 3 of out 5 parts back to 
       concert pitch for MIDI/playback purposes.
       
I'd prefer the first method, because if I do the second method, I'll 
always be doing F and B-flat transpositions in my head.  While I can 
do it, it does offer plenty of opportunities for mistakes.

A somewhat related sub-problem is that when I arrange stuff for my 
drum and bugle corp, the pitch is off by a fifth, because the horns 
are built in G (all four sizes).  So if I play a F major scale, it 
comes out as C concert.  G major is D concert, and C major comes out 
as G.   I would like to know how I can get the MIDI output to come 
out a fifth higher or fifth lower than what is written, because then 
it would match the bugle's tone.

====== problem number two =====
Clefs:  Drum corp music is apparently (by convention) all treble 
   clef, even for the baritone and contrabass parts.  For the baritone 
   part, I have using the G_8 clef, which is treble clef with an 8 
   underneath it, indicating an octave lower.  I'm happy with that.  
   What I need for the contrabass clef is a treble clef that sounds as 
   TWO octaves lower than written, kind of a G_16.  How might I go about 
   adding such a clef to lilypond and/or denemo?  It don't really care 
   if the 16 shows up on the paper, but right now, I'm using G_8 for 
   both baritone and contrabass, and my contrabass parts are coming out 
   in the same octave as baritone - I want it one lower than baritone).

(I am a professional programmer with years of C, C++, Java, Perl, 
and Python experience, but I haven't poked around the source code yet).

Tim 
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 Timothy Jones - LinuxTampa.com - 813-65-LINUX
Open Source Programming, Databases & Networking
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