Re: NR 2.1 Vocal music

[Graham Percival]

On Thu, Aug 26, 2010 at 10:41 PM, Trevor Daniels <address@hidden> wrote:
>
> First pass through 2.1.9 Choral done.
>
> I'll look at 2.1.8 Opera and stage musicals next.
>
> Any chance you could look over and comment on 2.1.7 and 2.1.9, please?

Doing so.

I know you didn't say to look at NR 2.1.1, but I noticed that you used
"Common references for vocal music" instead of the standard
"References for vocal music".  Also, could Ambitus be in @notation
rather than @q{} ?  You might want to add a @seealso music glossary
link for this.

I really, really, really don't like writing specific section numbers.
Somebody should be able to add a new subsection between 2.1.3 and
2.1.4 without changing (or even knowing) about the text in 2.1.1.  I'd
actually say that 2.1.2 is the only subsection which is common to
"all" types of vocal music.



Anyway, 2.1.7.

"The notes for each vocal part are placed in a Voice context, with
each either on a staff of its own or grouped in pairs on a single
staff."

I might read this as suggesting that SATB could be stuffed onto a
single set of 5 lines.  Could you reword the "single staff" bit?

Oh dear, more hard-coded section numbers.  Please definitely remove
these ones.  Even if somebody remembers to change the hard-coded
section numbers at the beginning of the file, they'd be quite forgiven
for not changing numbers in 2.1.7.

More generally, IIRC the other NR 2.x sections all assumed that the
reader was familiar with the "common notation for xyz" material in the
remainder of the section.  I'm not certain we need an @item reminding
people to read common notation stuff.  (that said, I suppose it's only
two sentences)


"Setting annotate-spacing = ##t in the layout block..."

Could I convince you to remove that part, and just link to Displaying
spacing ?  I don't like assuming that the reader knows what a layout
block is (notwithstanding the Learning), but it's not appropriate to
put a full example here.  I'd much rather have somebody just check out
the example in Notation 4.6.1 Displaying spacing.

I'd rather that you @ref{Fitting music onto fewer pages} rather than
@ref{Changing spacing}.  The first @ref{} is pretty self-explanatory,
and I'd rather emphasize our (mostly?) well-named sections.  More
generally, it might be worth combining the last two points in that
list.

- introduce examples with punctuation; we no longer allow sentences which
   \markup{ run directly into an example }

- do you absolutely need to use an @example rather than @lilypond for
the page-separator-markup ?
That said, we really try to avoid repeating information that's
elsewhere.  Unfortunately, the current doc page about
page-separator-markup is rather un-optimal.
If this were GDP, I'd run off and fix this by making a separate
section right away, but for now I'll simply state it as a problem.

- can't you do \layout { \context { \dynamicsUp }} ?  After mentioning
\dynamicsUp, it feels really weird to see the arcane \override command
in there.
Also, do you absolutely need an @example rather than @lilypond ?
Also*2, as a stupid reader I'm really confused by "use the following
in a \layout block within the \score block".  I'd really rather see a
@lilypond rather than a textual description followed by a
non-graphical @example.

The predef looks weird without \dynamicsDown and \dynamicsBoth.  I
know why you only put \...Up in there, but I think it would look
better with all three instead.

- not related to Vocal, but I winced a bit when seeing @ref{Lines}.
It might be better to rename this to "Expressive marks as lines" or
"Line-style expressions" or something... "Lines" by itself looks fine
if you're looking at the ToC, but by itself it's a bit confusing.
Again, in GDP style I'd make a special note of this and come back to
it in a day or two.



2.1.9 Chants psalms and hymns

- "To remove the stem set the transparent property of the Stem grob to
#t... An alternative is set the length property to 0."

Please don't talk through the code.  I'm a stupid reader and can't
follow that stuff.  I understand @lilypond and pretty pictures.

---
Chants often use quarter notes without stems to indicate the pitch,
with the rhythm being taken from the spoken rhythm of the words.

stemOff = { \override Staff.Stem #'transparent = ##t }

\relative c' {
  \stemOff
  a'4 b c2
}
---

- "To use modified bar lines see the Bar lines section in Bars."
please just @ref{Bar lines}.


In general, I think that all 4 items in Chants need @lilypond, and
would be better being outwith (sweet, I'm using British-specific words
now!) of any "References for chants and psalms".  All four items are
too complicated / too specific to be well-explained by those
references.

I'm also wondering if there should be a dedicated Chant \include
"chant.ly" which sets up these things, like \include "gregorian.ly".
Of course, that brings us to the ly/ cleanup, whose issue number I
can't find within 2 minutes, but has definitely been desired since
before GDP and won't be happening in the near future.


Pointing a psalm

- I got a bit lost here.  Could you add a @lilypond to illustrate some
(or all) of those points (no pun intended)?


Cheers,
- Graham