Re: Relative mode

[Darius Blasband]

Thanks for the answers....

At 10:06 22/10/2003 +0200, Mats Bengtsson wrote:
> I certainly recognize the problem of having to correct a
> few octave mistakes when entering a score, but I think the
> general idea of relative mode is so intuitive that I don't
> have to spend much time and effort while typing in the music.

You're obviously better at this than I am :-)

> However, you are certainly not alone, since a new octave check
> feature was added in version 2.0 of LilyPond, see
> http://lilypond.org/doc/v2.0/Documentation/user/out-www/lilypond/Octave-check.html

It's nice, but it's only a control feature. I thought more of some kind
of making entry more explicit.

> Do you have any concrete suggestion for how this should be done
> otherwise? I guess you still don't want to type c d' e' f' g' a' b' c'
> for an ordinary scale, so we would need some other input symbol to
> mean "closest upwards" and "closest downwards".

I should have thought of this. Trickier than it seems, as Lilypond already
uses almost all printable glyphs, and I don't know it well enough to know 
whether
reusing an existing symbol would make the grammar ambiguous.

Perhaps using other letters which do not conflict with notes:

aA    for a, direction up
aV    for a, direction down

Lisp cdrcar-like, one can then combine them, for:

aAA  for aA', etc....

Just an idea. Perhaps not a good one.

> Also, have you tried using absolute mode, i.e. to use
> \transpose c c'{...} instead of \relative c'{...}.
> Depending on the type of music and your way of thinking,
> it may be more convenient. Note that you can change the
> "default" octave in the middle of a piece, by starting a
> new \transpose ... section.
>
>    /Mats

I tried absolute mode a couple of times, but never managed to get used to it.
You're right: relative mode is the most intuitive way of using Lilypond.

Cheers,

Darius.