How to represent shifts in fingering (follow-up to old thread)

[Andrew Stellman]

Hi! I'm new to this list. This is a reply to a year-old post, but I've 
made a little progress that will hopefully still be helpful to someone 
if not the original poster. Also, I have a question at the end about how 
to create a new glob based on an existing one. I don't know if it's 
possible to do so, but it would make this approach a little more elegant 
and readable.

I just started using LilyPond (v2.0.1 for Windows). The first thing I'm 
doing with it is to transcribe some bass guitar exercises I've been 
using for years. These exercises focus on string shifts, and it wasn't 
immediately obvious how to do it. While searching for the answer, I ran 
across this mailing list, and specifically the following post from last 
year:

> From <http://mail.gnu.org/archive/html/lilypond-user/2003-02/msg00009.html>:

> From:  Daniel Ashton
> Subject:  How to represent shifts in fingering
> Date:  Sun, 02 Feb 2003 22:10:45 -0500
>
> Greetings, et c.,
>
> In the manual I find that fingerings can be represented using -N, 
> where N is a decimal. In string music, shifts from one position to 
> another are often represented by a straight line connecting two 
> fingerings. Can this be done in lilypond?
>
> Thanks,
>
> Daniel


This seemed to spawn a brief thread, but as far as I could tell, it 
petered out without producing an answer that I could use.

I think I've been able to make a little progress on this, and since it 
was discussed on this list before I thought maybe someone might like to 
see what I came up with and hopefully be able to improve on it. I used 
\glissando to draw the straight line connecting two fingerings.

Here's an example:


% Example: using \glissando to denote a string shift
%
% The 'extra-offset value for glissando (inherited from 
line-spanner-interface) is used
% to raise the glissando line so that it's between the fingering marks. 
The style, gap
% and thickness are tweaked slightly, but they're less important.
%
% For more information, see the manual for \glissando
% 
http://www.lilypond.org/doc/v2.0/Documentation/user/out-www/lilypond-internals/Glissando.html

\version "2.0.1"
\score { 
\notes {
   \property Voice.Glissando \set #'extra-offset = #'(0 . 2.8)
   \property Voice.Glissando \set #'style = #'line
   \property Voice.Glissando \set #'gap = #.05
   \property Voice.Glissando \set #'thickness = #2.0

   \clef bass
   d-2 e-4\glissando fis-1 g-3
}
\paper { raggedright = ##t }
}


I'm not 100% happy with this -- the line is ends up at a slightly odd 
angle every now and then. But I think it's close enough, and I can 
probably fix it by altering the offset of the line and the finger 
numberings in the few cases where it's off.

Keep in mind that I've only been using LilyPond for a couple of days, so 
I'm very new at this and I may have done something very odd. If I've 
done something really weird or dumb, I'd appreciate it if someone could 
point that out.

Also, would someone be able to tell me if it's possible to create or 
derive a new glob based on Glissando (maybe called StringShift) so that 
I can use both \glissando and \stringshift in my .ly file? That way I 
could alter the properties of the dervied glob without having to reset 
it in order to do any glissandos. Also, it would make the file easier to 
read.

Andrew