Re: transpose, transposition, and relative

[D Josiah Boothby]

> I'm not interested in midi. So \transpostion seems to be useless to me. The
> manual just says nothing about it :-(

I agree that the manual should probably be more clear here. I have an 
example that I would be happy to add which clarifies one of your next 
questions.

> And as for the workaround using "\transpose c bf" - well that's exactly that
> - a workaround. What the hell am I supposed to do when I'm coping with
> parts in Bf and D (trumpet), Bf and Ef (Cornet), Bb, Eb and C (Bass),
> Bb, C, Eb and G (Trombone) etc etc etc? My poor brain can't cope ... Even
> worse, what about the example in the manual, when I need to cope with D
> and G *in* *the* *same* *part*! (Horn).

So, from D to Bb (trumpet) you would have something like this:

DTrumpetNotes = \relative c'' { c2 d2 }

\transpose c e { %% <-- it's 2am, so i may be off, but i think this is the
                 %%     right degree of transposition
  \DTrumpetNotes
}

This example could be extended quite easily to the cornet, bass, trombone 
(transposing trombone! learn a new thing every day!); and if you're 
confused (as I might be) going from one key to another, you can always go 
through C, for example:

CTrumpetNotes = \transpose c d {
  \DTrumpetNotes
}

BbTrumpetNotes = \transpose c d {
  \CTrumpetNotes
}

And I'm sure this can be nested into itself more elegantly, but as I said, 
it's late on my end... I can't think that clearly.

The exception is for your horn part, which I would do like this:

DHornNotes = \relative c' { c1 }
CHornNotes = \relative c' { c1 }
FHornNotes = {
  \transpose c a, { \DHornNotes }
  \transpose c g, { \CHornNotes }
}

(though, i would just make the poor hornist transpose. serves them right 
for playing the silly instrument...:)

josiah


> What I *thought* \transposition did, and what the manual implies it does do,
> was convert parts to concert pitch as they were input.
>
> If this were the case, then we don't need to give a damn about pitch and
> midi - it'll just come out right anyway. And we don't need to worry 
> about getting confused over which part is transposed in which key - 
> they are all internally in C.
>
> So - can I respectfully suggest we have a big bug here - either in the
> manual or in the implementation of \transposition. And imho the bug 
> should be in the implementation - by changing the implementation we 
> don't change the current functionality as seen by the user, but we do 
> make the manual correct, and we make the behaviour of \transposition 
> both more consistent and more powerful.
>
> Cheers,
> Wol
>
>
>
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