Re: transpose, transposition, and relative

[Anthony W. Youngman]

In message <address@hidden>, Graham Percival 
<address@hidden> writes
> On 5-Feb-05, at 9:40 AM, David Raleigh Arnold wrote:
> > > As I've said before, please tell me exactly what section(s) should
> > > changed, and exactly
> > > what should be changed or added.
> >
> > Table of Contents
> >
> >     * GNU LilyPond \u2014 The music typesetter
> >     * Preface
> >           o Notes for version 2.4
> >     * 1 Introduction
> >           o 1.1 Engraving
> >           o 1.2 Automated engraving
> > Something like this? --> Relevant Features/Limitations
> >                          (of the languages (TeX, LaTeX, Scheme, etc.)
> >           o 1.3 What symbols to engrave?
> >           o 1.4 Music representation
> >           o 1.5 Example applications
> >
> > While you do skirt the topic several times in the section, I think it
> > deserves a subsection heading.  daveA
>
> OK, got it.  We should have a section about "Relevant 
> features/limitations".
> I'm not certain if the intro is the best place for it -- maybe 
> somewhere in
> chapter 7 or 8 would be better? -- but we can work that out later.
>
> Now what should I include in such a section?  In other words,
> (see my above quoted section) what exactly should be added?
As the person who started all this ...

The problem is that I missed the one line about midi.

I would suggest two changes. In the section about transposition, the 
*first* sentence should say something like "this command is used to 
convert transposed music to concert pitch for midi output only. For 
printed output use transpose".

And in the section about transpose, okay ... I know it's me being dense 
but ... the manual goes on about transposing music to output a part. I 
didn't make the manual leap to inputting a part. Going on about the 
trombone again, but how about ... "Or consider an instrument like the 
trombone, where parts may be in either Bb or C. A part can be wrapped in 
"\transpose c bf" when entering from a Bb part, and then that can be 
wrapped in either "\transpose c c" or "\transpose bf c" depending on 
which part you want to produce."

The problem is, it never crossed my mind (and it's not obvious from the 
manual) that you can actually do "\transpose c bf { \transpose bf c { 
music }}". And it probably never crossed anybody else's mind as to why 
on earth anyone would want to do such a thing :-) but if you want to 
produce a score and parts from the same set of notes, it makes life a 
lot easier (at least it does for me) if I can simply assume any music 
fragment is in C unless I've forced it to something else for a specific 
reason.

Cheers,
Wol
--
Anthony W. Youngman - wol at thewolery dot demon dot co dot uk
HEX wondered how much he should tell the Wizards. He felt it would not be a
good idea to burden them with too much input. Hex always thought of his reports
as Lies-to-People.
The Science of Discworld : (c) Terry Pratchett 1999