Re: glissando between non-adjacent notes

[Han-Wen Nienhuys]

V!ctor address@hidden wrote:
> Currently, Lily assumes a glissando will always connect adjacent notes.
> (The sintax works like ties in Lily, where one puts the tie command ~
> after the first note)
> But many times one needs the glissando to span a duration that cannot be
> expressed with a single note, e.g. 1 + 1/4. I've attached a PDF with 2
> examples of this (taken from one of my own scores), together with a
> proposed syntax for the implementation. 
> Essentially, these glissandi would work exactly like slurs in Lily,
> using one command to start a gliss and another to end it. e.g.
> c4\glissStart c16 f8\glissEnd

I have the feeling that this should already more-or-less be possible 
with current support for clusters: use a cluster for the line, and 
blanked note heads to get the stems. Or put the blanked notes in a 
different voice.

Doing real timed glissandos does raise some questions: should the gliss 
always be a straight line, or should it just follow a melodic contour?
If the latter, what happens with 'trilled' glissandi.

If the former, then this will have nasty interactions with beams: beam 
directions are determined by stem directions, but in the case of a 
glissando stem, the "pitch" of the stem is determined after spacing and 
line breaking, which happens after determining directions. In this case, 
it's still possible to do, but we would have to rewire the logic for 
stem and beam direction code for this special case. This is tricky, so 
it would take a couple of 100 euro.

Another option would be to forfeit beams on glissando stems, and/or 
require them to have preset directions.

--

Han-Wen Nienhuys - address@hidden - http://www.xs4all.nl/~hanwen

LilyPond Software Design
 -- Code for Music Notation
http://www.lilypond-design.com