Re: Arabic music half flat accidental shape

[Valentin Villenave]

2008/1/17, josephHarfouch <address@hidden>:

> I am a fairly new user of Lilypond, and this is my first post. I am very
> excited to have come across this wonderful product, and I am very grateful
> to its creators. I am excited in particular about its potential use to
> notate Arabic music, given the flexibility that its offers.

Welcome Joseph :)

> I have seen some discussions in this forum regarding the expansion of
> microtonal music that Turkish music, for example, would make use of, and
> some of these discussions also mentioned Arabic music. Just for interest, I
> think an expansion of notating microtones is not really relevant for Arabic
> music as it is traditionally notated up till now, as there is usually no
> attempt in Arabic music notation to define intervals smaller than a
> semitone. There are however intervals in some Arabic maqams (or modes) that
> are somewhat between a tone and  a semitone, and these can be indicated by
> using half-flat and half-sharp notation. The precise quality of all
> intervals, whether tones, semitones, or medium intervals,  is determined by
> the maqam (mode) name and/or by listening to the music. Since lilypond
> already offers a way to notate half sharp, and half flat, it already can be
> used without modification to notate Arabic music. There are a couple of
> things however, that I would like to be able to do. I'm not sure whether
> they are available, but I just don't know how to use them, or if they might
> be developed in the future. If they are not available, and it would not be
> too difficult or costly to add them, then I would be interested to help
> sponsor them.

Unfortunately, we have currently very few people available for
addressing bugs and implementing new features, so it is not really
about money...

> 1) The shape of the half-flat symbol that I see in Lilypond output looks
> like a reversed b, which I see in Turkish pieces but not in Arabic music. A
> half flat in Arabic music is displayed as a b but with a slash across (It is
> hard to describe the shape precisely). Is it possible to access such a
> symbol, and if not, is it possible to add it in the future?

Here is a way (for version 2.11 only; if you have version 2.10 please
replace "accidentals.flat" with "accidentals.M2").

%%%%%%%

dwn =
#(define-music-function (parser location note)   (ly:music?)
 #{ \once \override Voice.Accidental #'stencil =
          #ly:text-interface::print
        \once \override Voice.Accidental #'text =
          \markup {\musicglyph #"accidentals.flat"
       \postscript #"0.17 setlinewidth -2 0.5 moveto -0.6 1.8 lineto
       stroke "
       }
        $note #})

\relative {
       d \dwn bes d \dwn gis
}

%%%%%%%


> 2) This second request is not as important, but it just would be nice to
> have, if it is easy to implement.
>
> It would be nice to be able to omit the name pitch on the \key command, and
> let lilypond default it.
>
> for example instead of saying \key do \minor,
>
> to say instead
>
> \key \default \minor
>
> or even better
>
> \key \minor
>
> and then have lilypond default to the notename pitch of do, rather than
> issue a syntax error. Lilypond would determine the tonic that by knowing the
> associations between modes and default tonics, or simply defaulting to do
> when that is not available.

Unfortunately, I do not think this is possible right now.

> This does not seem like a very useful thing in Western music where most
> scales are thought of as modulations of common scales, but in Arabic music
> there are lots and lots of modes to be learned and remembered which are not
> always grouped by modulation. The name of the mode or a group of modes
> usually implies the name of the tonic. In this case it would to nice to
> define this once in a file, and let the software manage it. For example when
> an Arabic music is labelled as Maqam Bayati the tonic is assumed to be RE
> (D), and the clef key markings reflect this. If the mode is modulated from
> its default tonic to another note say sol (G), only then the music is
> labelled as Bayyati on sol and the clef markings are adjusted.

I'm afraid we do not have anybody competent enough to make LilyPond
aware of all these modes. My best guess is that we could probably just
regroup some definitions in a few different .ly files, so that you
could just add
\include "bayyati.ly"
in your file.

We currently do this for bagpipe music: if you just add \include
"bagpipe.ly" in your file, the key signature defaults to re \major,
and a few other things are tweaked.

Plus, I hope you are aware of the few tricks mentioned in
http://kainhofer.com/~lilypond/Documentation/user/lilypond/Key-signature.html

you can easily use some pre-defined modes such as \dorian, instead of
\major and \minor. Plus, it is easy to create new key-signatures.

If you can write yourself (on a long term, I mean) some definition
files for Arabic music, I'm sure we will consider adding them to the
"official" LilyPond distribution, or at least to the LSR.

Cheers,
Valentin