Re: splitting chords entered as <<c e g>>^"with stuff" \etc

[Carl D. Sorensen]

On 1/19/09 5:05 AM, "David Raleigh Arnold" <address@hidden> wrote:

> On Sunday 18 January 2009, Tim Woodall wrote:
>> And, of course, I found some bugs as soon as I'd posted.
>> 
>> Quick breakdown of how it works incase anyone really wants to hack on
>> it.

> Wow. I am impressed, honestly. I am not a programmer, but whether notes
> are written in \relative or absolute pitch all of the information is
> already present. I don't think it is necessary to do anything
> but carry all "," and "'" marks to all following pitches and reduce.
> 
> \relative --> absolute --> reduce
> a, b a c ... --> a, b, a, c, ...
> a,, b' a, c  --> a,, b,,' a,,', c,,', --> a,, b, a,, c,,
> 

This statement is not true when trying to split relative chords and produce
parallel relative voices, because of the way lilypond works.

The octave on the first note of a chord in relative mode is determined by
comparison with the first note of the previous chord.  The octave on
successive notes in a chord is determined by comparison with the previous
note in the current chord.  Therefore, in order to calculate the correct
absolute pitch, you need to get both the previous chord and the current
chord.

And if you want to split the chords into voices that use \relative mode, you
need an algorithm to tell you what the octave symbol should be.  The
algorithm will need to know the absolute octave of the last note in the
current voice, and the absolute octave of the current note in the current
voice, and then make a decision on what the octave symbol should be in the
current voice.

> I've always thought \relative to be quicker for a single simple
> melodic line, but a nightmare for anything with chords
> in it, so I didn't expect that the OP was dealing with
> it. If he was. I'm also not sure whether \relative is
> always necessarily completely linear any more. I haven't used
> it for a while. CRS.  Regards, daveA
> 

I find \relative to work quite nicely for chords, once I understood that
the first note in a chord gets its octave from the first note of the
previous chord.  I use \relative mode virtually exclusively for note entry,
regardless of whether it's in single notes or using the chord construct < >.
I do use absolute when I'm in chordmode.

Regards,

Carl