Re: air-tone tablature

[Carl D. Sorensen]

On 1/21/09 3:27 PM, "Eric Flesher" <address@hidden> wrote:

> I'm having serious problems figuring out a workable solution to the problem
> below:
> 
> Per Kurt Stone, breath tones (on woodwinds or brass) with no pitch content
> should preferably be written on a separate tablature line above the staff,
> using circular noteheads. Aside from their shape, these noteheads are unusual
> in that the stem extends through the notehead (see example below, engraved
> with Sibelius).
> 

I haven't been able to make this work, either.

I'm trying by using a rhythmic staff, and changing the voice to the rhythmic
staff for the breath notes.  This works, but I can't get the rhythmic staff
to start and stop, either.

> 
> On top of these issues is the need to create a new, circular notehead, which
> preferably would default to the placement relative to the stem shown above,
> i.e. centered on the stem, with the stem protruding through the notehead.
> Since I have other fonts with a pre-existing circular notehead, it would be
> easiest if this could just be imported in and used as a notehead, although I
> suspect (after perusing the manual, forum, etc.) that this might not be
> possible. 

The circular note head is not too hard.  Here's my code for a solid circular
note head:

#(define circle-note-head
  (let* ((head-half-width 1.2)
         (radius 0.4)
         (thickness 0.1)
         (fill #t)
         (out-radius (+ radius (/ thickness 2))))
   (ly:make-stencil
    (list 'circle radius thickness fill)
    (cons (- head-half-width) head-half-width)
    (cons (- out-radius) out-radius))))


This makes sold circular note heads.  fill could be set to false if the
duration of the note were 2 or longer, which would give hollow circular
notes.

The circular note head is enabled by
\once \override NoteHead #'stencil = #circle-note-head
\once \override NoteHead #'stem-attachment = #'(0 . 0)


I'm currently working on a music function which could do all of the tweaking
internally.

HTH,

Carl