Re: about beam, stacato dots, and chord

[Cameron Horsburgh]

On Mon, Apr 13, 2009 at 04:47:29AM +0800, huy nguyen wrote:
> I'm a string player, so all the questions here about violins and violas.
> 
> ok first of all, the program places the beam for eight notes in weird places. 
> sometime they don't even beam all of the sixteen notes together. so I see 4 
> beamed 16th notes, and then 4 separate ones. although it don't matter, it 
> would look much better if all of the 16th notes beam up. second, sometime the 
> stacato dots are not below the notes, but they are above the beams, this 
> looks ridiculous. and I have no idea how to make a chord with 3 low quarter 
> notes, and the top note is a whole note. it doesn't show up.

Could you send us a copy of your file? The beaming should work
properly, and we'd like to understand why it doesn't. My guess is
you've got the timing wrong in an earlier bar somewhere. Do you use
bar checks? More information can be found at
http://lilypond.org/doc/v2.12/Documentation/user/lilypond/Bars#Bar-and-bar-number-checks
 

If you don't like the default placement of the staccato marks you can
force it like this:

c-.  (will give the default ouput)
c^.  (will force the dot above the note)
c_.  (will force the staccato below the note)

Making a chord like that is a little tricky---different rhythms
require separate 'voices'. I'm not sure exactly what you're after, but
try these little examples:

<<
  { a1 } \\
  { <a, c e>4 <a, c e> <a, c e> <a, c e>  }
>>

and

<<
  { a1 } \\
  { a,4 c e c  }
>>


The basis of what I've done here is explained in
http://lilypond.org/doc/v2.12/Documentation/user/lilypond-learning/Single-staff-polyphony#Single-staff-polyphony
and
http://lilypond.org/doc/v2.12/Documentation/user/lilypond-learning/Combining-notes-into-chords#Combining-notes-into-chords

> 
> and I'm working on a string quartet, and I need to print the scores and 
> parts. although I've learn about the part print instruction in the manual, I 
> just dont' know how to remove the comment blocks listed there. I think that 
> all of the codes listed in the manual should be usable by just copy and 
> paste; not like that you have to change them. it makes things much easier if 
> u can just copy and paste the code.

I agree with you here, but I think this is rather difficult from a
technical point of view. All of the code you get when you click on the
picture of the music is automatically generated, and a lot of the
extra stuff is needed to make it appear in the manual properly. You
just need to cut-n-paste everything between the

% ****************************************************************
% ly snippet contents follows:
% ****************************************************************


and 

% ****************************************************************
% end ly snippet
% ****************************************************************


You'll also need to delete the \sourcefileline command.

> 
> I'm very new to this. this is the first time I've even use notepad for this 
> coding-like purpose, I'm just a normal computer user, no coding experience. 
> sorry if I sounds stupid. thanks for those who will answer my questions
>  

This is nothing to do with stupidity---you've done well getting this
far! LilyPond is quite hard to learn, but once you get the hang of it
it's not too bad and the results are worth the effort. May I suggest
you don't use notepad. I would recommend that you download the jEdit
editor from http://www.jedit.org/ and add the lilypondtool plugin
http://lilypondtool.organum.hu/

That will do useful things like syntax highlighting and generate
templates to get you started on your scores.

See if you can figure out how to fix the problems you're having, and
don't be afraid to ask us again if you get stuck!

-- 

Cameron Horsburgh

Blog: http://spiritcry.wordpress.com/