Re: Percussion Notation

[Janek Warchoł]

Hi!

2011/6/27 cdg <address@hidden>
>
> version 2.14.1
>
> First off, I'm VERY new to using Lilypond. I'd consider myself quite an 
> advanced
>  Finale user, but I'm having
> a blast with Lilypond!
>
> I am a percussionists, so maybe I'm a little more picky in the percussion
> notation for a few things. But my
> main concern for now is the notation of rolls. The 3 slashes are great.
>  Two slashes on a flagged 8th note, I
> was hyping that the slashes were shortened to avoid colliding with
>  the flag! NO other program does this,
> and I haven't observed it any any of the music I have—love it!
>
> However, one slash on a stemmed 16th note

You mean beamed note?

> or two slashes on a stemmed 8th note, not a fan.
> These appear to be the same thickness as a beam,
> and worse of all, are completely horizontal.

That's because rolls are treated as tremolos,
and slashes in tremolos are typeset parallell to the beam.
I'm not experienced in drum notation,
but maybe this means they should be horizontal?

> So, is it possible to adjust the angle of these symbols?

Yes. You need to override a property of the stem object to do this.
(StemTremolo, to be more precise - stems of notes with tremolos
are handled differently than regular notes, so a special
object, StemTremolo, is used instead of regular Stem).
When you'll go to the Internals Reference and search for
StemTremolo (all objects are listed in Backened -> All layout objects),
you'll find properties that you want to tweak.
For example changing slash thickness is achieved by this:
\override StemTremolo #'beam-thickness = #0.8
As for slope, i think that as the argument you need to specify
the tangent of desired angle (but don't worry about tangents
if you don't like them, just try a value between 1 and -1 and see if it fits)
If overrides are new to you, you may consider reading Learning Manual 4.

> On an unrelated issue and possibly quite the newbie question,
>  in the tempo marking, is there a way to 1)
> remove the parenthesis from around the note and numerical value,
> 2) make the note smaller, and 3) change the font of the numerical values.
>  I've tried using \markup with little success. I can implement
> \markup fine with the preceding text, "Largo espressive" for example,
>  but I can't seem to make it work for the following 'note value equals
>  number' section.

There surely is a way to do it, but i never needed it so i don't know it.
Have you tried searching LSR (LilyPond Snippet Repository)?

> I'm stoked about diving into Lilypond!

Great!

Hope this helps,
Janek