Re: Overriding shifting of coda when \break is used?

[Tim McNamara]

On Aug 6, 2011, at 11:30 AM, James Lowe wrote:

> Hello,
> ________________________________________
> From: address@hidden address@hidden on behalf of Tim McNamara address@hidden
> Sent: 06 August 2011 17:17
> To: LilyPond User
> Subject: Overriding shifting of coda when \break is used?
> 
> By default Lilypond moves a coda placed at the end of a line to the beginning 
> of the next line of \break is used.  I consider this bad behavior- the 
> rehearsal marks should stay put where I place them rather than having that 
> placement changed by the application (I have no idea why Lilypond is coded to 
> do this in the first place; I'm sure someone had what they thought was a good 
> reason but it's a nuisance when writing jazz lead sheets).
> 
> Is there a way to turn this off and get my coda marks to be where I want 
> them?  I couldn't find anything in the docs.
> 
> ---
> 
> Try.
> 
> http://lilypond.org/doc/v2.14/Documentation/notation/visibility-of-objects#index-break_002dvisibility

I'l check that out, thanks.

> I also don't understand your point about your gripe that LilyPond puts them 
> where you think they are to be. Musically a rehearsal mark indicates the 
> *start* of a section not the end.
> 
> So when you break, the *start* of the section is exactly in the right place - 
> i.e. the start of the next line.
> 
> The fact you are using a coda 'glyph' for your rehearsal mark is, as I say 
> irrelevant there is no '\coda' fuction - it's a rehearsal mark which you are 
> using a specified glyph (Unless I have misunderstood you). 
> 
> What LilyPond does with rehearsal marks is exactly what I want and I don't 
> want to have to move them manually when she decides to break a line at the 
> point the section starts.
> 
> Please let me know if I have misunderstood.

I hope this is not overly verbose and telling you what you already know.  I 
appreciate your response and don't want to waste your time.

With jazz lead sheets, it is typical to put a coda mark at the end of the 
section where the jump to the coda is made and again at the start of the coda 
itself.  I think this is typical in most forms of music, but jazz is the one I 
am familiar with.  Very often the first coda mark is placed at the end of a 
four bar staff and the second is placed at the start of another staff somewhere 
down the page, usually at the very bottom (the coda in jazz typically being 4 
or 8 bars to end the song, probably also the case in most forms of music).

Because jazz is usually organized in sets of 4 or 8 bars (being based on the 12 
or 16 bar blues form), I always use the \break command in order to get staves 
with 4 bars.  I want 4 bars to the staff to aid in reading the form of the 
chart (bearing in mind the improvisational nature of jazz, making it easy to 
follow the form during solos is very important).  Lilypond likes to conserve 
space and will set staves with 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 bars, etc., depending on how many 
notes are in the bar- which makes the form for jazz songs harder to follow even 
if it makes the notes easier to read.  I'd rather have the notes crammed in a 
little tighter or stretched out a little more in order to get an easy-to-follow 
form with a predictable four bars per staff, even though it looks kind of funny 
sometimes.  If you look at professionally set jazz charts,it is almost always 4 
bars per staff and the bars are usually of equal physical length.  An exception 
is sometimes with repeats where there are 5 or 6 bars on a staff in order to 
preserve the easy perception of the form; another exception may be a tag ending 
(which is a repeat of a few bars).  This makes it sometimes impractical to use 
some of the other options for setting the number of bars per staff.  \break is 
simple and provides direct manual control of these issues (and also makes 
errors easy to track down thanks to Lilypond's error reporting).

Typically the way the coda is used in jazz is to reach the end of the form and 
"D.C. al Coda" or "D.S. al Coda."  The jump to the coda is usually not at the 
end of the form, however, but might occur 4 or 8 bars before the ends of the 
form.  This almost always occurs at the end of a staff.  If I put a coda mark 
at the end of the staff and use \break to control the number of bars per line, 
the coda mark is moved by Lilypond to the start of the next staff, which is the 
wrong place for it and will confuse the musicians.  It belongs at the end of 
the staff and I want the coda mark to stay put rather than having Lilypond 
choose that for me.  Having some kind of override would be helpful, in 
particular for the coda because I run into this particular issue a lot (at 
least half of my charts).  Or not having Lilypond move the coda glyph when 
\break is used, the reason for which frankly escapes me- I can/t figure out why 
this is the default behavior because it makes no sense to me.

Rehearsal marks for jazz lead sheets tend to be a frustrating exercise on some 
occasions because everything is tied to notes rather than to the structure of 
the song.  For most things this is OK, but there are times where multiple 
things need to be placed at the same place on the chart (e.g., a segno and a 
section mark) and Lilypond does not always accommodate this gracefully.  Also, 
IMHO the syntax for placing a coda, a segno, etc. ought to be as elegant and 
simple as possible (e.g., \coda or \segno instead of \mark \markup { 
\musicglyph #"scripts.coda" }  or \mark \markup { \musicglyph #"scripts.segno" 
} Less typing means fewer errors ).

Thanks for your questions and the suggestion, I will check that out.

Tim