Re: Extending Lilypond's chord vocabulary PLUS Help on command definition

[Robert Schmaus]

Am 11/9/11 4:49 PM, schrieb Tim McNamara:
> On Nov 9, 2011, at 8:45 AM, Robert Schmaus wrote:
>
> > Hi Jim&  everyone,
> >
> > I'm currently preparing a macro file "jazz-chords.ily" which contains (my 
> > version of) common jazz chord notation. I will share that file as soon as it is in a 
> > usable state.
> >
> > However, right now, I just worked out how to define the markups of each chord 
> > by defining the markup explicitly. I would like to do that more elegantly by 
> > defining markup commands.
> > If, e.g., I would like to create a command \jcRaise such that the expression
> >
> > \markup{ \raise #1.5 {\tiny "Maj9"} }
> >
> > would just become
> > \jcRaise{ "Maj9" }
> >
> > or possibly
> > \markup\jcRaise{ "Maj9" }
> >
> > how do I define the markup command for this? I checked the manual here
> > http://lilypond.org/doc/v2.12/Documentation/user/lilypond/Markup-construction-in-Scheme#Markup-construction-in-Scheme
> >
> > and tried to build such a function accordingly, but didn't really get anywhere. 
> > I guess I would need to start somewhere more basic.
>
> Would the #(define-music-function work for this?
>
> I am assuming that you have seen the pop-chord.ly file already and don't want 
> to use that approach.


Hi Tim,

actually, I'm using the same approach as pop-chords. I've just 
modified/added loads of chord alterations and formatted them s.t. they 
look more like the usual jazz chords.

However, right now, I defined the markup command for each individual 
chord explicitly - with the effect, that I would also need to change 
each chord definition explicitly if I would, say, like to change the 
size in which the of the tensions are printed.
Therefore I was trying to switch to a music-function approach. But I 
don't yet know how to do it.

In the documentation, there is a description of how functions are 
defined, but I don't understand a lot of what's written there.
E.g. in
http://lilypond.org/doc/v2.12/Documentation/user/lilypond/New-markup-command-definition#New-markup-command-definition
halfway down, it reads

---
(cons (list '(font-shape . caps) ) props)
The variable props is a list of alists, and we prepend to it by cons’ing 
a list with the extra setting.
---

now it seems to me that I should know what what "cons'ing" *is* - but I 
don't, and I haven't found it explained anywhere in section 6 so far. 
hence my remark that I probably need to start way more back at the 
basics before I can define musical functions ...


I've seen that Carl and David sent me a suggestion of how the function 
should work - so hopefully I will soon enough see where I went wrong (my 
trials looked similar, but didn't work ...)

Thanks for all your responses - I'll let you know how it works 
(preferably by producing the jazz-chords file ...)

Cheers,
Robert