Re: Possible feature request for 'q' shorthand or tie syntax

[Jim Long]

On Thu, Sep 20, 2012 at 01:12:29PM +0200, David Kastrup wrote:
> Jim Long <address@hidden> writes:
> 
> > A humble suggestion....
> >
> > Please educate me if there is already a way to do this, but it
> > appears that 'q' as a shorthand for the repetition of the
> > previous note(s) only works for chords.  It would be handy if it
> > worked for single notes also, specifically in ties.
> >
> >   \time 12/8
> >   \partial 8
> >   aes8
> >   des,4. ~ q4 aes'8  d,4. ~ q4 a'8
> >   des,4. ~ q4 aes'8  d,4. ~ q4 a'8
> >
> >
> > For that matter, it would be nice (though I suspect more
> > syntactically problematic) for subsequent notes in ties to only
> > require a duration, since by definition the pitch has already
> > been specified in the first note of the tie.
> 
> Yes and no: musically one can tie eis to f or cis to des (not that
> LilyPond does a fabulous job with that).

My wording was somewhat accidental, but I'll point out 'require'.
Point taken re: your note about bar lines, bar number checks, etc.
And I don't have any resource to fund development, nor is this an
urgent issue.  So unless it's easy to do as a low-priority enhancement ....

That said, what about making the pitch *optional* in a tie?

So you could still do enharmonic ties:

c1 ~ | bis4 cis dis cis ~ | des1

But if stand-alone durations (like a '4' standing by itself)
could inherit the previous pitch (somewhat symmetric to how a
stand-alone pitch inherits the previous duration), one could
write:

c1 ~ | 4 cis dis cis ~ | 1

or even:

|c1|~1|~1~|2~4~8 c|



Similarly, if one didn't need bar checks, one *could* write:

c1~4 cis dis cis~1

or

c1~1~1~2~4~8 c

I think this changes my chordmode example somewhat, and makes
the current 'q' shorthand seem pretty adequate in chordmode.

This:
c1:maj7 ~ | 4 cis:maj7 dis:maj7 cis:maj7 ~ | 1

would be the same as:
c1:maj7 ~ | q4 cis:maj7 dis:maj7 cis:maj7 ~ | q1

And:
d4:m7 4 g:7 4 ~ | 4 c:maj7 4 4 |

would be the same as:
d4:m7 q g:7 q ~ | q c:maj7 q q |

I also take your point that the amount of typing saved is small,
but this mostly comes in handy when a (melodic, non-chordal)
rhythmic motif involving ties is repeated around a number of
different pitches, and when cutting and pasting, one has to edit
each pitch in the tied notes.  It's not the amount of typing so
much as the redundant information.  I always feel like whenever
one has to enter information that is already known, it's just
another chance to make a data entry error.  Granted however,
LilyPond gives errors on unterminated ties.

Given that q works so well in chordmode, is it rather non-trivial
to make 'q' work for single notes?  Actually, I just read Marc
Kohl's post about using q in comping notation, and I see his
point.  Perhaps a separate letter could be used to refer to the
previous note, say perhaps p in this example?

c1~|p4 cis dis cis~|p1

This has the advantage that p stands for pitch, just like q
stands for quord. :)  And at some point in the documentation,
users could be admonished to mind their p's and q's.



> Personally, I rather like the ambiguous nature of shifted Renaissance
> mostly rhythms expressed without the use of ties, but of course it is
> not really fancied in modern notation.

Please link to an example, I'd be curious to take a look.

Thanks for taking time to listen.

Jim