Re: Tweaking notehead direction in chords

[Arle Lommel]

Brilliant, Paul. It isn't as easy as I'd hoped, but this works and is really 
minimally difficult for me to use. I used 1.25 and -1.25 as values and it is 
certainly close enough that I can't complain. This helps a *lot*.

Best regards,

Arle

On 2012 Dec 11, at 21:05 , Paul Morris wrote:

> Hi Arle,
> 
> On Dec 11, 2012, at 2:37 PM, Arle Lommel <address@hidden> wrote:
> 
>> I've been looking for how to tweak the direction of noteheads within chords. 
>> I've got a few instances where Lilypond’s default isn't as clear as when I 
>> flip the direction of some of the noteheads. I've searched the repository 
>> and tried various tweaks using direction, but nothing seems to matter. I'm 
>> sure it's easy, but I can't find it.
>> 
>> As a minimal example, consider this chord:
>> 
>> <e fis ais cis>4
>> 
>> The default is to have the e face left and the other heads face right, but 
>> in the piece I am reproducing the e faces right and the fis faces left. 
>> Doing it this way, as per the old engraver, increases the white space 
>> between the noteheads and increases legibility.
>> 
>> Any guidance on how to achieve this? If there is an easy way, I would 
>> suggest adding it to the LSR as well, since this is a basic sort of tweak 
>> that others must surely need, but which doesn't seem to be easy to find.
> 
> I had trouble figuring this out earlier this year and David Nalesnik helped 
> me out with the code below.[1]  I have had it on my list to add it to the LSR 
> (while giving proper credit to David N.), as it is something that is not easy 
> to figure out on your own.  
> 
> (I think the fully accurate horizontal offsets should be 1.251178 and 
> -1.251178 rather than 1.3 or -1.3 for regular sized noteheads.  They would be 
> a little larger for whole note note heads, but I don't know those values at 
> the moment.)
> 
> Let me know if you have questions about how it works.
> 
> HTH,
> -Paul
> 
> 
> #(define ((shift offsets) grob)
>  (let ((note-heads (ly:grob-array->list (ly:grob-object grob 'note-heads))))
>    (for-each
>      (lambda (p q) (set! (ly:grob-property p 'X-offset) q))
>      note-heads offsets)))
> 
> displaceHeads =
> #(define-music-function (parser location offsets) (list?)
>  #{
>    \once \override NoteColumn #'before-line-breaking = #(shift offsets)
>  #}
> )
> 
> theMusic = {
>  \displaceHeads #'(0 0 1.3)
>  <c' e' g' >4
> 
>  \displaceHeads #'(0 1.3 1.3)
>  <d' f' a'>
> 
>  \displaceHeads #'(0 1.3 1.3)
>  <d' f' a'>
> 
>  \displaceHeads #'(0 0 1.3)
>  < c' e' g'>
> 
>  \displaceHeads #'(-1.3 -1.3 0)
>  < c'' e'' g''>
> 
>  \displaceHeads #'(-1.3 -1.3 0)
>  < c''' e''' g'''>
> 
>  \displaceHeads #'(0 0 1.3)
>  < c e g>
> 
>  \displaceHeads #'(0 -1.3 0)
>  < c'' e'' g''>
> 
>  \displaceHeads #'(0 0 -1.3)
>  < c'' e'' g''>
> }
> 
> \new Staff {
>  \theMusic
> }
> 
> [1] http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/lilypond-user/2012-12/msg00186.html