Re: Diatonic transposition within a key

[David Kastrup]

Tim McNamara <address@hidden> writes:

> On Apr 28, 2014, at 7:26 PM, David Kastrup <address@hidden> wrote:
>
>> Tim McNamara <address@hidden> writes:
>> 
>>> Can I put \modalTranspose inside the existing \transpose?  Or should
>>> it go outside?  Or will the two hopelessly disagree?  My head hurts
>>> trying to figure this sort of thing out...
>> 
>> When in doubt, try it out.
>> 
>> It would seem most likely to me that you can use \modalTranspose inside
>> of the \transpose to transpose according to the scale with which the
>> music has been entered, and outside of \transpose to transpose according
>> to the scale with which the music will get printed.
>
> OK, I think I get part of that.  I’m confused about how to implement the 
>
> diatonicScale = \relative c' { c d e f g a b }
> motif = \relative c' { c8 d e f g a b c }
>
> parts of the command.  Does one put in the scale of the parent key
> into the diatonicScale (e.g., \relative c’ { g a b c d e fis } for the
> key of G)?  And would this go inside or outside \transpose with the
> \modalTranspose command?
>
> So far no matter where I put this in the score, compilation fails.

You don't need to put either of those expressions into variables
(assignments to variables are only possible at top level which is likely
where your errors come from).  You can just spell them out at the place
where you call \modalTranspose, like

\modalTranspose g b { g a b c d e fis } \relative { g'4 b8 d g2 }

Now it might make sense to put at least the scale into a variable of its
own since you are going to need it more than once, and arguably putting
the melody into a variable (or at least into a function argument) helps
in not having to write it once for original pitch and once for the
transposition.

-- 
David Kastrup