Re: Subject: String Concatenation, and Use of Unicode characters [sic]

[Davide Liessi]

Il 03/03/15 07.56, Michael Hendry ha scritto:
> > Forgive me for suggesting, but I suggest it improves mental health to
> > think of transpose in the form:
> >
> >     \transpose "to" "from" \musicExpression

This is what I do, too: I usually think of transpose as `\transpose "to" 
"from"` when tranposing instrumental parts from concert pitch to 
transposed pitch, and as `\transpose "from" "to"` in all other cases.

> I used to think of the transposition in this way until I found a need to
> transpose the whole piece to a different key (to accommodate a singer’s
> range, for example), and I found the two ways of looking at
> transposition tied my brain in knots.

Indeed looking at the same command in two ways might be a bit confusing, 
but I got used to it rather easily.

> Ideally, I’d like to define the whole-piece transposition at the top of
> the file, rather than editing the per-instrument transposition at the
> point of book production.

You certainly do not need to change the individual transpositions in 
order to transpose an entire piece: nothing stops you from transposing 
music that has already been transposed, instead of editing each 
`\transpose` command.

When I need to transpose a piece I usually place `\transpose "from" 
"to"` just before the music expression inside `\score`.
Unless I need to change the octave of an instrument, this is sufficient.

E.g. if I needed to transpose this piece one tone up...

\score {
  <<
    \new Staff \transpose bes, c \trumpetPartConcert
    \new PianoStaff <<
      \new Staff \pianoRight
      \new Staff \pianoLeft
    >>
  >>
  \layout { }
}

... I would simply write

\score {
  \transpose c d
  <<
    \new Staff \transpose bes, c \trumpetPartConcert
    \new PianoStaff <<
      \new Staff \pianoRight
      \new Staff \pianoLeft
    >>
  >>
  \layout { }
}

Best wishes.
Davide