Re: Lilypond and Jazz chords

[David Kastrup]

Thomas Morley <address@hidden> writes:

> 2016-01-17 22:28 GMT+01:00 Carl-Henrik Buschmann <address@hidden>:
>
> Thanks for code and links!
>
>> A properly formatet complex chord stacks alterations in parenthesis.
>
> Well, I disagre - at least as a general verdict.
>
>> Lilyponds default is
>> [...] undesirable.
>
> Ofcourse I disagree again, ;)
> Though, there are so many opinions about that topic...
>
> The main problem is that current LilyPond-default is very hard to
> tweak, apart from doing exceptions as Kieren already demonstrated.

Here's my take on how to do this more transparently: first have an
engraver that does the basic chord analysis and writes one or several
properties with the basic analysis results (like fundamental pitch and
scale offsets).  Those properties are made part of text-interface.

Then have several markup commands producing output based on those
properties.  Like German chord names, or a markup list with
modifications and stuff like that.  And then you can basically create
one fixed markup for each chord naming style and assign that to the
"text" field of a ChordName.

Also it then becomes easy to put chord names into a TextScript: it's
common for Jazz accordion scores using standard bass to name chords and
bass notes in textscript style in the bass staff according to the chord
button(s) to use, and to name them in ChordNames style according to
their function.  For example, you might have a chord c♭ for fingering
reasons in the accordion part while having B functionally (chord buttons
are in circle-of-fifth arrangement with considerable redundancy, so c♭
and b are 12 buttons apart from each other even though sounding exactly
the same notes).  Or you have Em6 functionally and c+em as buttons.

So the accordion chord naming function would likely take some auxiliary
info to be placed by either engraver or manually.

And so on.  If done right, stuff will both play and transpose reasonably
well.

And everybody could puzzle together his own chord markup reasonably
easy.

-- 
David Kastrup