Re: Lilypond and Jazz chords

[Kieren MacMillan]

Hi David,

> 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

That all sounds great. If the engraver broke the chord components into the 
smallest possible bits (e.g., root, quality, third stack, alterations, bass or 
inversion), then the NameBuilder (or whatever) could format those however one 
pleased.

However, I’m also concerned that the current input syntax isn’t rich enough. 
For example, one can’t tell Lilypond “at run time" if <c d f bf> should be 
labelled as Bb/C or C7(sus2,sus4). [Note that, at this point, I don’t care what 
anyone’s preference for display of this chord is — I’m simply pointing out that 
I don’t know of a mechanism to force Lilypond to label the same set of notes 
two or more different ways.] So we should attack the input mode as well, to 
support the widest and most flexible possible usage.

Best regards,
Kieren.
________________________________

Kieren MacMillan, composer
‣ website: www.kierenmacmillan.info
‣ email: address@hidden