Thank you David for your help. I think the behaviour of "\relative" and "\resetRelativeOctave" are clear. If the latter is not deprecated IMHO there are cases where it can be very useful. That one you mention (preventing up
and down octave when changing code) it is just one. For instance, suppose I start to write a score and I write this musical phrase:
c4 d8 e8 f4
Later I want to use this phrase again, so I copy and paste so that I have something like this:
%some notes here
c4 d8 e8 f4 % the octave here depends on the last previous note
As I written in the remark, the octave at the end depends on the last previous note. You could need to change c4 for example in c'4 to obtain the same behavior as the first phrase. Suppose you do change it, so that you obtain:
c4 d8 e8 f4
%some notes here
%some notes here
c'4 d8 e8 f4 % the octave here depends on the last previous note
now the the phrase at the beginning and at then end stops to match and became differents. This prevent you from easily create a variable and write the code in the following (nice) way:
fragment = {c4 d8 e8 f4}
{
\fragment
%some notes here
%some notes here
\fragment
}
On the other hand if you write the the beginning of your musical phrases always prefixing them with \resetRelativeOctave c' like this:
\resetRelativeOctave c' c4 d8 e8 f4
\resetRelativeOctave c' c4 d8 e8 f4
you don't need to worry in case of copy and paste. (And by the way the fact you see \resetRelativeOctave make you remind you need to think about the octave.)
In this latter case if you decide to create a variable to reuse your code you can do three different things:
1) fragment = {c4 d8 e8 f4}
2) fragment = {\resetRelativeOctave c' c4 d8 e8 f4}
3) fragment = \relative c' {c4 d8 e8 f4}
The first is useful when you need to be able to do not fix the octave. The following is an example:
fragment = {c4 d8 e8 f4}
{
\resetRelativeOctave c' \fragment
%some notes here
%some notes here\resetRelativeOctave c, \fragment
}
The second and the third are useful when the fragment in your score occurs always at the same octave. But the former makes the notes following the fragment be at the same octave of the (last note) of the fragment while the latter makes the note following the fragment be at the same octave of the (last note) preceding the segment.
Is this correct?