Re: Choice of pitch input mode

[David Wright]

On Sat 30 Apr 2016 at 10:38:55 (+0200), Malte Meyn wrote:
> Am 30.04.2016 um 05:43 schrieb David Wright:
> >But it's no surprise that composing directly into LP is only really
> >possible in absolute mode.
> 
> It’s not. I’ve always done it in \relative mode using octave checks,
> I never had any problems.

I guess there's more difference between composing and transcribing
than I had realised. It looks from your example as if your leave
phrases out and then put them in later. The problem with transcribing
is that you often have to do that note by note. An octavation check on
every other note soon looks like absolute!

A vital part of transcribing for me is a written copy to follow; kind
of chicken and egg. So I write the individual lines with gaps where
it's muddy, get them roughly right, particularly the overall durations
so that LP can break lines, and typeset that as a working copy.
(Using absolute is tedious for that.)

Then I convert to absolute and try to sort out the muddy bits. As soon
as you start, for example, switching inner parts' notes (the bass and
the top line tend to be easier), you get in a mess with relative.
When you press "R" to refresh the PDF after making a change, the bar
you're working on might jump to a different page because suddenly the
alto is an octave deeper, the tenor an octave higher, and the music
takes more pages to render, than it did.

Perhaps composers don't sweat over individual notes like that and/or
don't need a decent looking copy in front of them. Some compose at the
piano, don't they.

Cheers,
David.