Re: Is there a short way of forcing a particular octave?

[David Wright]

On Wed 21 Dec 2016 at 14:22:28 (-0800), Nathan Ho wrote:
> On 2016-12-21 11:55, Kieren MacMillan wrote:
> >Hi David,
> >
> >>I can't see the point in avoiding any methodology
> >>that makes things easier and more reliable.
> >
> >I agree 100%. Which is exactly why I abandoned \relative and use only
> >\absolute.  ;)
> 
> I also stopped using \relative a few years ago (I think it was in
> response to one of your posts here). No regrets here.
> 
> It's alright for simple monophonic melodies, but it gets in the way
> when engraving anything with chords or polyphony.

I haven't noticed any effect with polyphony: the octavation of the
next note in the source is always determined by the previous one.

Chords are different but simple: when you get to the > at the end of a
chord, the next note in the source is related to the first note of that
chord; ie in a sequence of chords, their first notes form the
\relative sequence. What gets in the way of what?

> Also, if you break
> your music into sections and assign them to variables, you have to
> either 1) work out how octaves interact when juxtaposing these
> sections

I don't understand what you mean. When you write

musa = \relative { c f a c f a c f }
musb = \relative { c g d a e c g d }

{ \clef bass \musa \musb \musb \musa }

\musa and \musb are absolute; their constituent pitches are baked in.
The pitches don't "interact" when you later combine them.

> or 2) use a hybrid of absolute mode for structure and
> relative mode for note entry.

Were you to put pitches into your structures (I don't), it would
indeed be idiosyncratic to wrap it in a \relative { }, in fact, I'm
not sure how it would be parsed.

So your describing the score above as a hybrid seems pointless:
virtually every LP score that uses \relative anywhere would be
a hybrid in your book. About the only exceptions would be fragments
like

\relative { c' d e f g a b c }

> The main downside to absolute mode is that wrapping stretches of
> music in \transpose is inconvenient, creating distracting structures
> in the code that don't reflect the music.

I'm trying to work out what you mean by this. My only idea is that you
don't like the change in indentation level caused by transposition, as

{
  c' d' e' f'
  \transpose c c' {
    g a b c'
  }
  b' a' g' f'
}

to which my solution would be

{
  \absolute {
    c' d' e' f'
  }
  \transpose c c' {
    g a b c'
  }
  \absolute {
    b' a' g' f'
  }
}

so that everything is now at the same level.

> As an example, try
> typesetting a line that ascends over several octaves without an
> abundance of apostrophes and commas in the source.

I'm tired of guessing what you mean. Please just post an example and
what bugs you about it.

Cheers,
David.

rel.pdf
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