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Re: Your favourite/most efficient methods of inputting scores (piano)?


From: David Wright
Subject: Re: Your favourite/most efficient methods of inputting scores (piano)?
Date: Wed, 22 Feb 2017 09:45:34 -0600
User-agent: Mutt/1.5.21 (2010-09-15)

On Tue 21 Feb 2017 at 11:35:40 (+0100), Urs Liska wrote:
> Am 21.02.2017 um 10:40 schrieb kmg:

> In addition, it is often a good idea separate things out in individual
> files (e.g. one for each staff or even one for each voice).
> >
> > I did the same with the score where right hand had only once voice
> > most of the time, still I'm yet to see someone else using it - seems
> > like many people just use /new Voice and write them separately.

If, like me, you enter parts in \relative mode, parallel music
makes it much more difficult. It's also unnatural to think of
much vocal music in a "vertical" layout, bar by bar.

> With barchecks there are two somewhat mandatory recommendations,
> everything else is up to personal style or agreement (if you're working
> in a team):
> 1) Please do use them (always)

Almost. I don't use them in Anglican Chants (too brief) and
hymns, where the natural unit is the line, not the bar.
In fact, I set many hymns with the printed lines split at each
anacrusis to match the word underlay, and so the LP source,
both notes and lyrics, reflects that.

> 2) use them consistently.

And everything else too. This makes it easier to spot mistakes,
make systematic/bulk changes (eg moving version 2.18 to 2.19/20)
and even various indexing/post-processing operations.

> Whether you put them at the end of the line or at the beginning doesn't
> really matter.
> The end of the line is somewhat "natural", as it ends the previous measure
> At the beginning of the line gives a more consistent "look", because it
> is always in the same place.
> 
> An alternative I use regularly is to put them on an empty line, together
> with a barnumber comment, like so:
> 
>   c4 c c c
> 
>   | % 41
>   d4 d d d
> 
> This makes the input file vertically "longer", but usually that doesn't
> matter. The advantage is that it makes it very clear visually what
> happens, and (if you use that) it gives very good commits to a version
> control system such as Git.

I do find that's too slack for my liking. With emacs split into four
panes, giving 7 or 8 lines per pane, there just isn't enough context
(and no indication of the part). I don't know where I stole my
preferred format from, but it looks like this:

soprano = \relative {
  a'2. a4
  a4 a g e
  f4. g8( a4) a
  g4 e f4. g8
  \barNumberCheck #5 | % soprano
  a8( b c2) b4~
  b4 a2 gs4
  a2 r4 a
  gs4 a2 gs4
  a2 r4 a
  \barNumberCheck #10 | % soprano
  gs4 a2 gs4
  a2 r4 a~ ...

which means at least one check is always visible in each pane.
And I can subitize five bars as I type in the code, typically
into a buffer containing:

soprano = \relative {
  \barNumberCheck #5 | % soprano
  \barNumberCheck #10 | % soprano
  \barNumberCheck #15 | % soprano
...

Occasionally I insert the checks in arrears (with an emacs macro).
It's no fun working on a score lacking them.

> The sample includes another recommendation: Specify the duration at the
> beginning of each line, even if it's not technically necessary. This
> makes it more obvious on first sight, and it helps avoid errors if you
> should change anything later.

Yes. And so far I am entirely a pitch-priority person, even though
you can now type durations on their own. That facility might suit
minimalists (and the occasional alto or tenor part :) ). I suppose
in that case the recommendation would be to reaffirm the pitch at
the beginning of each line.

Cheers,
David.



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