Re: proportional spacing for chords?

[Andrew Bernard]

Hi Adam,

I have tried lots of solutions for this. I am thinking this cannot be
satisfactorily done in lilypond at this time. The attached solution
works up to a point, but the chord names clash. Using really large
paper - which I also tried - to gain space such as architectural A0
does not seem practical for a music stand, although technically it
solves the clashing problem.

I am not sure that it is currently entirely reasonable to expect that
chordnames can be laid out proportionally the same as notes. Perhaps a
development request?

Mr Vromans on the list has a chord chart program called playtab -
perhaps you could export something to that. It may be a case of using
the right tool for the job.


Andrew


On 15 March 2017 at 11:11, Adam Spiers <address@hidden> wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> How can I achieve proportional spacing when I only have chord names
> and bar lines, and no staff or notes?  Attached is a file with a very
> naive attempt which fails to achieve this; corrections would be most
> welcome.
>
> For the curious, the background and motivation behind this question is
> as follows:
>
> I have a transcription of a jazz solo by John Coltrane which I made
> several years ago.[0]  It contains chord symbols which I produced via
> manual analysis to match the harmony of his improvisation, rather than
> the (much simpler) chord progression of the 12-bar blues over which he
> was improvising.  Therefore the chords are different for each of the 8
> choruses of the solo.
>
> It would be very instructive to produce a clear visualisation of the
> harmonic variations he uses in each chorus, so I have dropped the
> notes of the solo from the .ly file, leaving only the chords, rendered
> in landscape, with all the choruses vertically stacked on top of each
> other, one per line.  This should allow easy visual comparison of any
> part of the 12-bar progression simply by scanning vertically at that
> point within the progression.  However this vertical scan only works
> effectively if all the choruses are vertically aligned, hence the need
> for proportional spacing.
>
> Thanks a lot in advance for any hints!
> Adam
>
> [0] http://blog.adamspiers.org/2013/01/28/cello-lessons-from-a-dead-genius/

blue-train-proportional-chordnames.ly
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