Re: proportional spacing for chords?

[David Wright]

On Thu 16 Mar 2017 at 12:40:28 (+1100), Andrew Bernard wrote:
> 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.

But isn't that the primary aim? I just assumed that growing the paper
is the same as shrinking the global score size, but a lot less bother
for a proof of concept.

You experts can probably push the lines of chords closer together
(vertical spacing was never my forte) to produce a ribbon. Then there
are plenty of tools for slicing and dicing PDFs. I use pdfjam myself;
a vital tool in a country where A4 paper is virtually unknown.
Perhaps SVG is a possibility. (That assumes you aren't just going to
use a rolling display on a screen.)

> 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?

If it's easy and isn't going to involve a period when proportional
gets messed up for the rest of us. But if it's difficult, aren't there
more profitable developments to make to LP.

We have demonstrated a methodology for achieving what the OP asked for
(I think; I haven't had any feedback but it's only been 8 hours or so).
There's even a second string: stack with simultaneous music. The midi
is irrelevant: it's quite usual to generate midi in a separate \score.

> 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.

(I'm ignorant about this.)

> On 15 March 2017 at 11:11, Adam Spiers <address@hidden> wrote:
> > 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.

Cheers,
David.