Re: Chords in LilyPond

[Mats Behre]

On 2017-05-25 06:52, address@hidden wrote:
> On Thu, 25 May 2017, Charles Winston wrote:
> > > On May 25, 2017, at 12:26 AM, Kieren MacMillan
> > > <address@hidden> wrote: Except <e bf g’ c''> contains a
> > > huge amount of information that cannot currently be input in
> > > \chordmode (as far as I know).
> > >
> > > Ultimately, as long as we end up with an input system robust enough to
> > > convey that amount of information, I don’t particularly care whether
> > > it’s in \chordmode or whatever.
> > True. I think ideally we need an input mode that is stronger than
> > chordmode, or we at least need to improve chordmode to be able to handle
> This is why I think the chord names -> music -> chord names flow is a
> problem.  Real users do not think in terms of a translation from input to
> notes and then from notes to output; as seen in the recurring threads on
> this mailing list, most non-expert users don't even realize that "chord
> mode" and the "ChordNames context" are two different things that do not
> necessarily always go together.  The natural way for typesetting of chord
> names to occur is by a direct mapping from input chord names to output
> chord names without going through the current "music" data struture
> consisting of notes, at all.
While this is true, in order to support things like transposition (which I for 
one use frequently) I think you will have to devise formats for input and 
internal representation (they may be the same) that identifies both all aspects 
of the chord and the specified notes (in this respect I only consider the root 
note of a triad a 'specified note', but that will be up to the format, really). 
If you are able to achieve that for all conceivable chords (i.e. the format has 
open-ended enough for the user to add notes) it should be possible to specify 
how each combination should be output, and usually for print this will strongly 
reflect the way the chord is entered, but the output media could also be e.g. 
MIDI. (No, I don't think this will necessarily be easy ...)

Even though the average user doesn't think of an intermediate representation a 
program that can do manipulations still needs a representation it can work with.

Mats