Re:Chords in LilyPond

[Peter Gentry]

I have been intrigued by the highly technical correspondence on this topic.  However I have struggled to understand what is being discussed.

A bit of googling has shed some light http://debussy.music.ubc.ca/muset/guido/section3.html for instance but other sources are even more technical. I was particularly thrown by the term “semantics” this is a slippery customer that seems to mean different things in different contexts.

In the link above it is simply a recipe for how to populate various properties or parameters if not explicitly defined.

ie  Semantics:

• If size or style are not specified when using \noteFormat, their current settings remain unaffected. If not modified using \noteFormat, the default settings are size=1.0, style="standard".
• The specified parameters are applied to all notes within the range of \noteFormat, or, if no range is specified, until (i) the next \noteFormat tag changing that parameter or (ii) the end of the current voice.

Other links such as http://motools.sourceforge.net/chord_draft_1/chord.html describe in some detail the structure of chords beyond the simple C G7 etc descriptions including where a strong note outside the “normal” chord members is employed often by a solo instrument.

All this is way outside by musical knowledge whilst interesting it is difficult to understand.

 

Am I correct in seeing “semantics” in this way ?