Re: Colored scores for Rock bandconsisting of members with mental disablilities

[Ben]

On 2/11/2018 8:30 AM, Hallvard Paulsen wrote:

Hello all

I am an absolute beginner when it comes to LilyPond and musical scoremaking in general, so please correct me if I am not behaving according to this lists rules.

(I also have very limited experience with the musical terms in English, so please correct me if there is something obviously wrong.)

The thing is that my grown son (23years this year) is playing in a Rock Band consisiting of 7members all having some degree of mental disablility.

There are 2 keyboardists, a simplified bass, and a simplified guitar, and a vocalist using scores or lyrics, and 2 drummers/percusionists who manage without.

The thing is that they are using "Dissimilis Notation", (octaves have no relevance for us) where the note pitch is shown using a mix of colors and numbers, and duration is basically given by some assistant pointing to the color to be played. (In general the beat is almost allways 4/4, the keyboards play hole notes, the bass halfnotes, the guitar quarter notes, and they only change notes/chords at the beginning of the new bar. I have attached a PDF as an example (usually there are many more bars, but it seams Hungry Hart can be played by repeating these 4 over and over again.

I was hopeing it would be possible to use lilypond to produce scores with a mixture colored/numbered noteheads, and also MIDI files to play the voices of any missing bandmember should they not be able to attend a rehersal. Also good "pointers" are hard to find, and even harder to keep over time, so if their job could be "automated away" to some degree, it would make the future much more predictable.

Hi Hallvard,

It is certainly possible to create colored notes, stems, etc. in LilyPond...have you already downloaded and installed the program?

To get you started, here is a page from the documentation that talks about coloring objects:
http://lilypond.org/doc/v2.18/Documentation/notation/inside-the-staff#coloring-objects

Once you decide what notes you would like to input, and on what staff type you would like, etc. then you can begin to tweak the colors until you are satisfied.

Also, MIDI output is possible in LilyPond as well, and you can choose whichever GM instrument you'd like to use in the event of a performance.

Also also, welcome to LilyPond :)