Re: Tangled up in Lilypond syntax

[David Wright]

On Thu 28 Mar 2019 at 09:52:26 (+0100), Valentin Villenave wrote:
> On 3/28/19, Aaron Hill <address@hidden> wrote:
> > That said, I fully agree with advising folks who intend on moving music
> > around more fluidly to avoid \relative since it adds a maintenance chore
> > that would otherwise impede the creative process.
> 
> Heh. This is one of the (few) subjects I’d tend to disagree with
> Kieren about. Using \relative allows me to focus on the melodic
> movements (and thus the expressive musical phrases), regardless of the
> octave in which they’re taking place. Sure, it requires to be careful
> when cut-and-pasting, but that’s actually quite trivial all things
> considered.
> 
> I suspect using Italiano/French note names as opposed to
> Dutch/English/German letter-as-notenames plays a role as well, as "do
> re mi" are much more vocal syllables (and ipso facto I often find
> myself singing while typing), whereas letters are more easily taken as
> mere symbols (rhemes) largely devoid of any intrinsical musical
> qualities and therefore more easily mixed with non-pronounceable
> syntax. At any rate, that’s the hypothesis I’d submit based on my own
> perception :-)

I'm not trained in tonic solfa and don't find any advantage in singing
by using it. That said, I'm as likely to write "fah" over an entrance
that's difficult to pitch as writing "IV', but my "fah" relates to
the key that the music *feels* like it's in at the time. (I have a
good memory for pitch, but it's almost completely relative; I don't
have perfect pitch.)

So my question is, when you're singing along with typing a piece
that's in Aflat major, how do you cope with the fact that your "do"
is now "III" in the scale (IOW, you seem to be transposing the
whole time)?

BTW I'm not even confident about how to pronounce Aflat and Bflat
when called upon to sing them in tonic solfa. Is it lore/law and
tor/taw?

Cheers,
David.