I just want to compliment you on your project, which I think is
wonderful.
(http://www.geocities.com/Vienna/Studio/1714/lilypond.html) I am
especially awed by your process and the sheer ambition of your effort.
I do have a comment. Please abandon altogether the notion of using note
placement on a stem to indicate accent. All the notes on one stem are
explicitly and unambiguously indicated to be on the same division of the
beat, regardless of any shadings and subtleties (e.g.: ~~~~) added
later. This is one of the few things in the shifting sands of music
notation that is rock solid. The solution, where it is not altogether
obvious that a note might be played *subliminally* earlier, (which is
very common as I said before) is to put the note in question on its own
stem with an accent mark. To make it fit, in any worst case, you could
use a zero tuplet bracket.
Music notation corresponds to time, not rhythm. A listener can only
interpret rhythm in terms of time. If a listener has no metronome
running in his head, he can't understand the way that the performer has
made accents. People have to be able to find a beat somewhere, to
interpret music as performers and especially as listeners. In music
notation, you can easily find it. Don't change that. A performer (or
composer!) can't shade it, can't take liberties with it, can't accent
it, can't make it expressive, if he can't find it.
I am especially grateful to you for crowding single staves and thus
bringing up problems which I face with guitar music. I hope you take the
sweet with the bitter, and do not use 8va----| notation ever. Because
you have two hands and two staves, it is never necessary to use 8va
instead of octave clefs for keyboard music. The fact that composers
wrote, and write, quick and dirty is irrelevant. With guitar music, and
the potential for a 5 octave span on one staff, I need 8va markings for
harmonics, but I would not use them unnecessarily. I agree that they
certainly should be deprecated for keyboard music. :-)
John
