On Tue, Jul 18, 2000 at 05:02:17PM +0200, Arjen Bax wrote:
> John Henckel [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] writes:
>
> Has anyone done this already, and can you give me some samples or advice?
> I do have the star spangled banner and it is helpful.
I have typeset a few hymns, and can give you some samples when I get home.
Alas, I haven't figured out an ideal way of doing it.
Separating the music from the words is a bit tricky. Hymnals generally
don't tie together eighth notes, but instead use a bar to indicate eighth
notes that are tied together. You can do this in mudela, but it makes the
"automatic melisma" option not work properly (since they aren't tied).
This means you have to either insert bogus empty syllables in the lyrics,
or specify the rythm of the lyrics manually. Either way, you won't be able
to simply paste the lyrics from one melody into another. :(
> > These following are the stem rules for the treble clef as I have
> > observed in most hymnals.
>
> > 1. if S and A differ by less than a third, the stems should be
> > up/down.
> > 2. else if S and A have different values, the stems should be
> > up/down.
> > 3. else if A sings "la" or higher, both S and A stems should be
> > down.
> > 4. else both stems should be up
>
> I always put \stemup or \stemdown at the beginning of the Voice
> context, so that S and T always have \stemup and A and B always
> \stemdown. I wasn't aware that there are "rules" and am used to always
> reading downward stems (I have a Bass voice).
Hymnals generally are different from standard SATB harmony, and do seem to
follow the above rules, although I'm not sure why. It may be because they
have to fit more music and words into a smaller space, so they sacrifice a
bit of clarity to make it more compact.
I don't know of any way to make hymn music follow the above rules nicely.
My solution generally involves changing the voice context every time you
need the stems to point opposite ways, or whenever the two rhythms differ.
Hmmm. I guess that's about all. I'll try to remember to send you some
examples when I get home tonight.
--
David Roundy
http://civet.berkeley.edu/droundy/
