Hi Gilles,
>> deprecate \relative, which I now avoid like the plague.
> Why?
1. It doesn’t play well with reuse: both trivial reuse (i.e., cut-and-paste)
and more advanced (i.e., referenced in variables) require extra care at the
very least, and outright extra work (e.g., octave checks, transposition, etc.)
in most cases. This means that sharing bits of music either within a file/piece
or between files/pieces (or even between users) requires extra work and is
error-prone.
2. It makes what should be simple adjustments unnecessarily complicated, with
unnecessarily large impacts. Consider, as just one example, my paired functions
split =
#(define-music-function (parser location music1 music2)
(ly:music? ly:music?)
#{ <<
{ \voiceOne $music1 }
\context Voice = "2" { \voiceTwo $music2 }
>> \oneVoice
#})
splitLU =
#(define-music-function (parser location music1 music2)
(ly:music? ly:music?)
#{ <<
{ \voiceTwo $music1 }
\context Voice = "2" { \voiceOne $music2 }
>> \oneVoice
#})
These (and their 3- and 4-voice counterparts) are workhorses in my code, saving
me endless amounts of typing constructs like
<< { \voiceOne foo } \new Voice { \voiceTwo bar } >> \oneVoice
every time I simply want a short polyphonic section. I could hardly begin to do
efficient engraving work without them. Now consider the effect of switching, in
relative mode, from
b4 \split { a4 } { c,4 }
to
b4 \splitLU { c,4 } { a4 }
Because relative mode “leaves from” whatever pitch comes immediately before it,
the first example would output the b followed by a sixth “chord" immediately
below it (i.e., with the a on top, sitting a second below the b), whereas the
second example would output the b followed by a third [!!] “chord" (i.e., with
the c, on top, sitting a seventh below the b). In absolute mode, I am free to
choose either function (and each is necessary!) at will, without worrying that
the choice may mess up the outputted pitches.
This same sort of relative shifting happens when you want to switch the order
of notes as given in a chord, e.g. <c g’ b> outputs a different chord than <c b
g’>.
3. Many single edits suddenly require two (or more) edits as a result solely of
relative mode. For example, let’s say you have
\relative c’ { c d e a }
and you want to change the e to d. Now you must also add an apostrophe to the
a, to compensate for the relative octave adjustment:
\relative c’ { c d d a’ }
wasting effort and brainpower (if you even remember to do it the first time,
rather than compiling before finding the error).
These are only three of the problems. Worst of all, having it is a false
economy: it’s not actually intuitive for everyone (though it is for me, and was
right away), as a quick search of the archives will turn up many newbies
complaining about “how hard it is to remember when to use , and when to use ‘
and when to use nothing”.
Yes, it’s a little more work during initial entry of some music to add the
correct octavation to the pitches. But the majority of pitches I enter fall
between c, and b’’, so the difference (if any) is minimal. And of course there
are many patterns which require *more* octavation typing in relative mode than
absolute, so in those cases absolute mode saves keystrokes.
Hope this helps explain why I don’t use \relative any more, and tell most
newbies I know to avoid it.
Cheers,
Kieren.
________________________________
Kieren MacMillan, composer
‣ website: www.kierenmacmillan.info
‣ email: [email protected]
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