Hi List, I have used Lilypond for a few years now. I (almost) always use \relative and I have never had trouble with it. Indeed, as a lay person, I have no idea which octave c'4 d' e' f' g'1 is – I know I could look it up, but it is certainly not in my head. So for someone with little or no formal musical training, I think \relative is the best way to go – and I selfishly think that the documentation should be written for people such as me.
Regards, Mogens From: Kieren MacMillan Sent: December 15, 2017 7:28 To: Lilypond-User Mailing List Cc: Mats Bengtsson Subject: Re: Auto-transposition Hi all, Mats wrote: > By the way, whoever is working on the Changes document for upcoming 2.20, > don't forget to mention about \fixed! +1 David W wrote: > Just use \relative early. The fact that this works like it does is further evidence that \relative is not sufficiently intuitive. I'm pretty sure if you asked 100 newbies — or even not-so-newbies — what the output of your code would be, there would be a significant subset (maybe even a majority?!) that wouldn't answer correctly. Saul wrote: > IMO absolute mode might be easier from the perspective of the software, but > it's not how most musicians think I disagree. In fact, I would offer that the situation is essentially the opposite of what you suggest: to wit, if I extract a line out of the middle of a relative block c4 d e f g1 and ask what pitches (including octave!) those are, no human musician can tell me (better than random chance), whereas software *can*. On the other hand, if I pull the same line out of the middle of an absolute block c'4 d' e' f' g'1 both human and software can get it (i.e., the octave) correct 100% of the time. > Maybe the documentation could do a better job explaining the semantics of > relative mode and when to use \resetRelativeOctave? That's definitely true. Gianmaria wrote: > I don't think there is a clear advantage to use relative vs absolute. I think there are clear advantages and disadvantages to both. The main problem I see is the insistence (implicit in the documentation) that relative mode is the best for newbies to start with, and the volume of list posts from newbies having problems with relative mode makes it clear that that is not true. Perhaps if the documentation were make crystal clear, with \resetRelativeOctave used in every example, etc., then I could feel comfortable backing down from my crusade to try to save newbies from the pitfalls we have [unintentionally] laid for them. Best, Kieren. ________________________________ Kieren MacMillan, composer ‣ website: www.kierenmacmillan.info ‣ email: i...@kierenmacmillan.info _______________________________________________ lilypond-user mailing list lilypond-user@gnu.org https://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/lilypond-user
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