Carl - Jean - Kieren - Tom: Thank you so much for your responses and suggestions and examples. I will study and test it all diligently and get back to you.
One thing the first responder Shane got right: it’s a welcoming and helpful community. Very much something to be proud of. Regards, Andrew Culver > On Apr 9, 2021, at 12:07, AHF <[email protected]> wrote: > > Hello LilyPeople, > > I am looking into using LilyPond for future works. What I like about it is > the text input, which makes it very easy to integrate with the collection of > C programs and PostgreSQL functions I use to generate and manage music for > large-scale pieces. (I’m on a Mac.) > > I have been doing this since the late 1980’s, for John Cage's operas, > installations, and films, and for my own large-scale orchestral works, such > as “Ocean 1-133” for 150 musician soloists over 90 minutes — see the Merce > Cunningham work “Ocean" if you are interested. > > The parts for Ocean 1-133 (more than 3000 pages) were pulled from the > database and formatted using C code into the P-field file format of the > wonderful old Score program by Leland Smith. Like LilyPond, this format is > expressed with simple text files. Given the abandonment of Score and the > vibrancy of LilyPond, I want to know if I should be using LilyPond. > > The example below is from one of Cage’s Number pieces, demonstrating Time > Bracket notation. The important challenges for a notation program are: > - Each time bracket is centered on the page, and the system is only as long > as necessary. > - No barlines. > - Notes within the time bracket are distributed evenly horizontally. There is > no notion of tempo or meter. > - Whole note noteheads - or any notehead I want, free of any metric > constraints. > - Ample vertical spacing between time bracket systems. > - Horizontally centered headers and footers (not shown). > - Sometimes one piece runs over several pages (a “piece” is a set of time > brackets for one player). > > <John-Cage-time-brackets.png> > > Score had no problem doing this because fundamentally it was a CAD program > augmented by musical knowledge. With the P-field format, you essentially cut > out the musical knowledge layer. You got to put beautiful-looking music > symbols wherever you wanted them. From what I can tell, the musical knowledge > part of the equation is too deeply baked in to most notation programs, such > that if you don’t need it, or want to invent new rules, you are stuck trying > to trick the program into not doing what it “helpfully” insists on doing. > > I need to be able to generate 100% of the .ly files from C, taking as a > source the composition in the database (which was also generated, using > chance operations, with C code). Because of the volume of pages, hand > tweaking the parts is not an option. > > So: > 1. Is LilyPond up to the job? > 2. What commands are used to do the time bracket centering, meter-free > notehead selection, bar-less notehead equidistant spacing, etc.? > 3. Is LilyPond going to gracefully let me set music symbols where I want > them, or will I be constantly having to fool it into compliance at every > turn? A follow-up question: If I do have to work around LilyPond’s > “knowledgeable” music formatting “conveniences”, will these work-arounds end > up being “corrected” in future versions, thus breaking my existing code? > > BTW, I am open to hiring a knowledgeable LilyPerson as a time-saving and > inspirational resource. Reply to this email if you are interested. > > Regards, > > Andrew Culver > > >
