Re: support for ritardando, rallentando, accelerando etc.

[Bernard Hurley]

There are two ways of interpreting a lilypond file:

        1] as a printable score
        2] as a midi file

Some things, various forms of markup etc, are only relevant to interpretation 
[1], others, such as midi instrument, are only relevant to [2], yet others, 
such as tempo are relevant to both, and for this reason the \tempo can be 
interpreted in either way. It would be possible to typeset a tempo marking 
using markup but this could not be interpreted in a midi output, this means 
that the \tempo command is more than syntactic sugar, it is required by the 
logic of the situation in which the lilypond code has two radically different 
types of interpretation. I would say that similar considerations apply to \rit.

Bernard


On Wed, Aug 26, 2009 at 09:46:57AM +0000, Jonathan Glines wrote:
> A quick Google search reveals that someone asked for this on the list back in
> 2004, but was quickly shot down. See here:
> <http://www.mail-archive.com/address@hidden/msg08302.html>
> 
> He argues that if \ppp is a command in Lilypond and \sin is a command in 
> LaTeX,
> then \rit should also be a command, even though an identical looking symbol
> could be made using text commands.
> 
> I'd like to further this argument by pointing out that ritardando has an 
> effect
> on how the music is played. I'm using Lilypond so that I can output a midi 
> file
> for use in other applications, but without a ritardando command the tempo is 
> too
> fast at the end of my midi file. In order to fix that, I'm either going to 
> have
> to add an ungodly amount of tempo changes in my Lilypond file, or edit the 
> midi
> file in Rosegarden every time I export it. These are not ideal solutions.
> 
> If the \rit command etc. are implemented in Lilypond, I think they should have
> syntax similar to crescendo and additionally allow me to specify the change in
> tempo.
> 
> Am I missing something? Is there an easy way to change tempo gradually that 
> I've
> overlooked? Or is the notation for ritardando simply not standardized enough 
> to
> be a command?
> 
> Regards,
> Jonathan
> 
> 
> 
> _______________________________________________
> bug-lilypond mailing list
> address@hidden
> http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/bug-lilypond