Re: Re[2]: [PATCH] voicify in tutorial

[Graham Percival]

On Tue, 17 Sep 2002 17:33:11 +0200
J <address@hidden> wrote:
> HWN> Well, I don't see the point in putting it in Basics. If people
> want to HWN> typeset polyphonic music, they should read the tutorial
> section on HWN> polyphonic music.
> 
> Theoretically, there are many things that users should read/do before
> asking a question. But they don't. For the use of voicify function I'm
> illustrating, it isn't clearly obvious to a majority of people that
> it's polyphony. Many people don't know why in a two-voiced piece,
> there springs a chord that has the bottom note's stem pointing down,
> while the others are pointing up; they don't know it's polyphony and
> thus, how can they look up something they don't even know about.

I'd say that you're both partially right.  The "More Basics" section is
big enough already, and I wouldn't say that voicification is really
a basic thing.

OTOH, people might not know what polyphony refers to (I'm not too clear
on the term myself, and I'm doing composition at university![1] *grin*),
and we'd like people to find out about this function before they ask us.
It makes sense to have it somewhere in the tutorial (if somebody doesn't
read the tutorial, I say "no mercy".  Unless they ask nicely and I'm in
a good mood.  :)

We don't actually have a "polyphony" section in the tutorial.  But I
think it'd fit in well with the Piano Music section.


[1]  The music dept only does modern composition, and is quite small. 
There's only really one theory course, and that starts with Debussy (in
a non-technical way) and spends most of the time on serialism and
minimalism.  There's absolutely no study of pre-20th century stuff.

Cheers,
- Graham