Re: Chord Naming

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-------- Original-Nachricht --------
> Datum: Sat, 24 Jan 2009 08:10:15 -0700
> Von: "Carl D. Sorensen" <address@hidden>


>Not quite.  I want to make a facility that makes it easy for everyone to
>create their favorite way, if one of the defaults isn't what is wanted.  And
>dolmetsch.com just provides a list of the predefined chords.  Any extra
>chords would have to be defined by the user.

Ok, now I get it.
I'd still prefer chord symbols independent from other contexts since I never use
Fretboards, but I get your point that it's probably just me and wouldn't make
sense for the majority.
Whatsoever, your proposal 'is' an improvement to the current system. :)

>This is hard for me to understand.  Do you mean that in a jazz leadsheet, if
>the chord symbol says G7alt. the musician is free to choose any of the
>options you present?

Yes.
There are even more complex variations, especially in bebop.
If you transcribed the bass from a bebop recording you'd be surprised by the
amount of non-diatonic notes.

>Since all you want is text, the Lyrics method works.  And you would be able
>to continue to use it under my proposal.

I was never worried it wouldn't. :)

>The same is true under my proposal.  Exceptions (I don't really like the
>term; I'd prefer to just call them chord names) are stored as different
>characters, and one only had to learn to display them once.  And if one has
>additional chord names that are not

Uhm, I just picked the term because I read it somewhere in the docs, I don't
like it either. Variations would be more appropriate I think.

>Thanks for the feedback, and for the offer of help,

Thanks to you for tackling this topic.
When I started using LilyPond the chord symbols were the main problem for me,
because nothing seemed logical to me. There's no standardized way of writing
chord symbols but there are some generally known variations in the jazz world.
Your proposal seems the right way to me to make this variations better
accessible. I think I'll still stick to my own way (mainly because I don't like
the chord symbols font to much) but it'll definitely make things easier for new
users.

Now I've got a question which is slightly off-topic.
This thread got me inspired to give scheme another try (everytime I tried to do
something with scheme before it'd never work).
I am trying to create a music function that makes it possible to transpose chord
symbols by my means. My initial idea was a function that takes two arguments,
ly:music and string, i.e. the transposable root and the fixed suffix, which
returns then a converted string of both arguments.
For example:
\c c1 #"m7" -> "Cm7"
\transpose c d { \c c1 #"m7" } -> "Dm7"

I am trying to go there step by step, but now I got already an error and don't
know why.

#(define (root-name music)
   (let ((p (ly:music-property music 'pitch)))
     (if (ly:pitch? p)
         (let ((n (ly:pitch-notename p)))
           if (number? n)
              (number->string n)))))
                 
c = #(define-music-function (parser location pitch) (ly:music?)
       (let ((rn (root-name pitch)))
         #{ \mark \markup { $rn } #}))

\new Staff { c'1 \c c'1 c'1 }

What I am trying so far is to convert the notename from a pitch to a string and
to display it. It won't work though and hopefully you or someone else can help
me locate the error here, so that I can continue learning scheme.
What still troubles me most is the usage of ly: -functions I guess.
The same architecure with standard scheme data-types works.

Regards,

Tao
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