Re: Mixed chord/note mode

[Jean Abou Samra]

Le 22/08/2022 à 21:43, Carl Sorensen a écrit :
> On Mon, Aug 22, 2022 at 12:59 PM Jean Abou Samra <jean@abou-samra.fr> 
> wrote:
>
>
>
>     > Le 22 août 2022 à 15:16, Lukas-Fabian Moser <lfm@gmx.de> a écrit :
>     >
>     > 
>     >> Am 13.08.22 um 22:04 schrieb David Kastrup:
>     >> We had this discussion a longer time ago, with chords and notes
>     >> conflicting in that : is used for tremolo notation, too.
>     >
>     > For context:
>     >
>     >
>     https://mail.gnu.org/archive/html/lilypond-devel/2012-09/msg00160.html
>     [GLISS] Unifying \chordmode and \notemode
>     >
>     https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/lilypond-devel/2010-04/msg00390.html
>     Why don't we get rid of \chordmode?
>     >
>     > Probably there were other discussions after that, but these were
>     the first I found.
>     >
>     >> Chord modifiers are a bit of a puzzlement to figure out later, but
>     >> something like <c:> would (I think) be a major chord, <c:m> a minor
>     >> chord and so on.
>     >
>     > Just for confirmation: This does _not_ mean that \chordmode
>     would be abandoned, does it? (I probably got confused by some of
>     the ideas in those old threads.)
>     >
>     > As someone who uses \figuremode on a daily basis, I learned to
>     loathe the necessary < > signs around each and every element I
>     enter (of course I get that it would be hard to get rid of them in
>     figure mode). I think it would be a considerable gain in
>     heavy-handedness if I would have to do
>     >
>     > <f:maj7>1*2 <g:7> <g:m7>1 <ges:7>1 <f:maj7> <ges:7>
>     >
>     > instead of
>     >
>     > f1*2:maj7 g:7 g1:m7 ges1:7 f1:maj7 ges1:7
>
>
>
>     And what do you think about
>
>     f1*2:maj7 g:M7 g1:m7 ges1:M7 f1:maj7 ges1:M7
>
>
> I do not like it.  I don't like Do to indicate a major  chord.  I 
> think that one of the strengths in LilyPond is its consistency.  
> Whether in note mode or in chord mod, the notename is a pitch.  And 
> the pitch is all lower-case.
>
> g:7 is not a major chord, as I understand it .  It's a dominant 7 
> chord.  So even if we were to use the M and m convention (that you are 
> proposing), I don't think g:7 should change to g:M7.


Right, that's a weakness.


> I don't think we should change the syntax arbitrarily.  The new 
> proposal makes it nicer for French speakers and less nice for English 
> speakers.  We already have the syntax published, and out in the wild 
> for many years.  Changing it, in my mind, is arbitrary.



Sorry if I have expressed myself in an unclear way, but you seem to
have misunderstood my post. I am not talking about breaking existing
syntax at all. This thread is about how to make normal note mode
include some way to write chords just with their root and "qualifiers"
(major/minor, seventh, etc.) instead of in full with all of their
notes in <...>. This is already what chord mode does. The problem is
that c:8 means a chord with octave in chord mode but a C with tremolo
in note mode. We can't make c:8 mean a chord with octave in note mode
without breaking the existing *tremolo* syntax. So we need to find a
variant of the existing chord mode syntax that could work in note mode.
And several variants are being considered:

a.  Make the colon trigger chordmode-like syntax if inside chord brackets
    <...>. Looks like

    { <c:8>2 <c:m8>2 }

    (note: no \chordmode)

b. Make the colon trigger chordmode-like input if followed by a chord
   modifier, but keep it as tremolo if followed by a number.

   Because in the existing chord mode many chords are written without
   a modifier (like “c:7”), this requires adding a “no-op” modifier, “M”,
   that just signals that a chord is being written instead of a tremolo.

   Looks like

   { c2:M8 c2:m8 }

c. Use capital letters to start a chord.

   { C2:8 C2:m8 }


Again, there is no breakage of existing input syntax in any of this.

Thanks,
Jean