Re: Some questions from a novice

[Mats Bengtsson]

Nikolai Kirsebom wrote:
> Hi.
> I have LilyPond 1.6.5. installed (Cygwin) and have tried it for the
> first time.  Look nice, spent quite some time to get things working out.
> I have some questions, things I'm not able to find out how to
> 'implement'.

As has already pointed out, please upgrade to version 2.2, which is
now available in Cygwin.

Some stylistic comments:
- I recommend to add a '|' where you expect each bar to stop,
  look in the manual for bar checks to learn why.
- It's also a good habit to write one bar per line in the input
  file.
- Always add a line
\version "1.6.5"
  or whatever version you use. This makes it much easier to upgrade
  to a newer version of LilyPond, using the convert-ly program.

> Enclosed below is my program.
>
> 1: The first 3 notes (a triple) should be played as one quarter note.  I
> thought that I would have to specify "\times 2/3", however doing that
> results in the whole piece being shifted (result all wrong).

\partial 4
    \times 2/3 { b8(\f c'8  d'8)\segno }

You also have another triplet that erronously says \times 1/3
instead of \times 2/3

> 2: The first "\grace" note should be right in front of the first Es (in
> the second bar of the piece), however it is printed as the last note in
> the first bar.
Fixed in newer versions of LilyPond.

> 4: Bar number 10 is the final should have the mark "Fine", however when
> entering a non-number in the "volta" statement, LilyPond generates an
> error.  

If you want to replace the number in the volta with "fine", then
you probably need to look at the section in the users manual on
 "manual repeat commands".


> 5: Bar number 19 should be the first bar of section marked Trio.  It is
> in a new key (2 b's while the rest has 3 b's).  The change in "b"
> indication ends up at the end of bar 18 and again a "\grace" note which
> should be the first in the 19th bar is placed in a separate bar.
> Actually the repeats should be something like ":|:".

Again, a bug in your old version.

> 6: Should LilyPond be able to handle national characters ?

Certainly, just input them as usual: åäöÅÄÖ
This presumes that your editor saves the file with latin1 character
encoding. I always use Emacs as text editor, both in Linux and
Windows, which handles latin1 like a charm.

> Hope someone is able to help me out.  Really nice program, however
> somewhat hard to get started.  Please answer to me directly.

It seems to me that you have managed to get very far yourself.

   /Mats