Re: Is Lilypond right for this need?

[Erik Sandberg]

On Tuesday 31 October 2006 21:21, Cliff Pruitt wrote:
> Thanks for the advice.
>
> The suggestions would be great if I were more proficient at writing
> out music in general. I think what I'm trying to figure out is the
> best way to approximate the correct phrases quickly without taking
> the time to be accurate.  I'm very slow at determining music notation
> and for me to actually work out the note durations for all of our
> songs would take forever (I'm working of guitar lessons I had back
> when I was in high school & early college).  I know HOW to work it
> out (conceptually) but its a very slow & unnatural process for me.
>
> My main requirements are:
> - Have a chord line up over the right word

Hm, there are mechanisms which should make it possible to align words to 
chords, but it probably requires some nonstandard trickery. Probably you can 
do something like 

harmonies = \new ChordNames="harmonies" \chordmode {
     b2 f2 es2 f2/es % and so on ...
 }

\score {
<<
  \harmonies
  \new Lyrics \lyricsto "harmonies" { Over "all the" earth "You reign on" 
high }
>>

% so that lyrics can align to music in the context
\context { \ChordNames \alias "Voice" } 

}

If rhythm is unimportant, you can try \cadenzaOn (turns off automatic 
barlines), and then use \bar "|" to add bars.

> - Multiple verses of lyrics under one line (staff) of chords
>
> Ideally I would be able to format it as a chord in the given key (for
> bass & piano) & optionally have another staff that shows chord names
> transposed for use with a capo.
>
> I think what I'm running into is just that your average run of the
> mill rock guitar player (i.e. myself) is out of touch enough with the
> correct way of reading & writing music that it might be a difficult
> switch for me.  Its my deficiency, not the software.
>
> I've managed to output a sample song with the correct chord / word
> alignment, but the bar lines are in all kinds of chaotic places since
> every syllable is (I'm assuming) interpreted as a quarter note.  At
> this point I'm down to trying to figure out a consistent method for
> reducing everything to 32nd or 64th notes based on syllables, filling
> whatever isn't used with rests & just trying to write an app to
> convert some simple text file into an .ly file.
>
> Really Lilypond probably is overkill for what I need, but there isn't
> anything else out there that does what I need any better.  There's
> not much out there for that stage between a word processor document
> and the need for full blown sheet music.
>
> Any other thoughts or suggestions are much appreciated, but I
> understand if I'm just outside of the box here.
> - Cliff

-- 
Erik