RE: [Best Practices] instrument changes

[James Lowe]

Kieren,
________________________________________
From: address@hidden address@hidden on behalf of Kieren MacMillan address@hidden
Sent: 28 June 2011 15:15
To: Lilypond-User Mailing List
Subject: [Best Practices] instrument changes

Hello all,

I write a lot of music for "doublers", i.e., instrumentalists who play more 
than one instrument. Often (e.g., clarinet), these instruments have different 
transpositions. Furthermore, I usually need to print parts (in "performance 
pitch") and scores (both "transposed" and "c" scores).

I would love to put together a "Best Practices" example/snippet/document, but I 
want to make sure they *are* "best practices": a lot of what I do now would be 
better described as "crisis-mode hacking", in order to get the score ready in 
time for the performance.  :)

Has anyone else dealt with significant instrument changes (e.g., winds in an 
opera), and would like to share your process?
Together, perhaps we can put together a truly useful Best Practices doc.

------

I do this a lot (mainly because most of the music I get is for Clarinet or 
Trumpet in A when we only have b-flat players, also I am often asked to put a 
lot of bass-clef stuff in tenor clef for one of my bassoonists who finds it 
easier in some scores to read a single clef than have to jump about during a 
complicated passage - even though I baulk at the number of ledger lines that 
that can result in, how they and flautists cope with more than 3 ledger lines 
is beyond me! ...but anyway I apologise if most of these are stating the 
obvious.

A few rules I use

1. Always use music variables and THEN transpose them in the \score, rather 
than transpose them in the variable (if that makes sense?) - that is for me I 
literally 'use the source' (i.e. the score) and write out the music in the same 
pitch as the score (sometimes it is just the single music part). If I have to 
transpose a part where I have saxophones doubling up for clarinets, but I still 
need a clarinet part I can then simply use the variable twice in the same 
\score but add a \transpose on one of the instances.

2. Try to keep the fancy \tweaks and \h-aligns to a minimum, my point on that 
is once you have placed your dynamic ff just so and made your rehearsal marks 
sit not-so-high above that slur or beam, and then you transpose the \tweak, 
\override will now look stupid in most cases. That is a hard one to pull off 
sometimes, so I have to weigh up if it is worth it and if LP is 'good enough', 
but don't bother to worry about those things until the last. Keep as many 
overrides in the \layout { } part of the \score { } as you can as that  makes 
it much easier (for me anyway) to keep my actual music 'clean' for reviewing in 
the .ly file. Sometimes it is too convenient to stick an override in place in 
the variable and that causes problems when you use it in a \transposed part in 
a different .ly file (as an include for instance).

3. Make lots of %comments as you go :) this is mainly for #2 above. While 
writing out my score I use a \transpose c c { music } construct and then flip 
it as needed (i.e. \transpose bes c { music } ) as this gives me a bit of a way 
to 'take a quick look' as I go to see if anything is likely to be pushed too 
far on the staff (do I need to consider an ottava? is that \markup going to 
look stupid and should it be put over the staff instead? However I still stick 
to #2 and make comments as I go in the file, then I know when I am done what I 
need to go back and check or tweak.

As I say, nothing earth shattering but it works for me.

James