Re: Possible feature request for 'q' shorthand or tie syntax

[David Kastrup]

Jim Long <address@hidden> writes:

> A humble suggestion....
>
> Please educate me if there is already a way to do this, but it
> appears that 'q' as a shorthand for the repetition of the
> previous note(s) only works for chords.  It would be handy if it
> worked for single notes also, specifically in ties.
>
>   \time 12/8
>   \partial 8
>   aes8
>   des,4. ~ q4 aes'8  d,4. ~ q4 a'8
>   des,4. ~ q4 aes'8  d,4. ~ q4 a'8
>
>
> For that matter, it would be nice (though I suspect more
> syntactically problematic) for subsequent notes in ties to only
> require a duration, since by definition the pitch has already
> been specified in the first note of the tie.

Yes and no: musically one can tie eis to f or cis to des (not that
LilyPond does a fabulous job with that).

> This might be written as:
>
>   \time 12/8
>   \partial 8
>   aes8
>   des,4.~4 aes'8  d,4.~4 a'8
>   des,4.~4 aes'8  d,4.~4 a'8
>
> Flipping that around, it might (or might not, I'm not qualified
> to say) be syntactically convenient to define a 'compound
> duration' as one that includes two or more simple durations
> separated by tildes.

That would be rather complex concept.  It also does not lend itself
easily to interspersing material like bar lines or bar checks or meter
changes.  At the current point of time, durations are implemented as one
hardwired syntactic element hooking into the "duration" property of
events while ties are implemented as a post-event that attaches to the
"articulations" field of the preceding event.

In both cases, the actual attachment is done by the parser, and the
respective element (duration/articulation) is completely formed before
being attached.

Something which LilyPond _does_ support is the so-called
Completion_heads_engraver which has the opposite approach: it takes a
long duration and splits tied notes off according to bar lines getting
in the way.  However, this still requires the original notes to be
specified with a duration corresponding to their full length.  It is
nice for producing canons and/or stretto passages in "modern" notation
with no untied values crossing barlines, but does not help all that much
when the original is supposed to contain long irregular lengths.

Personally, I rather like the ambiguous nature of shifted Renaissance
mostly rhythms expressed without the use of ties, but of course it is
not really fancied in modern notation.

-- 
David Kastrup