Re: ties between enharmonic pitches

[David Kastrup]

Mike Solomon <address@hidden> writes:

> Hey all,
>
> I recently stumbled across this old thread from 2002 about ties
> between enharmonic pitches:
>
> http://osdir.com/ml/gnu.lilypond.general/2002-12/msg00176.html
>
> I am typesetting a piece where the successive chords are:
>
> <dis ais’ cisis fis bis> ~ % (D#m maj7 #15)
> <e g d’ fis b>  %(Em9)
>
> The above is pseudocode - the actual piece is across 5 staves and voices.
>
> I have seen the suggestion to slur the cisis and the d, but something
> about that feels unsatisfactory.  However, if that is the most common
> way in real scores, I will do it.  What are current opinons on this
> topic? Meaning, what is considered the best way to show this and what
> is the most elegant way to do that in LilyPond?

It probably only counts as "sucks less" compared to the current state,
but for what it's worth I put a patch on
<URL:https://code.google.com/p/lilypond/issues/detail?id=461>

After turning your example into workable code by writing

\relative {
  <dis ais' cisis fis bis>2 ~ % (D#m maj7 #15)
  <e g d' fis b>  %(Em9)
}

the result definitely looks ugly since the tie configuration is chosen
only based on the left chord column, making the tie close to useless
because of picking the wrong compromise of moving away from ledger lines
or whatever.

So it's clear that even under the premise "ties remain horizontal", the
submitted patch is not sufficient for doing the trick in a satisfactory
manner.

It's at best a start.

-- 
David Kastrup