RE: A few notes softer

[Mark Stephen Mrotek]

Matthew,

Sotto voce?
Piu piano?

Mark

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Sent: Monday, November 30, 2015 10:11 AM
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Subject: A few notes softer

This may be more a question about musical notation than about LilyPond,
but:

I would like to indicate that just a few notes (one hand on the piano for
the duration of one bar) should be played softly.  Not as a progressive
change over time (crescendo/decrescendo), but the isolated notes - play at
normal volume up to that point, play the few soft notes, then go back to the
previous level.

What is the best way to indicate this so that musicians will easily
understand that that is how I intend it to be played?  How can that best
notation be easily achieved with LilyPond?  Is there a standard musical term
for this effect?

Here's what I have at the moment, and what it looks like is attached.
Code extracted from a longer score; in the real file the two hands are
inside separate defines.

% this is in D major; none of these notes will be engraved as accidentals
   << { <a' cis'' e''>8 <a' cis'' e''>8
         <a' cis'' e''>8 <a' cis'' e''>8 } \\
       { \override Hairpin.stencil = #constante-hairpin
          s8._\> s16_\p\< s4_\! } >> |

% the left hand is probably not relevant, but:
    <g, b, d>4 r4 |

I think this looks nice, but I don't know if anyone else but me will
understand what it means, and I wish I could get the "p" to be centred and
the spacing at the ends of the bracket to be more balanced.  Maybe it would
be better to abuse a tuplet bracket to engrave this?

Having it *also* produce the right velocities for MIDI is probably a lost
cause, but it's no big deal if I have to rewrite that bar for the MIDI
version.  I don't want to just put \p at the start of the bar and \mf at the
start of the immediately following bar, because that suggests changes in the
ongoing overall dynamic level (which I don't intend) and also I don't think
that would clearly indicate that it's just for one hand.

--
Matthew Skala
address@hidden                 People before principles.
http://ansuz.sooke.bc.ca/