Re: Is there a short way of forcing a particular octave?

[David Wright]

On Tue 20 Dec 2016 at 23:49:16 (+0100), Gianmaria Lari wrote:
> Ciao Peter,
> 
> I know this is a totally different story but I suggest also to give a try
> to avoid the "\relative" and to use absolute octave entry. It takes some
> weeks to get used but in my opinion it is more easy to manage code in this
> way. IMHO "\relative" is too much prone to annoying mistakes and
> furthermore, as you says, it introduces an additional level of brackets.

I can't see the point in avoiding any methodology that makes things
easier and more reliable. Use a hammer for nail and a screwdriver for
screws; there's no battle.

If you compose at the (qwerty) keyboard, then it makes sense to use
\absolute otherwise moving one note's pitch may require you to modify
the next note's octavation, and this gets tedious.

OTOH if you're transcribing melodies, \relative means that the
octavation is only modified at large jumps (fifth or more) and not
every time you make the b/c transition.

During the data entry phase, \absolute means checking the octavation
of every individual note, whereas \relative has the effect of making
most octavation errors blindingly obvious. I find \absolute useful
where I'm adding the internal parts for piano/organ because the
additions are typically fragmentary and non-melodic.

When archiving your work, \absolute would seem a sensible choice
because any later edits are likely to be local, so it's more like
composing above; you don't want propagation of unintentional
octavation changes.

Obviously all this requires understanding the tools available, notably
ly of course, where aliases for back and forth conversion between
modes save time.

I don't understand "annoying"/"unannoying" mistakes, nor why there's
an extra level of braces involved. The \absolute { } construction
parallels \relative { }, doesn't it?

Cheers,
David.