variables for specific kinds of markup?

[Marc Evanstein (formerly Evans)]

Hi all,

I'm trying to create a variable to handle a certain type of markup text. 
For instance, I'd like percussion strikings to be in small caps above 
the staff, and what I really want is to define some sort of macro that 
replaces all instances of "\striking { theText }" with 
"^\markup\smallCaps { theText }".

The following clearly doesn't work (much as I would like it to):

striking = ^\markup\smallCaps

From searching around, it seems like I need to define a function using 
scheme. I tried this:

striking = #(define-music-function (parser location text)
         (string?)
         #{
           ^\markup\smallCaps { #text }
         #})

... and while the single line "\striking mallet" seems to render the 
word mallet as a smallCaps markup above a dummy staff, when I try to 
incorporate it into a series of notes, e.g.:

{c'4 \striking mallet d'4 e'4 f'4 }

I get an "error: unexpected post-event". What exactly does that mean?

I did notice something close to what I want here:

http://lilypond.org/doc/v2.19/Documentation/extending/new-markup-command-definition.en.html

But it still would require me to put something like \markup\striking, as 
opposed to \striking.

I'm pretty new to lilypond, so apologies if I've said something that 
betrays a lack of understanding. I guess I'd just mostly like to know 
what that "unexpected post-event" error means.

Thanks in advance!

Marc


--
Marc Evans
PhD Candidate in Music Composition at UCSB
Stanford BA '10, Music; MA '11, Music, Science and Technology
www.marcevansmusic.com

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