Re: Fingering: showing strings by dots?

[Alasdair McAndrew]

Dear Pierre,

Thank you for your detailed reply.  Here is an example of the notation:

You'll see that in the first bar of this line there are two examples with a 4 with two dots, and in the last bar there are two examples of a 4 with three dots.  And here's an example which includes a 3 with four dots:

This is beginning to push this notation almost further than reasonable, but nevertheless it was a standard notation for the time and for this instrument, and I'd like to maintain it if I can.

There are other issues with this music, which can bristle with expressive marks: bowing and fingering information, various shorthands for different sorts of ornaments, over and above the placement of the notes.  But I'll write another post about that.  For the fingering maybe I could possibly also use the markup command to place some characters atop each other, a digit and a row of closely spaced dots.  You'll see that although I mentioned in my original post that the dots are in an arc, that's not necessarily the case, and I could probably get away with a straight line.  

Thank you again,

Alasdair

On Sun, Aug 23, 2020 at 2:35 PM Pierre Perol-Schneider <pierre.schneider.paris@gmail.com> wrote:

Hi Alasdair,

I've never seen such notation. I'd be curious to see an example.

Maybe this could help: http://lsr.di.unimi.it/LSR/Item?id=1068

E.g.:

\version "2.20.0"

#(define-markup-command
  (circled-pattern layout props radius angle num arg)
  (number? number? number? markup?)
  (interpret-markup layout props
   (let* ((rep (abs num))(rad (abs radius)))
    (cond
     ((= num 0) (markup ""))
     ((= num 1) (markup arg))
     (#t (markup
          (#:combine
           (#:null)
           (fold
            (lambda (i prev)
             (markup
               (#:combine
                (#:rotate
                 (* i (/ angle rep))
                 (#:concat (#:null #:hspace rad arg)))
               prev)))
            (markup (#:null))
            (iota (1+ rep))))))))))

four = \markup\translate #'(-.7 . 0) \rotate #45 \circled-pattern #2 #90 #4 "."

{
  c'-3^\four
}

Cheers,

Pierre

Le dim. 23 août 2020 à 04:23, Alasdair McAndrew <amca01@gmail.com> a écrit :

I am trying to typeset some early 18th century French music for viola da gamba.  The standard notation, which I would like to keep, is that the string is indicated by a row of dots above the finger number.  That is, for example, a 4 with three dots over it (generally in a slight arc, rather than in a straight line), indicates using the fourth finger on the third string.  

Can this be achieved in Lilypond?  I can't find any references in the manual, but maybe I haven't looked hard enough...

Thank you very much,

Alasdair

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