Re: Setting relative pitch as a global declaration?

[Lukas-Fabian Moser]

Hi Alasdair,

Am 09.02.22 um 08:16 schrieb Alasdair McAndrew:
> I'm sorry about all these damn-fool queries of mine; I promise to go 
> back under my rock soon.  Anyway:
> In the current 18th century suite I'm typesetting (for two treble 
> instruments without bass), there is a separate variable (containing 
> the notes) for each part of each movement.  Then there are global 
> declarations about the instruments, and the key and time-signature of 
> each movement; and these are all brought together in score blocks.
>
> The one thing I don't know how to do is to declare the relative pitch 
> globally.  Thus, each music variable looks like
>
> movement1_part1 = \new Voice \relative c'' { notes, notes, and more 
> notes }
>
> The difficulty is that I want to re-set the second part for a bass 
> instrument, so it might start off as
>
> movement1_part2 = \new Voice \relative c { notes, notes, and more notes }
>
> Currently this means changing the relative pitch for each movement 
> individually.  It would be much more efficient to be able to do this 
> just once at the beginning, with an appropriate global declaration.  
> Can this be done?  Is there a way to set the relative pitch of some 
> music in a \global block?

As Rémy already pointed out, a compilable example would make things 
clearer. But maybe the answer you're seeking is contained in the 
following list:

- There's no way to globally declare your input mode to be relative

- If you want to re-use music already entered in a different octave, you 
can transpose it: \transpose c c, \yourMusicVariable

- It's not necessary to write a pitch after \relative (as in \relative 
c' { notesotesnotes }), you can also just do \relative { notesnotesnotes 
}; then the first note will be read as "absolute".

- It's possible to change the relative octave in mid-entry using 
\resetRelativeOctave

Does this already help?

Lukas