Re: Setting relative pitch as a global declaration?

[David Wright]

On Wed 09 Feb 2022 at 18:52:52 (+0100), David Kastrup wrote:
> David Wright <lilylis@lionunicorn.co.uk> writes:
> > On Wed 09 Feb 2022 at 14:24:14 (+0000), Valentin Petzel wrote:
> >> 
> >> I think Alasdair does not want to specify relative at toplevel, but
> >> he has his voices in multiple consecutive parts, and he wants the
> >> whole voice to be relative, instead of each part being separately
> >> relative. This can of course simply be done using \relative pitch
> >> {\partA \partB ...}.
> >
> > I think you've misinterpreted "part" as part of a movement, rather
> > than part being an instrumental part.
> >
> > The OP will want to set the music as:
> >
> > movement1_part1 = { notes, notes, and more notes }
> > movement2_part1 = { notes, notes, and more notes }
> > movement3_part1 = { notes, notes, and more notes }
> >
> > to do what they posted, ie,
> >
> > \relative c { \movement1_part1 \movement2_part1 \movement3_part1 }
> >
> > This will enable them to set part2 for a high- or low-pitched
> > instrument with one modification, and without changing the
> > pitch of part1:
> >
> > \relative c' { \movement1_part2 \movement2_part2 \movement3_part2 }
> >
> > or
> >
> > \relative c, { \movement1_part2 \movement2_part2 \movement3_part2 }
> 
> I find that a pretty bad idea since changes in \movement1_part1 can
> shift the octave of movement2_part1 around.  I think it makes more sense
> to do octave shifts via \transpose rather than tieing the internals of
> one passage to the next passage at a completely different place in the
> source.

I agree entirely. And being a non-schemer, if I wanted to do what the
OP does, I would likely use an external method to achieve it
(like awk/sed). I've never transposed a single part, but I do, for
example, have an automatic system for transposing Anglican chants
into keys that fit into a sequence. That's straightforward, of course,
just changing \score { \transpose f f \new ChoirStaff << … >> }.

So my post wasn't an idea for an implementation, but a more
extended illustration of what the OP's meaning of "part"
(as in partbook, or instrumental parts) implies. The OP is
welcome to confirm or correct this.

Cheers,
David.