Re: Ties between voices

[William Rehwinkel]

This is a good question, Stephan. I think it can be explained that when 
talking about keyboard music, even though there are abstract ideas of 
things like melody from playing one note after the previous, and other 
things such as chords, engraving techniques such as including many 
noteheads on one stem to form a chord can be considered a shorthand for 
representing different notes (voices?) that have the same start and end 
point. Furthermore, splitting a single-stem chord into an upper-stem 
group of notes and lower-stem group of notes is simply a shorthand...you 
could imagine writing each note separately (as with new German organ 
tablature for example), in which case this would not be a problem. For 
keyboard music, I don't think this is too objectionable, however this 
would of course not be acceptable for closed score choral music or other 
situations where distinct instruments are represented by different 
voices on one line.

Speaking of tie-ing notes "between voices" is a bit of a 
misrepresentation, it's referring to the way that lilypond writes 
multiple polyphonic notes on the same staff using different voices.

This thinking doesn't apply to other things like Chopin piano works with 
slurs across voices but I think those can be thought of more 
practically, to hold the first note long enough that it sounds legato 
with the last.

-William

On 7/23/22 13:27, Stephan Schöll wrote:
> Hi all
>
> I'm neither a professional engraver nor composer. But I've already tried
> to copy scores for my own use.
>
> That's where I got in touch with many "creative" engraving situations.
> One might ask how one could engrave something a manual engraver did 100
> years ago. And then we have this fantastic list that comes up with ideas
> solutions.
>
> But from time to time I encounter things that don't make sense to me
> from a semantical perspective. Ties across voices is such a thing. How
> would that make sense? Yes, there has been a master in the past who did
> it, but nevertheless, it has (in developer speak) has a smell. Should I
> omit or correct that in my score? After all ties describe the
> relationship between two or several notes within a voice (i.e. that can
> be sung).
>
> Just my philosophical 2 cents ;-)
>
> Best regards
>
> Stephan
>
> Am 23.07.2022 um 08:04 schrieb Jean Abou Samra:
> > Le 23/07/2022 à 03:49, Andrew Bernard a écrit :
> > > I know that we can't natively make ties between notes in different
> > > voices. I know that there was a Google Summer of Code task that could
> > > not be completed.
> > >
> > > This is such a critical feature for keyboard music. When there are
> > > hundreds of such ties in major pieces, it is just too tedious to do
> > > all the workarounds with hidden notes and voices. I'm sorry to say
> > > that I have switched to Dorico because of this significant
> > > shortcoming, after having been a Lilypond user for a decade or more.
> > >
> > > So, my question is this. Is the codebase just painted into a corner
> > > that can't be gotten out of in this area due to architectural design
> > > decisions?
> >
> >
> > I don't think so, but it's definitely not a trivial
> > problem either, and requires new design.
> >
> >
> > > Are there any plans at all to develop this functionality in the
> > > forseeable future?
> >
> >
> > Did you see this recent discussion?
> >
> > https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/lilypond-devel/2022-05/msg00175.html
> >
> > It's not possible to answer your question, as most
> > plans to develop functionality are a private decision
> > of a particular contributor that are not public until
> > (perhaps a few days before) a patch is submitted.
> >
> > Best,
> > Jean
--
William Rehwinkel

william@williamrehwinkel.net
https://williamrehwinkel.net