Re: Barre grob - appearance

[Jeff Olson]

On 8/27/2022 5:36 AM, Thomas Morley wrote:
> Ofcourse, one can find several
> codings here on the list, in LSR, I have some own as well. All are
> (ab)using spanners like TextSpanner or hijacking other grobs like
> Arpeggio.

As an old amateur guitarist, I'm looking forward to a better barre 
solution.  Thank you, Harm, for taking this on!

In the mean time there are existing solutions that are NOT based on 
spanners.

The system I've been using for years is based on the similarities of 
barres and position indicators.  Both are indicators for overall 
placement of the hand along the neck.  Both typically use Roman 
numerals.  Both occupy the same visual space above the staff, and hence 
both are read by the eye like the different words in the same sentence 
about "Where do I put my hand?".  The more detailed question of "Where 
do I put my fingers?" is handled as a separate issue using Arabic 
numerals within the staff.

The system is easily described, as in this footnote to the reader:

    Roman numerals above the staff indicate hand positions on the 
fretboard and remain in effect until the
    next such indication.  A barre is indicated by prefixing the Roman 
numeral with a small “b_” for a small
    barre or a large “B_” for a large barre at that position.

Admittedly, this system alone isn't going to express all the nuances in 
your inner barre examples, but my arrangements are for intermediate 
guitarists, and they seem to catch on to it quickly (and most, like me, 
can scarcely do an inner barre).

Implementation in lilypond is trivial, by including definitions like these:

% guitar neck position indicators
pI    = ^\markup { "I" }
pII   = ^\markup { "II" }
pIII  = ^\markup { "III" }
pIV   = ^\markup { "IV" }

% large barre
BpI    = ^\markup { "B_I" }
BpII   = ^\markup { "B_II" }
BpIII  = ^\markup { "B_III" }
BpIV   = ^\markup { "B_IV" }

% small barre
bpI    = ^\markup { "b_I" }
bpII   = ^\markup { "b_II" }
bpIII  = ^\markup { "b_III" }
bpIV   = ^\markup { "b_IV" }

The resulting code is very compact and stands out nicely in 
Frescobaldi's color highlighting, as shown in the attached image 
alt-barre-frescobaldi.png.

The output appearance from this same example is shown in the attached 
alt-barre-appearance.png.  This is from a lengthy arrangement for two 
guitars I published five years ago, which is why it was intentionally 
crowded to reduce the page count.  In some of the cases shown, I had to 
cheat on the placement of the position indicators, e.g. in m44.

I'm hoping that whatever solution you create will play well with other 
grobs in crowded situations.  As you mentioned two weeks ago, "Notation 
of classical guitar is one of the most complex ones". There's already a 
lot of other important visual clutter, even in the simple example I've 
attached (e.g. slurs and beams on the same notes under the barre).  
Reminds me of Alice's Restaurant 
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alice%27s_Restaurant> "... with circles 
and arrows and a paragraph on the back ... explaining what each one was 
...".  We just don't want our creations "... to be used as evidence 
against us".  :-)

Jeff

alt-barre-appearance.png
Description: PNG image

alt-barre-frescobaldi.png
Description: PNG image