The message below, posted on the user list, contains a useful list of problems encountered while learning and using LilyPond for a significant project. Some suggest improvements to the documentation are needed; others could be turned into requests for enhancements. I wonder if the bug squad would like to trawl this for new tracker items?
Trevor ----- Original Message ----- From: "Curt" <accou...@museworld.com> To: "Lilypond-User List" <lilypond-u...@gnu.org> Sent: Friday, September 13, 2013 4:54 AM Subject: film score example > Hi all - > > About a year ago, several of you answered questions of mine about notating a > film score. I reached a stopping point with the first cue and learned a bit > more about git, so I have the first film cue from the score up on github now: > > https://github.com/tunesmith/TheForgivingSea > > (pdf of score at: > https://github.com/tunesmith/TheForgivingSea/blob/master/1M2/pdf/1M2.pdf ) > > The score was originally prepared (in Sibelius) a few years ago, under the > tutelage of a professional hollywood film composer, Hummie Mann, and was > performed/recorded by a volunteer orchestra, so it's been through several > revisions to tighten it up. This project was to re-notate it in lilypond. > It's also a simple, short score, so it might be useful for various learning > purposes. I'm also more than happy to receive any suggestions or "pull > requests" on how to improve the score or simplify the lilypond coding. > > Appended below is part of one of the README's - the "unexpected difficulties" > I had with lilypond, as in the areas that didn't seem to work easily right > away. (Note that I started this re-notation project as a complete lilypond > beginner.) A big one here is "giant time signatures", which are common in > film scores but don't seem to have a graceful solution in lilypond. Please > note that these are just the (minor) complaints, and that overall I was > *extremely* happy with the experience and output. I did this all in eclipse > (elysium) on a 15" MacBook Pro and loved the "coding" experience. > > Thanks for all your help, I hope someone finds this useful! > > Curt > > ~^~^~^~^ > > Unexpectedly hard parts of creating this score (all specific to v2.16): > > - General spacing and staff sizes. I believe Lilypond by default puts > everything > too close together for music that is read by instrumentalists, particularly > sight-readers. The spacing commands are easy to use, but difficult to find > and look up if you don't already know them. > > - I make liberal use of "tagging" for part extraction. It appears this is > the best > way to handle minor differences between parts and full scores. > > - Hairpins are surprisingly difficult. Most instruments do not have a natural > decay, so hairpins don't necessarily start or end right at the note > boundaries. It's necessary to use "fake voices" in these cases. Even > with this, it didn't support having a decrescendo end at the Fine bar - > I had to make it end at a note value before the Fine bar. And > if you have ties over these fake voices, you have to know about > \set tieWaitForNote = ##t > > - Header text elements are a bit bearish to configure. Our instructions were > to > put the instrument name in the "upper left" of each part; I ended up using > the out of the box "poet" slot, and then later reconfigured all of > bookTitleMarkup to reposition "instrument" when it became clear I'd need > the "instrument" slot for later pages. It also could be easier to put a > simple newline in, for longer instrument names. > > - The alignment of the flat sign in text markup like "Clarinet in Bb" is > difficult. > I gave up on this one because the approach to make it look right felt too > hard-coded. > > - The "\sustainOff" right-alignment looks bad to me. It should end at the > barline > or at the rest you stop pedaling; not right afterward. Pedaling usually > implies > you pedal for the duration of the note, but not longer. > > - It was difficult to figure out how to create a percussion staff where > someone > switched from a pitched instrument to a rhythm instrument. Also, I'm not > quite convinced on the choice for a percussive half note- I've seen open-heads > in these situations before, but I found it impossible to override the notehead > in \drummode. > > - It was extremely hard to specify a subito dynamic right after a hairpin. > This > is a relatively common use-case, but I had to pull in a pretty complicated > scheme function, and modify it, to make it work as expected. This one > requirement > probably took around six hours. > > - Making courtesy/cautionary accidentals show up in just the parts was a more > verbose process than it needed to be, it seemed. I wasn't able to do this > reliably unless I tagged the entire measure. The programmer in me wanted > to just tag the cautionary accidental alone. > > - Fermatas were often misaligned, too close to or colliding with slurs. > Manual > padding was necessary. > > - In film scoring, it's common to include the information of the SMPTE > timecode > of when a last note in a cue gets cut off, for the instruments that are > playing at that time. It was not possible to make a \markup element > right-align with the final barline. This eventually required a few > overrides to Score.RehearsalMark - not too bad, but it felt a bit > hackish. > > - Specifying an arbitrary bar number (like after a long multi-rest) is not > supported out of the box, but I found a lovely, concise snippet to > help with this at http://lsr.dsi.unimi.it/LSR/Item?id=431 > > - Eyeglasses are sometimes used in the bottom right of a page to remind an > instrumentalist that there really is another page. I had to override > rehearsal mark in a few ways to get this to work. > > - One interesting semi-bug is that top-markup-spacing doesn't seem to apply > to 2nd pages (and later pages) of scores, even if they have the instrument > name at the top of the page. When I got to two-page parts, I had to > rejigger my formatting to use a larger top-margin, introduce > top-system-spacing, and reduce top-markup-spacing. > > - It would be nice if, in a PianoStaff, you could invoke "sustainOn" in the > upper staff (for instance if you're in a melody-only section) but still > easily have the pedal markings show below the lower staff. > > - Figuring out large bar numbers was difficult, and it actually required some > alpha code that is included in an issue in the lilypond issue tracker. > The mailing list was *great* at pointing this out, thanks Nick! > > - Giant time signatures are actually somewhat common for film scores, but > difficult to create in any notation system. Best option I came up > with was to jack up the font size and assign them to staff groups. > > > > _______________________________________________ > lilypond-user mailing list > lilypond-u...@gnu.org > https://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/lilypond-user _______________________________________________ bug-lilypond mailing list bug-lilypond@gnu.org https://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/bug-lilypond