Hi Stacy,
I'm not familiar with harmonics notation or tabulature, but I think both
of your problems can be solved.
Am 27.06.20 um 01:05 schrieb Stacy Fatemi:
Hey list,
I'm notating a piece for 6-string bass with heavy harmonic use,
including chords with different fretted harmonics. Attachment 1 (the
hand-drawn bar) shows how I want this measure to go: root notes in
voice 2, harmonics in voice 1, with a chord composed of a 7th fret
harmonic on the 1st string and 5th fret harmonics on the 2nd and 3rd
strings. Here are the problems:
This presents us with two more problems:
2. The harmonics in the first voice are severely augmenting the fret
number in the second voice (it's not a huge issue in this tiny
example, but in the full file I'm working on I have a line of 78
commas in a row for the first note of the second file to get it on the
right fret), and
This is caused by the use of \relative mode.
Here's why: In \relative mode, the absolute pitch of each note you enter
influences the next entered pitch (insofar as any pitch entered
_without_ ' oder , is taken to be at most a fourth away from the last
entered pitch, and ' and , only add/substract octaves). Now, what you
probably did not expect: This does not keep track of parallel
independent voices. Instead, your very high note \harmonicByRatio #1/4
<e\3 a\2>2. makes LilyPond assume that the next note encountered in your
source file is to be taken relative to that high note.
There are verious ways of solving this problem, of adding a bunch of
,,,,,'s to get back to the normal octave is probably not the best. One
way would be to start a new \relative environment for your lower voice:
\relative c,, { b'2.\5 b4\5 | }
But probably it would be best to not use relative mode at all, but
instead use fixed mode. To be honest, I spent the last half an hour
trying to figure out what happens behind the scene for your first
command, \harmonicByRatio #1/4 <e\3 a\2>2. in \relative mode. I'm not
sure yet, but I think that \harmonicByRatio is seriously broken when
used for chords in \relative mode.
(Anybody who wants to try: Compile #(calc-harmonic-pitch #{ c' #} #{
\relative <c' f'> #}. The function calc-harmonic-pitch should not do
anything when given c' as "harmonic pitch", if I understand the source
code in tablatura.scm correctly.)
But I admit that I do not yet understand the logic by which the fret
numbers for harmonics are calculated. I'm not that familiar with the
bass (and so I have to calculate rather a lot), but when I just tried to
define stringTunings for the cello (which I'm very familiar with) I
could understand usual pitches easily, but could not get my head around
the displayed tabs for harmonics. But maybe I will.
3. The harmonics don't form a coherent chord, but rather a staggered
display with a collision between the stem from voice 1 and the note
from voice 3.
This is not a bug but a feature: Normally, you want to be able to
distinguish the first and the third voice. But not here.
The construction << ... \\ ... \\ >> is a bit involved in that it does
_several_ things: It creates independent voices, yes, but it also sets
defaults for shifting and stem direction (namely, the first voice gets a
\voiceOne, which should be read as "should be layouted as a first voice,
e.g. with \stemUp etc."). In more complicated situations, it's often
more convenient not to use the \\'s but to create the voices for
yourself and setting them up manually:
<<
\new Voice { \voiceOne ... }
\new Voice { \voiceThree .... }
>>
But the easiest remedy in your situation is:
\version "2.18.2"
\score {
\new TabStaff
{
\set Staff.stringTunings = \stringTuning <a,,, e,, a,, e, a, cis>
\tabFullNotation
\relative c,, {
<<
{ r4 \harmonicByRatio #1/4 <e\3 a\2>2. | }
\\
\relative c,, { b'2.\5 b4\5 | }
\\
{ s4 \voiceOne \harmonicByFret #7 cis2.\1 | }
>>
}
}
}
Note that I also changed r4 into s4 - s4 behaves like a rest but does
not print anything, and we only need one actual printed rest.
Best
Lukas
