That helps explain it! Thanks! But if I wanted to reproduce precisely what this arranger is doing, I could just enter the pitches as written and just place a note to instruct the performer to do the ottava manually, correct?
Thanks, Ken On Mon, Nov 1, 2021 at 3:57 PM Jean Abou Samra <j...@abou-samra.fr> wrote: > > Le 01/11/2021 à 23:49, Kenneth Wolcott a écrit : > > Hi Kieren & Carl; > > > > Well, since you have already provided an MWE that shows it works as > > documented, may I provide my full Lilypond code? It is only a halfway > > completed Piano arrangement of "The Elephant" from the ""Carnival of > > the Animals", by Saint-Saens. It is not long and it is simple. > > Perhaps I'm doing something really stupid... > > You're trying to enter the pitches as if the ottava were > not there, and add the ottava to make them sound and read > one octave lower. Just like with accidentals, LilyPond does > not think like that: you should enter the real pitch in > the way it sounds, and \ottava determines how to format it. > So you should simply add extra commas on all the notes > of the ottava. > > This design choice separates input and layout. If you started > without ottava, and your teacher or publisher tells you that > you should really write these notes with an ottava to make > them more readable, you can just sprinkle \ottava in the code > without changing the pitches themselves. > > Best, > Jean
