I'm willing to be a guinea pig for any work you do. I had been thinking
about tackling this topic myself but was a bit hesitant to dive in since
pedal steel has it it's own idiosyncrasies for tabbing.
I think these can all be dealt with by Lilypond but may be a challenge
to get working well together in a clear way from a coding standpoint. I
have tabbed non pedal lap steel with C6 and D7 turnings that came out
quite well.
For pedal steel here are things I have thought about:
* Indication of pedal number and knee lever number presses. Usually a
pedal letter or knee lever symbol is attached to the fret number on
the string itself.
* Re-entrant E9 tuning with the two lower pitch strings on top. I
think lilypond can handle this automatically like it does for banjo
but I haven't tried it.
* Some way to make coding of on the fly tuning changes not too
cumbersome with quick pedal presses off and on. Especially when
pedals are combined several times in a single measure. Measures
could end up being quite messy to code and maintain. I have found
sometimes what seems like an easy tweak to a measure can cause
unexpected results.
* Indication of how quickly to press a pedal - which indicates a quick
bend or slow bend.
* Indication of string "bends" as pedals are pressed. And some times
pedal presses can be combined with bar slides. Plus indication if
string is string again after the bend or slide or just let ring and
if other non bent strings are to continue ringing.
* Indication of note slurs on some strings while other strings are
"bent" with pedals.
* Show a pedal/knee lever legend (copedent) somewhere at the bottom of
page since not all pedal steels have the same number of pedals and
levers. And this is assuming player is using a standard pedal
configuration.
Walt
