Hi, I am a fairly new user of Lilypond, and this is my first post. I am very excited to have come across this wonderful product, and I am very grateful to its creators. I am excited in particular about its potential use to notate Arabic music, given the flexibility that its offers.
I have seen some discussions in this forum regarding the expansion of microtonal music that Turkish music, for example, would make use of, and some of these discussions also mentioned Arabic music. Just for interest, I think an expansion of notating microtones is not really relevant for Arabic music as it is traditionally notated up till now, as there is usually no attempt in Arabic music notation to define intervals smaller than a semitone. There are however intervals in some Arabic maqams (or modes) that are somewhat between a tone and a semitone, and these can be indicated by using half-flat and half-sharp notation. The precise quality of all intervals, whether tones, semitones, or medium intervals, is determined by the maqam (mode) name and/or by listening to the music. Since lilypond already offers a way to notate half sharp, and half flat, it already can be used without modification to notate Arabic music. There are a couple of things however, that I would like to be able to do. I'm not sure whether they are available, but I just don't know how to use them, or if they might be developed in the future. If they are not available, and it would not be too difficult or costly to add them, then I would be interested to help sponsor them. 1) The shape of the half-flat symbol that I see in Lilypond output looks like a reversed b, which I see in Turkish pieces but not in Arabic music. A half flat in Arabic music is displayed as a b but with a slash across (It is hard to describe the shape precisely). Is it possible to access such a symbol, and if not, is it possible to add it in the future? 2) This second request is not as important, but it just would be nice to have, if it is easy to implement. It would be nice to be able to omit the name pitch on the \key command, and let lilypond default it. for example instead of saying \key do \minor, to say instead \key \default \minor or even better \key \minor and then have lilypond default to the notename pitch of do, rather than issue a syntax error. Lilypond would determine the tonic that by knowing the associations between modes and default tonics, or simply defaulting to do when that is not available. This does not seem like a very useful thing in Western music where most scales are thought of as modulations of common scales, but in Arabic music there are lots and lots of modes to be learned and remembered which are not always grouped by modulation. The name of the mode or a group of modes usually implies the name of the tonic. In this case it would to nice to define this once in a file, and let the software manage it. For example when an Arabic music is labelled as Maqam Bayati the tonic is assumed to be RE (D), and the clef key markings reflect this. If the mode is modulated from its default tonic to another note say sol (G), only then the music is labelled as Bayyati on sol and the clef markings are adjusted. Many Thanks Joseph Harfouch -- View this message in context: http://www.nabble.com/Arabic-music-half-flat-accidental-shape-tp14781599p14781599.html Sent from the Gnu - Lilypond - User mailing list archive at Nabble.com. _______________________________________________ lilypond-user mailing list lilypond-user@gnu.org http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/lilypond-user
