Re: Jazz notation

[Wurbel Eric]

Hi everyone

Le lun 05/01/2004 à 02:39, Carl Youngblood a écrit :
> The subject of what it would take to get lilypond to do jazz notation 
> was brought up a while back (in Sep. 2003, I believe).  I think this is 
> an important discussion that shouldn't be treated so lightly.

Some modest comments about so-called "jazz notation" :

Concerning this "problem", I don't think there is a special "jazz 
engraving". I try now to explain this point of view.
In Carl's examples, I see mainly three items which he points as "jazz
specific : chord coding, chord fonts, and music fonts.

chord coding : I never saw a single coding style. From what I know,
there is no standard on this subject, except if you consider that
"this r**l book chord coding style is the standard" ;-).
I've seen TONS of chord coding... All are acceptable in some sense.
Developping alternative chord coding styles shouldn't be very difficult.
Comment developpers ?

chord fonts : Carl's examples  show the usage of a font which
is reminiscent of the historical "Real Books" (which are compilations of
Jazz standards, for those who don't know much about jazz).
Personnaly (but this is only personal taste), I hate it. If find
this font unreadable, and very eye tiring.
But, here, a little question : what font choice has to to with 
specificities of a music style ?
Again, adding the capability to choose the font for chord printing
should not be unreachable... But what do main developpers think about 
this ?

music fonts : same remarks as above, including my personnal taste.
One exception though : this "Real Book" music font is *truly* horrible.
And the examples pointed by Carl are really typographically (spacing, 
readability, etc.) awful. And I'm saying this being an amateur Jazz
performer and *not* being a typographic dictator !

A last note : Carl, don't take this as an offense, but I really don't
like sentences like "this is THE style to use".
There is NO reason to say this. You want an exeample ?
Take the score compilations edited by Charles Mingus, who was a great
figure of jazz and who did a particulary remarkable job in the field
of music diffusion.
His scores NEVER use these awfull "real book" fonts.
(I have other examples of good quality jazz scores).

So, as a conclusion, this is not because the vast majority of jazz 
score editors use poor fonts and poor typesetting rules that typesetting
engines like lilypond have to follow this mediocrity.

This was just my 2 cents...

By the way, happy new year !

Eric