Re: SHEET MUSIC

[Mats Bengtsson]

> 
> On Sat, 08 Jun 2002 16:37:09 Mats Bengtsson wrote:
> > > HI,
> > > If I hooked up a music keyboard to my computer, would lilypond be
> > able to 
> > > write the notes I play on sheetmusic for me to print out?  If so,
> > how does 
> > > that work?
> > 
> > Well, if you have some kind of sequencer program you
> > can use the keyboard to generate a MIDI file. Lilypond
> > comes with a utility called midi2ly which then can
> > produce a Lilypond input file. However, you'll probably
> > not want to use this route since you have to play extremely
> > rhythmical to get the desired note durations and you still
> > have to edit the .ly files to add slurs, dynamics and all
> > other information that's printed in a score but not 
> > included in the MIDI file.

I guess you are talking about the reverse situation below, 
namely using Lilypond to produce MIDI files.

> I found that lilypond did slurs surprisingly well and
> dynamics somewhat in 1.4.13, but
> the dynamics were not very satisfactory.  I suspect that
> the cause of that is two voices on one staff, but playing
> with the defaults might help too.
>
> Q. Is it possible to override the default velocity values
> in the .ly file?  I think many compositions might profit
> from a rehash in the working directory.  Can that be done?

The default settings are done in the initialization file
scm/midi.scm. It should be possible to override these
settings in your own .ly file or in a copy of the midi.scm
file in the working directory (I've never played with 
these properties myself).

> Midi doesn't handle unisons very well.  If midiInstrment were
> voice instead of staff context, it might be better, and
> it would be possible to get harmonics, for example. Until
> the happy day that that is fixed,

Congratulations, the happy day has already come. Since Lilypond 
is so modular, you can actually redefine yourself what context
should correspond to separate tracks. Example:

\score{
\notes \relative c' <
  \context Staff = SA <
    \context Voice = VA { c d e f}
    \context Voice = VB { e g c e}
  >
  \context Staff = SB <
    \context Voice = VC { c b a g}
    \context Voice = VD { c g e c}
  >
>
\midi{
  \translator{
        \type "Performer_group_performer"
%        \type "Staff_performer"
        \name Staff
        \accepts Voice

        \consists "Key_performer"
        \consists "Tempo_performer"
        \consists "Time_signature_performer"
  }
  \translator{
        \type "Staff_performer"
%        \type "Performer_group_performer"
        \name Voice
        \consists "Dynamic_performer"
        \consists "Span_dynamic_performer"
        \consists "Piano_pedal_performer"
        \accepts "Thread"
  }
}
}

The original definitions are found in the initialization
file ly/performer.ly (called performer-init.ly in 1.5.xx).

> All that remains is a way of including the lyrics, to make a
> .kar file, and a way of writing to the header fields of
> the midi file for copyright notice, etc., and lilypond
> will be a formidable midi sequencer.

Do you have some information of .kar files, I've never
heard about them?

   /Mats