Re: DrumVoice Polyphony

[Mats Bengtsson]

That's not entirely correct. The s1*x are used to keep the DrumVoice
contexts "alive" over the bars of music when there are no actual music.
So, in the example shown in the manual, it's only necessary to use
s1*1, since there's music in both voices in the second bar.

However, it turns out that an even better solution is to just say

       \context DrumVoice = "1" {  }
       \context DrumVoice = "2" {  }

which at least in versions 2.4 and 2.5 creates contexts that are
automatically kept alive for the full score. I'm not sure if it's
a deliberate feature or if is a fortunate bug. I'll check with the
developers in a separate email to lilypond-devel.

   /Mats

Bryan Stanbridge wrote:
> Greetings,
>
> This may help others writing music for percussion polyphony.  It took me
> quite a bit of time to realize that the shorthand setup for simple
> polyphony needed the s1*x to equal the number of whole note values in
> the piece, instead of just a method of starting the DrumVoices.  I'd
> suggest adding the following to the documentation (5.9.3 in v2.4.x,
> 6.4.3 in v2.5.x):
>
> "The length of the created voice (s1*2 in this instance), should equal
> the length of use in a piece.  For example, if you had 32 bars of 4/4,
> the s1*2 should be replaced by s1*32."
>
> This would probably be added after the figure following this text:
>
> "The above example shows verbose polyphonic notation.  The short
> polyphonic notation, described in [Polyphony], can be used if the
> [DrumVoice]s are instatiated by hand first. For example:"
>
> At the very least, here it is on the archives (I checked earlier to make
> sure I'm not posting something that's already been said, but they were
> down).  Hopefully it'll save someone the hour+ I've spent wondering
> why all my polyphonic examples broke down after two bars.  ::sigh::
>
> Cheers!
>
> Bryan...
>
> PS Please feel free to adapt the language to conform to whatever
> standards regarding tense, etc. is in use throughout the documentation. 
> No rights reserved on the added text, etc. etc.
>
>
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--
=============================================
        Mats Bengtsson
        Signal Processing
        Signals, Sensors and Systems
        Royal Institute of Technology
        SE-100 44  STOCKHOLM
        Sweden
        Phone: (+46) 8 790 8463                         
        Fax:   (+46) 8 790 7260
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