RE: Two midi questions

[Trevor Daniels]

Alasdair McAndrew wrote on 27 December 2007 22:59

> I have used
>
> \set Staff.midiInstrument = "viola"
>
> but the midi output still seems to contain a 
> piano sound in it.  It's as though I can add 
> an instrument sound to the midi file, but not 
> turn off the default piano sound.  What's 
> going on, and how can I fix it? 

Impossible to say without seeing your code.  
Could you post a small snippet that shows this 
problem?

> To change the midi tempo, I used
>
> \tempo 4=80 \once \override 
>    Score.MetronomeMark #'transparent = ##t
>

It would be better to use

\once \override 
    Score.MetronomeMark #'stencil = ##f

to remove the mark completely, rather than 
making it transparent, which leaves it there to 
affect other things.

> which seems unnecessarily clumsy.   Wouldn't 
> it be easier to have a "midiTempo" command, so 
> that 

> \midiTempo 4=80

> would have the same effect as the line above?

Yes, but there are a very large number of such 
possible 'enhancements'.  Already there are over 
160 \xxx commands and rather than add to these 
LilyPond gives users the facility to make their 
own commands to suit their particular style and 
needs.

> Thanks,
> Alasdair

Trevor D