Re:Glissandos

[Ossie Wilson Snr]

My daughter is arranging a simple song to be sung by primary school children in an eisteddfod  in the next few weeks and I am trying to typeset her arrangement in LP (2.12.2 on WINDOWS XP). There are non lyric passages where vocal sounds are used to indicate city noises, forest noises and ocean noises. These are to be defined by pictorial impressions of the way the sound fluctuates together with attached words like “Vrmmm”, “bbring bbring” etc on the song sheet submitted to the adjudicator before the performance and the song must presented with no deviation from that format.

 

I have been using cross headed notes, arpeggios (with hidden notes), zigzag glissandos (also with hidden notes) etc to show these effects. However, I have struck a few problems.

 

1)                   I would like to be able to vary the width and lengthy of the zigzag on glissandos to better indicate the variation in pitch to be obtained.

2)                   Where noises vary from low pitch to high pitch and back down again, I have been using a series of connected glissandos (hidden notes) but there are gaps where the hidden notes are missing. I have attempted to close these gaps by adding to the length of the individual glissandos by changing the appropriate bound-details. This does lengthen the glissandos appropriately but also raises their angle from the horizontal so that the missing note space remains but at a higher pitch. I tried to avoid this by using the same function but using X instead of Y e.g. #’(bound-details right X). This did not work but showed no error in the log and did not show the glissando at all in any shape. I realize I am completely ignorant when it comes to modifying the behaviour of LP objects and rely on what I am able to read that someone else has devised.

Does anyone in the LP community have any practical advice on either or both of these problems (not just read the manuals) or can they suggest other symbols that already exist where these changes would not be required.

 

Thanks for your interest.

 

Ossie Wilson