On Mon, Sep 13, 2010 at 11:18 PM, Mark Polesky
<address@hidden> wrote:
Peter Buhr wrote:
> I want to specify a duration (tie length) for
> \laissezVibrer as in:
>
> a4\laissezVibrer{1}
>
> meaning put a tie of duration whole-note on the 1/4 note
> "a". Knowing how long to let a note ring seems essential
> to describe the music for a player.
Why not just write a whole note?
Okay, I know there are some cases where it's not that
simple, but IIUC the entire point of the l.v. notation is to
tell the player *not* to stop the tone (as on the
harp)---either it will die out on its own or the string (or
whatever) will be struck again soon enough. If you want the
the note to ring for the length of a whole note, then you
should probably just write a whole note.
For bowed stringed instruments, the initial note is notated with a "regular" note, and laissez vibrer means "to allow the string to continue to vibrate", but without bowing. In my limited experience, the laissez vibrer period has no clearly defined length or termination.