Re: Auto-transposition

[Gianmaria Lari]

On 15 December 2017 at 07:20, Saul Tobin <address@hidden> wrote:

Reading your example, it seems to me that the "FAIL" is caused by the hypothetical user misunderstanding the semantics of relative mode. Using relative mode without explicitly defining what pitch the phrase is meant to be relative to is unreadable and prone to break. If it were written properly, it would be:

\relative {

  \resetRelativeOctave c'
  c4 d e f g1  % a rising diatonic scale, starting on middle C

 % if the next line is meant to start on the G above middle C, it should have a new \resetRelativeOctave
  g'4 f e d c1  % written relatively, this means we care about the melodic leap upward from the previous note
  %  now I want to reuse the rising diatonic scale… so I cut and paste the first two lines:
   \resetRelativeOctave c'
   c4 d e f g1  % a rising diatonic scale, starting on middle C — no problem!
}

Relative mode makes perfect sense if you're entering music that cares mainly about the relationship between notes within a phrase (i.e. most music). IMO absolute mode might be easier from the perspective of the software, but it's not how most musicians think, and that's important. Maybe the documentation could do a better job explaining the semantics of relative mode and when to use \resetRelativeOctave?

I take exception to the idea that relative mode ought to be deprecated. I've been using exclusively relative mode to compose for almost ten years, and I think it's great.

In short: I don't think there is a clear advantage to use relative vs absolute. I say this because of my (small) lilypond experience (I started with relative and now I only use absolute) and more important, because I periodically see this type of thread on this mailing list. But please correct me if my previous sentence is not true.

Like other people I stopped using relative mode after having more harm than good. Using "fixed" all started working always, it is more clear and honestly I don't have the impression you have to write/work more. 

I especially think that for novice user this should be the suggested way to work: at beginning you have a lot of problem to make things working. Even if you could make errors in both absolute and relative mode, with absolute also a beginner is immediately able to see where is the problem and to fix it. With relative I remember getting frustrated wasting a lot of time trying to understand where was the problem, fixing it and discover I was creating another problem in another part of the music.

Now to be more clear:

- it is sure when I start using lilypond I didn't use relative correctly (at that time didn't know \resetRelativeOctave) and....

- I probably don't write that much music so that maybe I'm not the best user to say what's the best mode.

But this is the standard beginning for everybody. So adding even more complexity for something that maybe (maybe) give you some advantages in future I don't think it's a good choice.

And yes, I'm not a lilypond expert but I'm an excellent  novice :) with a lot of problem. For this reason I think the manual should:

- avoid to suggest using relative

- avoid to show the majority of examples using relative (for the large majority of examples it is really not need any fixed/relative)

I'm sure there are other people like you Saul that can have great advantage using \relative. But because (to me) it is not that clear if it is generally advantageous and because (to me) it is more complex I don't think it should be the suggested way to go. This is just my two cents.

g.