Re: Q: Whole rest woe

[David Raleigh Arnold]

Feature requests:

(1.)  Pitches for rests an option in the syntax.
(2.)  Suppress heads.
(3.)  Suppressed head notes are rests to midi but they must have pitch
on account of their flags or beams and/or stems. To put it another
way, (1.) and (2.) interact.

Is it so impossible to have the *option* of giving a rest a pitch so
that it can be placed as desired? It could be placed relative to the
preceding note in the part and have no effect on subsequent notes
except to default the next rest.

This could also make the entry of hidden rests easier in banjo music,
where a part often consists in many measures of eighth note or
sixteenth note (g)s and hidden rests. The *extra* flagged stem on the
affected notes, always the open 5th string, has nothing to do with the
actual time value of the note, and eighths or sixteenths were so used
indifferently for the purpose of fingering only. This is a ninteenth
century convention which has only come back into use in the last 30
years or so.

This is only one situation where it is necessary to be able to put
another eighth note stem on a half note, or even dotted half note or
whole note, keeping it white in spite of collision. The stem goes on
the wrong side of a whole note, as if another notehead were erased. And
in that case only, horizontalnoteshift would make sense.

Rather than \overwrite, I think it better to consider such a stem and
flag (or stem and beam, *essential* for guitar music through the whole
19th century) to be a sort of rest, which is what it really is. When you
truly have two notes, you should have two heads. When you don't, you
should have the larger time value head only. Since there are no musical
terms that I know of, how about \SuppressHead \EndSuppressHead or \sh
\-sh, such that it would only affect notes in that part that collide
with notes in another part? To midi, such a note should be a rest.

Again, piano players don't need 2 and 3. String players do, especially
guitar, banjo, and lute.     
-- 
daveA (debian.user)