I also am interested in fingering at the sides of notes, and I'm
fairly sure that you will never find a satisfactory way to put
fingering in the same columns as accidentals. A very common error
in printed music production is for a left hand finger number to
be placed too high or low so that it appears to refer to the
wrong note. Placing a finger number on the right of a note to
which it refers ought not to be considered, for the same reason
that accidentals are placed on the left, which is sequence. The
accidental changes the note, therefore you must see it first. The
fingering tells you how to play the note, therefore you should at
least not see it after you have played the note. The only option
is to put the numbers always to the left of an accidental and
aligned on the same lines and spaces as the notes, and it would
be best if the numbers present a similar vertical alignment to
the note heads. That way, it will always be clear to which note a
number refers, because every finger indicator will be at almost
the same distance from its note, and it will therefore be
possible to have fewer numbers without confusion. The only reason
that this was not done in the past is that the notes were
finished before the fingering, and the fingering was crammed into
whatever white space was left. This led to egregious mistakes,
even in those much revered Schott publications. There is no
reason why LilyPond should make such a mess. A third column
should be available for optional right hand fingering.
a n = right hand fingering tima more flexible: align
1 #n |h-----------=staff line h=note head
\vertically,
m2 #nh| = this number 2 could be omitted!: \one
column.
b# |-------------\the other nums are clearly referenced.
i 3b |h = This bbb accidental makes it necessary to move
the
b |-------------- \ whole double column of
t 4 |h \ numbers to the left.
|--------------- \ This is ok.
|
---------------
It would not be as good to just put them where there is room.
Accidentals are too big to be placed as the noteheads are, but
the numbers and letters can be, so it would be best to do it
parallel to the noteheads. The 'avoid collisions' approach might
result in something like this:
#
a1b# |h------------
m2 b#h|
nb |-------------
3n i|h This is a mess. The 4
n |-------------- is closer to the 2nd
t4|h note on the stem than
|--------------- the 3. It looks even
| worse on staff paper, and
--------------- nothing can be omitted.
So the task of supporting fingering on the left side is simpler
than it might at first seem. Simply move the necessary column(s)
to the left of the leftmost accidental. Put the RH column to the
left of the leftmost LH finger column. Done. And much neater and
more readable than anything out there, ever before.
I hope that support continues for putting fingering above and
below the noteheads or stems as well, but of course the number or
letter sometimes has to be at the end of the stem to avoid being
to the right of it, which is not uncommon but ought never to be
allowed. Fingering should never follow the note which it is
supposed to tell you how to play. Above or below is often a
better place for right hand fingering. (I like timaq, not pimaq,
because p is piano and f is forte and IMH preference that covers
it.) Breaking a stem a little bit should not be ruled out. It
certainly looks better than if a line goes through part of the
number:
|h
h|
4 = of course this number is aligned
| \with one of the note heads, not
| \centered on the line.
The best place for a string indication is above or below. (I like
the letters. Numbers are hard to read and different from the
other stringed instruments, which is unnecessarily parochial, so
I like (A), [()=a ring, altogether standard for all strings]
better than (5) or (La) or (la). For the same reason, I use an
octave G/8 clef to write guitar music, so that anyone seeing it
will know that it is at the octave without having to know how a
guitar is tuned.) *Please* give us a ring to write a string in
and find a way to let us put in what we want.
There remains only to provide some way to type in the position
and indicate barring, and that would hold us guitar players for a
little while. (if the slurs and ties weren't screwed up--but that
for another, longer day) I hate the standard way, which is that
5/6CVII would indicate that you bar 5 strings at the 7th fret. (I
don't know who the half-wit was who thought that 5/6 was a good
way to indicate how many strings to bar.) There was an older way
in some American music, which was to use an old fashioned pedal
mark, where *9 meant to play something at the 9th fret. An
asterisk is often too small to serve, and the pedal mark has
changed, so I use @9 instead. Thus I use @7a instead of 5/6CVII,
where the 'a' represents the lowest string barred, and @9 (at 9)
instead of IX (9th position). I use lower case so that it does
not cause confusion with chord names, as AVII and A7 or A*7 or
A@7 or La@7 might. *Please* don't support anything but a place to
type in the necessary with a proper size! Let some evolution take
place ;-)
I hope that there will arise a zero tolerance for anything out of
sequence. The fact that it is sequential is the reason that
children should be taught to read music before they are taught to
read anything else, certainly English. In the word *think*, for
example, the h changes the meaning of the t which comes before
it. Thus our teachers cause dyslexia. Our system of music
notation will remain the unique crowning glory of western
civilization regardless of how many bad or stupid practices may
gain favor, (dotted rests for example;-)) but it is a living
language and therefore subject to decadence as well as
improvement. The absolute worst practices involve requiring the
reader to understand a big chunk of a measure before he can
correctly interpret the first note. Its sequential nature is
perhaps the best feature of the language, and that fact must have
been kept in mind by its best developers over the last millenium
or so, or it would not be nearly as good as it is. Fortunately,
midi requires that events be in sequence also, and although the
computer can be beaten, it tends to enforce logic.
A cogent example of this is the `problem` of having a slur and a
tie originate at the same point. A slur and a tie can't originate
from the same note. It is a *logical* impossibility. Either the
next note is tied or it is slurred. It cannot *logically* be both
slurred and tied, because these are two different and mutually
exclusive ways of starting a note. I have seen many examples of
it, especially in vocal music. I don't wish it to be impossible
to write. I suggested both the problem and its solution in my
first mail to this group (7/12-13) :-)
--
Peace, understanding, health and happiness to all beings!
((((((( g__n__u f_o_r_c_e )))))))
lily_lily__lily MN[-------------------->mm@ _lilypond__
dave No Va USA David Raleigh Arnold [EMAIL PROTECTED]
