I would like to forward another argument for the use of \relative. I have used Lilypond for several years, but I am certainly not a professional musician or music typesetter. The music I set is not overly complicated - usually up to five of six (vocal) voices on up to maybe six pages. I seem unable to remember which octave is c' through c''. Memorizing this is likely simpler than memorizing that the derivative of arctan(x) is 1/(1+x²), but while the latter to me is rock solid, the former is a fleeting breath. Therefore I always end up taking a wild guess for the first note of my \relative; once that note has been corrected, the rest is mostly right. Using \absolute would, for me, be a nightmare of wrong octaves.
Regards, Mogens From: Paul Scott Sent: March 16, 2021 15:56 To: Kieren MacMillan Cc: David Kastrup; lilypond-user@gnu.org Subject: Re: why Kieren is a \relative evangelist [was “Re: Nested transposition"] > 3. The *single* serious argument against absolute music — that it requires > extra typing [of apostrophes and commas] — is essentially eliminated by using > an IDE like Frescobaldi: using MIDI input means I avoid typing note code > (including octavation symbols) almost entirely, and the transposition > functions let me instantaneously re-octavate large sections of code if that’s > ever required (which it basically never is). I believe we should be > encouraging users to use tools like Frescobaldi — because I believe their > coding lives would be made easier in *so* many ways — and the “crutch” of > \relative means there’s less incentive to do so in the early stages of the > learning curve (which is exactly when habits, good or bad, tend to be formed). I am a copyist, not a composer. I currently don’t have a MIDI keyboard. I enter everything through Emacs without a mouse for pitch, therefore haven’t considered tools like Frescobaldi so far. I have been using \relative for many years and am aware of the problems. Because of this discussion I have just started using \absolute for bass clef parts and I just noticed \fixed which I will start experimenting with. Any other suggestions for my situation as described above? I will consider getting a small MIDI keyboard which would probably lead to experimenting with Frescobaldi. Thanks for any other thoughts. > > Making other people’s (especially newbies’) lives easier *is* ultimately what > I’m trying to do. Agreed! Paul
