Re: Support accordion with standard bass
Hi David, hi everybody. David's feature request has been officially added as http://code.google.com/p/lilypond/issues/detail?id=559 I'm both happy and sad to admit this request: I am happy to see that people like David care about making LilyPond an even better program, through such documented requests. And I'm sad because I have to warn you that, honestly, we deeply lack resources. Not money, not users, not enthusiastic contributors, but simply developers. We have only a few programmers, who are all very talented and dedicated, but who simply have also their lives, their jobs, their families, etc. However, I have to say that I'm impressed to see how easy it is to get familiar, then even intimate, with LilyPond. Six months ago, I was unable to understand a single line of Scheme code, and now I can even write some (simple but useful) functions, although I am in no way a programmer (I studied latin literature, so not really the same stuff...) So I fully agree with Carl on that. Plus, I'm always amazed to see how friendly and helpful our little community is always. So, the best I can advise you is to not just walk away. Cheers, Valentin ___ bug-lilypond mailing list bug-lilypond@gnu.org http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/bug-lilypond
Issue 559 in lilypond: Feature request: support accordion with standard bass
Issue 559: Feature request: support accordion with standard bass http://code.google.com/p/lilypond/issues/detail?id=559 New issue report by v.villenave: % This (very complete and documented) feature request was made % by David Kastrup on the bug-list on Jan. 13th 2008, after % a short discussion on -devel. Accordion with standard bass is not well-supported in Lilypond. There are diatonic (often bisonoric: with different tones on push and pull) accordions which usually use special notations -- I am not informed about those. So I'll start with a short explanation of the chromatic accordion and then explain the notations. We have two sides: discant and bass, and they are pretty much written down in violin and bass clef, like with a piano. The discant side is rather unproblematic as it has one button or key per note and uses standard notation. There are piano accordions with a normal keyboard (they were invented for popularizing accordions by providing a familiar interface), and button accordions with three rows (if there are more, they are just replications for easier fingering) of chromatically arranged buttons. C type (German, Finnish, Italian) and B type (Russian) basically differ in the directions of the rows. All of the discant details provide no complications for notation, with the exception that a button accordion can offer about 5 octaves of range, so the violin clef frequently gets octave shift modifiers. It is common to write a "8" or "16" directly over a registration symbol to indicate that a particular registration (Lilypond has these symbols already apparently) is going to be played one or two octaves higher than written. But the bass is more problematic. The easiest case is when we are talking about a score for "free bass" or "manual III": there one button sounds one note, and the notation is straightforward, again in a piano-like style. Pure free bass accordions are quite rare. It is more common to have "converter" accordions where either a manual II and manual III are right behind each other (older Morino accordions do that), or where a special mechanism can be used to switch from one type to the other. Some scores require switching back and forth in mid-piece. So what is this manual II (or standard or Stradella bass) system? It offers buttons for bass notes and for chords (bass notes usually sound stronger and/or deeper than the chord constituents). Physically there are not more than 12 separate notes available for the bass notes and 12 for the chord constituents: a lever/gear system maps the buttons to those. The most common kind has 6 rows of buttons, with 12 diagonals each focused around a different tone, making for a total of 72 distinct buttons. Whether one has 72, 96 or 120 basses makes no difference: the additional diagonals are just repetitions for easier fingering. The second row gives the fundamental bass notes (which are sorted C G D A E ... from the marked middle). The first row just duplicates that, but shifted by a major third (E B F# ... from the middle) to make stuff easier fingerable. The third to sixth rows give chords (again C G D ...), first the major, then the minor, the major+seventh, and the diminuished chord (which is actually not complete, since it is missing the diminuished fifth). Some accordion pages (like Wikipedia) claim that the seventh chord is also missing the fifth, and I find this reflected in the notation of pieces. Unfortunately, both my accordions tend to differ. Ok, what does this imply for Lilypond? Basically, we have three areas that are concerned: entry, layout, midi. Entry: since bass note and chord constituents may sound differently, they must always be distinguishable. Now Lilypond already has a chord concept, and figuring out an accordion bass from a non-accordion specific input is probably fine as long as one can figure out the bass note. With an accordion, chord inversions don't actually count. So the algorithm probably would work by subtracting the bass note from the sounded notes, then taking the chord that matches the largest number of the remaining notes (ignoring the octave and not sounding any note not in the original chord). A diminuished chord should probably (optionally?) also remove its non-existent fifth (while not using it for matching purposes). It should be configurable whether a seventh chord must have a match for its straight fifth or not as this is obviously dependent on the instrument. Similarly, it should be possible for accordions with a different row layout to get matched to existing music. When no more chord fits, the rest may possibly filled in with bass notes or left alone. An algorithm like that would probably be able to synthesize most Jazz harmonies. I think that the existing chord/bass note system should mostly be tolerable for entry here, except that for the accordion, chords may get sounded without a bass note, and
Re: Support accordion with standard bass
On 13 Jan 2008, at 22:50, Graham Percival wrote: I know that learning scheme may seem daunting, but realistically speaking, it's the only way this will get implemented. One Scheme learning book is Abelson, Sussman, "Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs". Hans Åberg ___ bug-lilypond mailing list bug-lilypond@gnu.org http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/bug-lilypond
Re: Support accordion with standard bass
On Sun, 13 Jan 2008 21:33:20 + (UTC) Carl Sorensen <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > David Kastrup gnu.org> writes: > > > Accordion with standard bass is not well-supported in Lilypond. > > This is a nice description of accordion notation. Such a discussion > would normally take place on user, not on bugs. Since I'm working on > the Gmane interface, I can't easily forward it there. You might want > to. Actually, this has been bounced around enough -- he initially sent it to -devel, and was asked to send it here after some discussion. It will be added to the google issue tracker, but then I'm afraid it will probably be ignored for at least two years... but if we ever get somebody interested in this, at least this info will be there waiting for them. > AFAICT, right now there is nobody who is willing to do sponsored > work. Han-Wen did most (all) of it in the past, and now he has a > day-job, so his time with LilyPond is greatly reduced. > > I hope I haven't discouraged you. I think you'll find that it's not > impossible to learn enough scheme to modify the notation in > LilyPond. It's my experience that the scheme code is the easiest to > modify, once you get used to prefix notation and lots of > parentheses. And it's always great to get somebody new with the > ability to hack on LilyPond. I'll second this. We have a critical shortage of developers right now; if we doubled the amount of programmers, we would be able to manage the current bug reports. To add new features such as this, we need *more* than double the amount of programming time. I know that learning scheme may seem daunting, but realistically speaking, it's the only way this will get implemented. Cheers, - Graham ___ bug-lilypond mailing list bug-lilypond@gnu.org http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/bug-lilypond
Re: Support accordion with standard bass
David Kastrup gnu.org> writes: > > > Accordion with standard bass is not well-supported in Lilypond. David, This is a nice description of accordion notation. Such a discussion would normally take place on user, not on bugs. Since I'm working on the Gmane interface, I can't easily forward it there. You might want to. > > Ok, what does this imply for Lilypond? Basically, we have three areas > that are concerned: entry, layout, midi. > > Entry: since bass note and chord constituents may sound differently, > they must always be distinguishable. > > Now Lilypond already has a chord concept, and figuring out an accordion > bass from a non-accordion specific input is probably fine as long as one > can figure out the bass note. With an accordion, chord inversions don't > actually count. So the algorithm probably would work by subtracting the > bass note from the sounded notes, then taking the chord that matches the > largest number of the remaining notes (ignoring the octave and not > sounding any note not in the original chord). A diminuished chord > should probably (optionally?) also remove its non-existent fifth (while > not using it for matching purposes). It should be configurable whether > a seventh chord must have a match for its straight fifth or not as this > is obviously dependent on the instrument. Similarly, it should be > possible for accordions with a different row layout to get matched to > existing music. When no more chord fits, the rest may possibly filled > in with bass notes or left alone. > > An algorithm like that would probably be able to synthesize most Jazz > harmonies. The code for calculating notes from chord names is written in scheme, and could be modified by someone who knows as much as you do about how it works. You'd need to learn Scheme, but it's not impossible to do... > > I think that the existing chord/bass note system should mostly be > tolerable for entry here, except that for the accordion, chords may get > sounded without a bass note, and bass notes without a chord. > > One notable information that is often present is whether a bass note is > to be played on the second (main) row, or on the first row (the bass row > containing thirds). Sort of fingering information, but pretty much > always specified. > > Anyway, let us come to the output. Here is where things are getting > really messy. My observation is that if you want to have some special kind of output notation, you'll probably need to write it yourself. This has both good and bad points. Bad, you have to do the work. Good, you get exactly what you want. This is what got me to do the fret diagrams code -- I knew what I wanted and I figured out how to get it. > > With the score, we have basically two flavors: German and American > Accordion Association. The main difference is that in the German > notation chords are written out, whereas AAA notation is quite closer to > numbered bass notation in that a chord is written as its principal base > note (discounting inversions!) with possibly a letter above (like an > accidental, the letters tend not to get repeated). Letters are M for > major (the default, so only needed for dissolving a previously given > different letter), m for minor, 7 for seventh and d for diminuished. So > the AAA notation is less cluttered (with fewer noteheads), but harder to > transfer to other instruments. The principal bass note is put below the > middle line from the bass clef (C position and lower), the chords on the > middle line and above. This division is hard in order to make the > notation unique: when transposing, one needs to wrap around the octaves. AAA notation seems to me to be easy to do with a note and a markup (or perhaps two notes) > > Now we come to the really fuzzy notation, the German one. Here the > chords are written out in notes, and usually also with chord/bass names > below the staff. The principal bass/chord division is the same, and > chords are written out in the lowest place where they fit disregarding > chord inversions. That is sort of a canonical notation. The fuzz comes > into play since writing out the chords makes it possible to play it on > other instruments, most notably a free bass accordion. And then chord > inversions do matter. Since chords and bass notes are distinguishable > by the number of stacked notes, their division tends to be weakened: > bass lines will at times not be wrapped around, and chords may reach > below the middle line when the equivalent free bass would finger them > there. This is probably also not too difficult to do -- all you have to do is write the scheme code to get the correct notes; all of the engraving is handled automatically. You've described the rules in words, so you could probably do it in scheme. > > Whether one wants to have bass notes wrap around or chords to change to > a different inversion when transposing is certainly user/writer choice. > Also the writer needs to h
Support accordion with standard bass
Accordion with standard bass is not well-supported in Lilypond. There are diatonic (often bisonoric: with different tones on push and pull) accordions which usually use special notations -- I am not informed about those. So I'll start with a short explanation of the chromatic accordion and then explain the notations. We have two sides: discant and bass, and they are pretty much written down in violin and bass clef, like with a piano. The discant side is rather unproblematic as it has one button or key per note and uses standard notation. There are piano accordions with a normal keyboard (they were invented for popularizing accordions by providing a familiar interface), and button accordions with three rows (if there are more, they are just replications for easier fingering) of chromatically arranged buttons. C type (German, Finnish, Italian) and B type (Russian) basically differ in the directions of the rows. All of the discant details provide no complications for notation, with the exception that a button accordion can offer about 5 octaves of range, so the violin clef frequently gets octave shift modifiers. It is common to write a "8" or "16" directly over a registration symbol to indicate that a particular registration (Lilypond has these symbols already apparently) is going to be played one or two octaves higher than written. But the bass is more problematic. The easiest case is when we are talking about a score for "free bass" or "manual III": there one button sounds one note, and the notation is straightforward, again in a piano-like style. Pure free bass accordions are quite rare. It is more common to have "converter" accordions where either a manual II and manual III are right behind each other (older Morino accordions do that), or where a special mechanism can be used to switch from one type to the other. Some scores require switching back and forth in mid-piece. So what is this manual II (or standard or Stradella bass) system? It offers buttons for bass notes and for chords (bass notes usually sound stronger and/or deeper than the chord constituents). Physically there are not more than 12 separate notes available for the bass notes and 12 for the chord constituents: a lever/gear system maps the buttons to those. The most common kind has 6 rows of buttons, with 12 diagonals each focused around a different tone, making for a total of 72 distinct buttons. Whether one has 72, 96 or 120 basses makes no difference: the additional diagonals are just repetitions for easier fingering. The second row gives the fundamental bass notes (which are sorted C G D A E ... from the marked middle). The first row just duplicates that, but shifted by a major third (E B F# ... from the middle) to make stuff easier fingerable. The third to sixth rows give chords (again C G D ...), first the major, then the minor, the major+seventh, and the diminuished chord (which is actually not complete, since it is missing the diminuished fifth). Some accordion pages (like Wikipedia) claim that the seventh chord is also missing the fifth, and I find this reflected in the notation of pieces. Unfortunately, both my accordions tend to differ. Ok, what does this imply for Lilypond? Basically, we have three areas that are concerned: entry, layout, midi. Entry: since bass note and chord constituents may sound differently, they must always be distinguishable. Now Lilypond already has a chord concept, and figuring out an accordion bass from a non-accordion specific input is probably fine as long as one can figure out the bass note. With an accordion, chord inversions don't actually count. So the algorithm probably would work by subtracting the bass note from the sounded notes, then taking the chord that matches the largest number of the remaining notes (ignoring the octave and not sounding any note not in the original chord). A diminuished chord should probably (optionally?) also remove its non-existent fifth (while not using it for matching purposes). It should be configurable whether a seventh chord must have a match for its straight fifth or not as this is obviously dependent on the instrument. Similarly, it should be possible for accordions with a different row layout to get matched to existing music. When no more chord fits, the rest may possibly filled in with bass notes or left alone. An algorithm like that would probably be able to synthesize most Jazz harmonies. I think that the existing chord/bass note system should mostly be tolerable for entry here, except that for the accordion, chords may get sounded without a bass note, and bass notes without a chord. One notable information that is often present is whether a bass note is to be played on the second (main) row, or on the first row (the bass row containing thirds). Sort of fingering information, but pretty much always specified. Anyway, let us come to the output. Here is where things are getting really messy. With the score, we have basic
