Re: [Denemo-devel] Denemo and Turkish, makam.ly

[Richard Shann]

On Fri, 2016-07-22 at 16:13 -0400, Jim Garrett wrote:
> Hello Denemo community,
> 
> I've recently learned how to use makam.ly to typeset Turkish music
> with Lilypond.  I'm happy writing Lilypond files directly, but I know
> others who would be would be much more inclined to use a GUI.  Is it
> currently possible to use Denemo to typeset Turkish music, and if so,
> what would be entailed?

Well, Denemo may well be one of the most customizable programs out
there, but whether it will help you typeset Turkish music would depend
on how much commonality there is with Western music.
The basic thing to grasp is that while it is trivial to make Denemo emit
the correct LilyPond syntax that isn't really the point; the crucial
question is whether Denemo can display what you have input in a way that
is helpful. Again you can alter what Denemo draws for any object that
you enter (any note, chord, marking ...) but the further the conventions
differ the harder it would get (think of making a word processor work
with Chinese characters from bottom right to top left...).

This example
http://lilypond.org/doc/v2.18/Documentation/source/Documentation/snippets/world-music


\include "makam.ly"

\relative c' {
  \set Staff.keySignature = #`((6 . ,(- KOMA)) (3 . ,BAKIYE))
  c4 cc db fk
  gbm4 gfc gfb efk
  fk4 db cc c
}

would indicate that you might want to override the appearance of the key
signature and the accidentals. The first already done in other contexts
the second could be done treating them as custom ornaments.
It would also be possible to change the MIDI output so that they sounded
the microtones, there is a field for re-writing what should be output,
that would require a good understanding of the MIDI spec - there is an
example of historical tunings in the Open->Open Example menu which would
be relevant for that.

I'll be happy to guide you through this...

Richard