Hi all,
I wanted to share something which I think illustrates the power that
Lily has over other popular notation software.
I spend a lot of time teaching partwriting to undergraduate music
majors, and recently, suddenly, it occurred to me that anything as
rule-bound as correct partwriting (I stress "correct" as opposed to
"artistic" or even "interesting") would naturally be the province of
computers. A computer should be able to instantly provide all
possible solutions to a problem with so many constraints.
(1) a rather constrained range for the voice parts (a central octave
for upper parts, slightly more for the bass--perhaps suitable to a
beginning or an ending);
(2) all parallel perfect intervals are disallowed;
(3) consecutive fifths/octaves by contrary motion are disallowed;
(3) approach to perfect fifths and octaves in outer voices by similar
motion is disallowed unless the soprano moves by step ("direct fifths
and octaves"); I'm aware that other practices may be more
severe--easy to incorporate stricter requirements. (See how I deal
with parallels.)
(4) voice parts may not cross or overlap.
(5) adjacent upper voices may never be more than an octave apart;
(6) certain intervals are disallowed (I do allow the diminished 5th
for the sake of the lovely fa-ti-do in the example progression);
(7) the bass is prevented from leaping over an octave (never thought
of this until I saw preliminary output);
(8) all chords are complete;
(9) the root is doubled.
(10) the leading tone must resolve to tonic unless it is in an inner
voice, when it may drop to the dominant pitch.
Anyway, sorry to go on so long. FWIW...
Comments welcome!
Best,
David