Musicology with Lilypond (and now correct attachments ;-)

[Karsten Reincke]

Dear Friends;

Musicologists need more than writing pure music scores. They must be
able to embed the score of music samples into their scientific texts.
And they must be able to integrate the symbols of the functional
harmony theory into the score of their music samples.

For using Lilypond with LaTeX there exists a well established method to
embed the scores into the texts: lilypond-book. But there does not
exist a good, sufficient and appropriate method to integrate the
analysis symbols into the scores. (Unfortunately, you cannot combine
the LaTeX and the Lilypond techniques, because lilypond-book finally
embeds a picture into the LaTeX code).

Howsoever, the needs of a LaTeX loving musicologists can completely be
fulfilled  by using LaTex + MusixTeX + harmony (a LaTeX package). (see
attached file cadenca2-by-musixtex-harmony.png) But in this case, the
musicologist must unfortunately deal with the awkward syntax of
MusixTeX which he probably does not want.

Hence we have a problem: either we use Lilypond (and cannot express,
what we have to do) or we use MusixTex (and reduce our productivity).

For solving this challenge, I started to develop a GUILE based Lilypond
library named 'harmonyli' which follows the idea(s) of the LaTeX
package harmony. I published it under the MIT license in a github
repository [ https://github.com/kreincke/harmonyli ]. (If you feel,
that another license would better fit the needs and habits of the
Lilypond community, feel free to make respective proposals). This
repository contains the lib and an example (including a Makefile). This
example is the Lilypond code of the MusixTex-eample above (see attached
file cadenca2-by-lilypond-harmonyli.png)

As you can see, the lilypond result is still a bit ugly, especially if
you compare it with the MusixTeX solution. Hence, I need your help for
improving the lib 'harmonyli':

a) How can we place the number under the main functional symbols (T, D,
S, Tp, Sp Dp, Tg, Sg, etc) [ this number indicates which tone is played
by th bass ] exactly in the middle of the functional harmony symbols?

b) how can we place the stack of numbers right aside of the main symbol
as a superscriptblock really near by the symbol and without losing the
feature, that each number of the stack can contain more than only one
number (for enabling us to express grace notes like D4>3)?

c) How can we align the symbols in a better way - just as it is done by
the orginal LaTeX lib harmony?

d) how can we enforce that the next note is printed into the staff if
and when the analysis symbol of the note before is completely printed?

e) How can we enforce that all analysis symbols are printed in row with
suffcient space between them to understand them correctly?


f) How can cross out the main harmony symbols for indicating that the
base tone is missed (=not played)? Do we need additional symbols in a
extra font or is there a technique to strike out any text?

g) How can we condense / refactor the code so, that we do not have to
write the same code twice or more.

If you need to see the existing code, have a look at 
https://github.com/kreincke/harmonyli/blob/master/inc.harmonyli.ly . I
appreciate any help you can give. I want to develop a perfect tool for
musicologists - simply because I need it for a larger work of myself ;-
)

How can you help me? Feel free
a) to comment this mail
b) to clone the rep, integrate your improvements and resend a pull
request
c) become an official developer by sending me your github account

So: many thanks for your support beforehand, I am looking forward to
your proposals.


heartfully your Karsten

-- 
  Karsten Reincke    /\/\   (+49|0) 170 / 927 78 57
 Im Braungeröll 31   >oo<  mailto:address@hidden
60431 Frankfurt a.M.  \/    http://www.fodina.de/kr/

cadenca2-by-musixtex-harmony.png
Description: PNG image

cadenca2-by-lilypond-harmonyli.png
Description: PNG image