• marks-examples.lsp

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Articulation, dynamics, and some performance indications can be attached to individual rhythm objects by enclosing them within the definitions of the rthm-seq objects of the rthm-seq-palette. This is done using the :marks keyword followed by a list. (Also see the page on the rthm-seq object.) Of the marks available, only the specific dynamic marks (p, f etc.; not including crescendos etc.) will affect MIDI output.

Assigning one rhythm object per mark

The :marks list indicates the mark to be added, such as a for an accent or s for staccato, followed by an index number (counting from 1) for the specific rhythm object within the given rthm-seq to which the mark is to be attached. (See the tables of marks below for a full list of available marks.) The indication (a 1 s 3), therefore, adds an accent to the first rhythm item of the rthm-seq and a staccato dot to the third. Separate marks are included sequentially in the same list, separated only by a space.

Marks that span multiple notes, such as crescendos, glissandos, ottava brackets, or slurs, are indicated by specifying the starting note and ending note of the span. In these cases, there is a separate mark for the beginning of the span and the end of the span (e.g. dim-beg and dim-end). Slurs and phrase marks also have an additional, shorter form of notation, which is described in the paragraph on slurs and phrases below.

:marks (a 1 s 3 beg-sl 5 end-sl 6 dim-beg 9 dim-end 13)

Dynamics can be attached in the same way.

:marks (ppp 1 cresc-beg 2 cresc-end 4 fff 5)

It is important to note that marks are attached to rhythm objects of the rthm-seq, and not to items in the pitch-seq of the pitch-seq-palette. Two tied rhythmic values are counted as separate rhythm objects. This means that marks can be attached to notes that are tied from the previous note.

NB: When adding marks that require a beginning and ending indication via the :marks slot, including the beg-sl and end-sl version of slurs or the beg-phrase and end-phrase version of phrase markings, the user should always include both the beg- and end- versions of the mark in the same rthm-seq to avoid errors or unwanted artifacts in the score. To add marks whose beginning and end points lie in separate sequences, use post-generation editing methods instead.

Assigning multiple rhythm objects per mark

When two numbers follow a mark indication, the mark is attached to all rhythm objects from the position in indicated by the first number to the position indicated by the second. Thus (a 1 4) attaches an accent to rhythm objects 1, 2, 3 and 4 of the rthm-seq. When more than two numbers follow the mark indication, the mark is only attached to those specific rhythm objects. Thus (s 5 7 8) attaches a staccato to rhythm objects 5, 7, and 8.

:marks (a 1 4 s 5 7 8)

Slurs and phrase marks

Indications for slurs and phrase markings can be given in two ways. The first way is to attach the beg-sl and end-sl or beg-phrase and end-phrase marks to the corresponding rhythms:

:marks (beg-sl 1 end-sl 2 beg-sl 5 end-sl 6 beg-phrase 1 end-phrase 8)

Alternatively, these two items can be added by using the marks slur and phrase followed by the starting and ending rhythm:

:marks (slur 1 2 slur 5 6 phrase 1 8)

User-defined text marks

User-defined performance indications can be added to any note by placing the desired text in quotation marks:

:marks ("etwas rascher" 1)

:marks vs. post-generation editing

Marks that are attached via the marks slot will appear in the score whenever that rthm-seq occurs. For this reason, the user may wish to add some marks, such as dynamics, by using the post-generation editing methods instead.

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The marks slot can also be used to change the note heads of one or more notes in a rthm-seq. This is done using the same syntax as for the articulations, dynamics, and performance indications.

:marks (x-head 1 triangle-up 5)

An entire passage can be changed to a different note-head by following the name of the note-head with two numbers indicating the first and last rhythm objects whose note-head are to be changed.

:marks (x-head 1 8)

Note-head marks can be interspersed with any other type of mark:

:marks (ppp 1 a 1 3 5 s 2 "like a whisper" 4 slur 6 7 x-head 3 8)

The types of note-heads available can be found in the tables of marks below. As with the other marks and dynamics, some note-head types are only available to CMN or LilyPond.

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LilyPond has an additional option for placing horizontal arrows above a player's staff in the score. This is done in post-generation editing using the add-arrow-to-events method.

The add-arrow-to-events method takes as its arguments a slippery-chicken object, the text to be placed at the beginning and end of the arrow (both as strings), followed by references to the bars and notes where the arrow is to start and end, and the player.

If no text is desired for either the start or end of the arrow, the user must enter a single space as a string (" "), rather than an empty string (""). The bar and note references are each specified as two-item lists, with the first item being the bar number and the second item being the index of the note-event in the bar. (NB: The note-event index counts both notes and rests and starts at 1.) The player must be specified exactly as it is defined in the ensemble block.

(let* ((mini
       (make-slippery-chicken
        '+mini+
        :ensemble '(((vn (violin :midi-channel 1))))
        :set-palette '((1 ((c4 d4 e4 f4 g4 a4 b4 c5))))
        :set-map '((1 (1 1 1)))
        :rthm-seq-palette '((1 ((((4 4) - e e e e - - e e e e -))
                                :pitch-seq-palette ((1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8)))))  
        :rthm-seq-map '((1 ((vn (1 1 1))))))))
  (add-arrow-to-events +mini+ "start" "end" '(1 5) '(3 4) 'vn )
  (write-lp-data-for-all mini :base-path "/tmp/"))

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Any event can carry arbitrary Lilypond code in the form of a text mark (string). Thus you can manipulate Lilypond directly without looking to a slippery-chicken method to do this for you. For example, if you wanted to change the number of staff lines in a part you could use something like the following text mark; this would make the given string appear in the Lilypond file before the note you want to begin this feature with. (N.B. use the :staff-lines slot of an instrument in your instrument-palette if the instrument should always use a specific number of staff lines).

(add-mark-before-note sc-object 7 1 'perc
 '(text "\\stopStaff \\override Staff.StaffSymbol.line-count = #3 \\startStaff"))

Some pre-made graphics files can be used as marks, as detailed in the next section, but in order to attach your own EPS graphics file as a mark to a note, try the following:

(let* ((mini
       (make-slippery-chicken
        '+mini+
        :ensemble '(((fl (flute :midi-channel 1))))
        :set-palette '((1 ((c4 d4 e4 f4 g4 a4 b4 c5))))
        :set-map '((1 (1)))
        :rthm-seq-palette '((1 ((((4 4) h. (q))
                                 ((q) h.)
                                 ((e) e (q) - e e e e -))
                                :pitch-seq-palette ((1 2 3 4 5 6 7)))))
        :rthm-seq-map '((1 ((fl (1))))))))
  (add-mark-to-note
   mini 1 1 'fl
   '(text "^\\markup {\\general-align #Y #DOWN  ~
           {\\epsfile #X #1.5 #\"blah.eps\"} }"))
  (lp-display mini))
        

A number of marks available to LilyPond use specially designed graphics files. In order to make use of these marks, the :use-custom-markup argument of the write-lp-data-for-all method must be set to T.

The LilyPond graphics files required for these marks can be obtained from the other files page. The individual .eps files in the downloaded archive must be placed in the same directory as the .ly files that are to be processed. Once this is done, using LilyPond to generate PDFs of the given .ly file will result in the corresponding .eps files being automatically inserted into the score. If using lilypond on Linux, or running lilypond from the command line on a Mac, the user must also be sure to cd to the directory where the .eps and .ly files are located before running the program.

The LilyPond marks that currently require graphics are:

aeolian-dark
aeolian-light
bracket-end
mphonic-arr
mphonic-cluster
mphonic-cons
mphonic-diss
sing
sing-arr
arrow-up-down

These can be used as follows:

(let* ((mini
       (make-slippery-chicken
        '+mini+
        :ensemble '(((fl (flute :midi-channel 1))))
        :set-palette '((1 ((c4 d4 e4 f4 g4 a4 b4 c5))))
        :set-map '((1 (1)))
        :rthm-seq-palette '((1 ((((4 4) h. (q))
                                 ((q) h.)
                                 ((e) e (q) - e e e e -))
                                :pitch-seq-palette ((1 2 3 4 5 6 7))
                                :marks (aeolian-dark 1 mphonic-arr 2
                                                     arrow-up-down 3
                                                     bracket-end 7))))
        :rthm-seq-map '((1 ((fl (1))))))))
  (write-lp-data-for-all mini :base-path "/tmp/" :use-custom-markup t))

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Due to the manner by which the :marks keyword argument is parsed, fingerings can only be added using post-generation editing. Numbers can be assigned to the marks slot using the add-mark-to-note method, as seen here:

(add-mark-to-note mini 1 2 'vn 1)
(add-mark-to-note mini 1 3 'vn 2)

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mark	:mark	symbol
accent	a
accented staccato	as
accented tenuto	at
arco	arco
bartok pizzicato (see note)	bartok
battuto abbrev.	batt
col legno	col-legno
col legno abbrev.	cl
col legno battuto abbrev.	clb
col legno tratto abbrev.	clt
crescendo begin	cresc-beg
crescendo end	cresc-end
diminuendo begin	dim-beg
diminuendo end	dim-end
fermata	pause
glissando begin (see note)	beg-gliss
glissando end (see note)	end-gliss
left-handed pizzicato	lhp
molto vibrato	mv
natural harmonic	harm
open note	open
ordinario	ord
ottava begin (see note)	beg-8va
ottava end	end-8va
ottava bassa begin (see note)	beg-8vb
ottava bassa end	end-8vb
double ottava begin (see note)	beg-15ma
double ottava end	end-15ma
double ottava bassa begin (see note)	beg-15mb
double ottava bassa end	end-15mb
phrase mark begin	beg-phrase
phrase mark end	end-phrase
pizzicato	pizz
pizzicato in parentheses	pizzp
poco crini	poco-crini
senza vibrato	sv
short pause (see note)	short-pause
slur begin	beg-sl
slur end	end-sl
staccato	s
string indications	I,II,III,IV
sul ponticello abbrev.	sp
sustain pedal down	ped
sustain pedal change	ped^
sustain pedal up	ped-up
tenuto	te
tenuto-staccato	ts
tre corda (see note)	tc
tremolo (3 slashes through stem)	t3
una corda	uc

CMN-only articulation and performance indications

mark	:mark	symbol
additional CMN string indications	I-II, I-II-III, II-III, III-IV
fingernail	nail
stopped note	stopped
trill with flat accidental (see note)	trill-f
trill with natural accidental (see note)	trill-n
trill with sharp accidental (see note)	trill-s

LilyPond-only articulation and performance indications

mark	:mark	symbol
hairpin with circled tip for niente (see note)	hairpin0

Notes on articulation and performance indications

• bartok pizzicato: To use bartok with LilyPond, you must set the :use-custom-markup keyword to T when calling write-lp-data-for-all.
• beg-gliss: Adding a gliss to a chord is not possible in CMN; try adding to a note in the chord instead.
• end-gliss: There is no separate command for ending a glissando in LilyPond, as there is in CMN; however, place the end-gliss anyway and slippery chicken will handle it internally.
• beg-8va/end-8va, beg-8vb/end-8vb: When LilyPond encounters these marks it will automatically transpose the pitches in the score by an octave. CMN does not do this.
• short pause: There is no short pause in CMN, so it is replaced by a normal fermata.
• tre corda: The tre corda mark in LilyPond requires that a una corda mark has already been previously placed. Attempting to add a tre corda mark without first placing a una corda mark will result in a LilyPond error when rendering the score. This does not apply to CMN.
• trills: Trills for LilyPond scores are best entered using the post-generation editing method trill. See the post-generation data editing page for more detail.
• hairpin0: This mark must be used together with indications for either a crescendo or diminuendo, and the hairpin0 mark must be attached to the same rhythm object to which the cresc-beg or dim-beg is attached, regardless of whether the mark is to indicate a crescendo from 0 or diminuendo to 0; e.g.:

  :marks (hairpin0 3 cresc-beg 3 cresc-end 5 dim-beg 6 dim-end 8 hairpin0 6)

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mark	:mark	symbol
pppp	pppp
ppp	ppp
pp	pp
p	p
mp	mp
mf	mf
f	f
ff	ff
fff	fff
ffff	ffff

CMN-only dynamics

mark	:mark	symbol
pppp in parentheses	pppp-p
ppp in parentheses	ppp-p
pp in parentheses	pp-p
p in parentheses	p-p
mp in parentheses	mp-p
mf in parentheses	mf-p
f in parentheses	f-p
ff in parentheses	ff-p
fff in parentheses	fff-p
ffff in parentheses	ffff-p

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mark	:mark	symbol
circled x	circled-x
flageolet note-head (see note)	flag-head
upwards pointing triangle	triangle-up
x	x-head

CMN-only note-heads

mark	:mark	symbol
airy note-head	airy-head
downward-pointing arrow	arrow-down
upward-pointing arrow	arrow-up
slash	slash
square	square
no note-head	none

LilyPond-only note-heads

mark	:mark	symbol
triangle pointing right	triangle

Notes on note-heads

• flag-head: LilyPond has the additional option of specifying whether flageolet note-heads should also be given dots or not for dotted rhythms. The dotted flageolet-head feature can be enabled and disabled using the post-generation editing method add-mark-before-note and adding the mark flag-dots-on to the first event object of a passage where dots are to be added to flageolet note-heads, and flag-dots-off to the last event object of a passage where dots are to be added to flageolet note-heads. These two marks are not visible in the score:

  (add-mark-before-note mini 1 1 'vn 'flag-dots-on)
  (add-mark-before-note mini 7 1 'vn 'flag-dots-off)

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