nsect(NAME)

Octaves --  how to do pitches

nsect(DESCRIPTION)

The LilyPond input language, Mudela (help, silly name), should be easy
to read and write.  In my experience Mudela is already quite convenient 
for entering music.  Every time I've entered a substantial piece of music, 
however, I found that I made quite a few mistakes.  The MIDI output helps 
a lot with locating and correcting the errors.  There's one type of error 
that seems to be frequent, stubborn and hard to catch, and that's the
octavation error.  The relative octave feature is an attempt to make
Mudela a bit easier to write.  In addition, this feature makes it harder 
to make octavation mistakes, yet if you made one, its a lot simpler to find 
and correct.

Here's how it works.  

itemize(
it()forget the old "\octave c';" command
it()forget the old octave boundaries with octaves c .. c'
)

You can enter a piece of music in relative mode, by typing

verb(
    \melodic \relative c { ... }
)

From then on, the pitch of a note will be the closest to the last one,
assuming that large intervals are a lot more rare than small ones. 
Thus, you can enter a scale without using octavation quotes:

verb(
    c d e f g a b c
)

the last c being an octave higher than the first.  If you have to
enter an interval that is greater than a fourth, you must specify
whether the pitch goes up, using post-quotes:

verb(
    c c' % octave up
    c g' % fourth up 
)

or down, using pre-quotes:

verb(
    c c, % octave down
    c f, % fourth down
)

nsect(CONVERTING)

To convert a piece of music from the old absolute-octave notation to
relative octaves, lilypond provides the bf(-Q, --find-fourths) feature
to locate all big intervals in your music (sorry, fully automated convert 
is too complex).

First, edit the .ly file, add "\relative c" to all melodic chunks:
  
verb(
    foo = \melodic \relative c { ... }
)

and remove all "\octave " commands.  See the example file 
file(input/test/find-fourths.ly).

Use lily to find the fourths

verb(
    lilypond -Q find-fourths.ly 2>&1 | tee fourths
    ...
    find-fourths.ly:3:18: warning: Interval greater than fourth, relative: g':
		  c d c f c g
			      c b, c g, c f, c c'' c

    find-fourths.ly:3:20: warning: Interval greater than fourth, relative: c,:
		  c d c f c g c
				b, c g, c f, c c'' c
)

Then, load a copy of the original mudela file in your favourite editor, 
and let it parse the 'error file' file(intervals).  First you remove all 
octavation quotes.  Then, jumping from warning to warning, you enter quotes 
as suggested by LilyPond.