Re: All-purpose bass tablature

[David Kastrup]

"address@hidden" <address@hidden> writes:

> Hi,
> I am getting close to what I want, and yet the last bit eludes me. I
> am regularly transcribing bass parts from performances played on 5 or
> 6-string basses. Invariably my intended audience is a 4-string player
> and so needs either a modified part or a pencil.
> My idea is to accommodate all basses on a 4-string TabStaff, by using
> ledger lines to represent the low-B  or high-C string notes, while
> allowing 4-string players to see the difference. It seems this idea is
> not original. Lilypond-user Laura Conrad was asking the same thing for
> lute in 2003.
> It does appear that in 'Internals' there is a mention of
> ledger-line-spanner in TabStaff but I'm not good at internals. For
> instance, I am confused that changing the line positions on the tab
> staff requires Staff.StaffSymbol and not TabStaff,

It doesn't.

> so I guess one must be a sub-thing of the other.

TabStaff has an alias of Staff, so when inside of an _existing_
TabStaff, settings for Staff go to the TabStaff instead.  However, for
settings you want to take effect for the entire duration of the
Staff/TabStaff lifespan (including its creation, so we are talking about
things like line-count), you really want to change them within the
TabStaff's context modification block (the thing starting with \with )
so that they are in effect before the first StaffSymbol is being drawn.

-- 
David Kastrup