Thursday, May 22, 2008

A stem-centered triangle notehead in LilyPond

How do we get a stem-centered triangle notehead in LilyPond?

Max implemented an answer last year reusing the triangle- or do-shaped notehead from the shape notes series. Here's the first example.



To me the example shows two different series of notes. The first four notes show a type of "inward-pointing" orientation while the last four notes show a type of "outward-pointing" orientation.

Later Max sent even more examples.



These are perfect. The outward-pointing triangles in measure two will handle both Sciarrino's lip- and tongue-pizzicati and also the "play the highest pitch, whatever that is" symbol in Penderecki. The inward-pointing triangles in measure three are amazingly odd and so visually distinct, at the same time. To what use will they go? Maybe ingressive air or some type of reversed bowing or playing. There's definitely something decidedly "reversed" about these shapes.

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