#3543 Notehead of harmonic whole note too narrow

[Anonymous]

Originally created by: *anonymous

Originally created by: Elu...@gmail.com

Nick Payne reports on the user list:

The noteheads of whole notes are considerably wider than the noteheads
of smaller value notes, but a whole note harmonic has a notehead that is
exactly the same width as a harmonic notehead of any lesser value, and
considerably narrower than the head of a normal whole note. This makes a
whole note chord look rather ugly when one of the notes in the chord is
a harmonic. For example, here is the final bar of Villa-Lobos' Etude No 1:

\version "2.17.25"

\relative f'' {
   \key e \minor
   <<
     { \override NoteHead.style = #'harmonic-mixed b1 }
     \\
     {
       \set tieWaitForNote = ##t \stemUp
       \grace { e,,,16~[ gis'~ cis~ e~] } <e,, gis' cis e>1
     }
   >>
}

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Originally posted by: dak@gnu.org

While the issue could most likely be addressed primarily by changing the alignment/X-offset rather than the notehead size, the length of the ledger line might also be worth thinking about.

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Originally posted by: PhilEHol...@googlemail.com

Owain Sutton also said it was more an alignment issue, and offered the attached image in support of that view.

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Originally posted by: dak@gnu.org

In general, whole notes appear to be left-aligned with other material.  Check out
\new Staff
{
  << { f'1 f'2( e') } \\
     { c'2( b) c'1 } >>
}

The question is whether this is correct, and if it is, how we should go about making it different for harmonics: after all, right now harmonics are mostly a different kind of notehead as far as the engraving stage is concerned.

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Originally posted by: PhilEHol...@googlemail.com

This music also shows interesting vertical alignment and note size.  See the attached extracts from the same piece - the harmonic noteheads are lower than central on the spaces.

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Originally posted by: PhilEHol...@googlemail.com

I've browsed through Gould and Gardner Read and there's little guidance from either concerning semi-breve to stemmed note alignment.  Read has some examples based on triple-stopping strings, and in these the stemmed notes appear right-aligned to the semi-breve (!).  This may simply be an artifact of the way they're drawn.  There's an example of SATB writing in Gould (page 468) and this clearly has the semi-breve left-aligned with a crochet, and protruding noticeably to the right.

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Originally posted by: PhilEHol...@googlemail.com

See also issue 1653.

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Originally posted by: dak@gnu.org

Actually, to be fair the music is not well-specified since the harmonic notehead is in Voice _different_ from its unharmonic companion.  That actually makes no sense (well ok, it makes _limited_ sense musically since the harmonic's onset does not agree with the main note's onset).

If we write the original example as
\version "2.17.25"

\relative f'' {
   \key e \minor
   \set tieWaitForNote = ##t
   \grace { e,,16~[ gis'~ cis~ e~] } <e,, gis' cis e b'\harmonic>1
}

we get the attached result which looks much more reasonable.  Is this mainly a documentation problem?  Because in a multi-voice situation one wants the alignment to follow the respective voice anyway:

\version "2.16.0"

\new Staff
{
  << { <d' a'\harmonic>1 d' d'2( e') } \\
     { g2( c') <g g'\harmonic>( d') <g d'\harmonic>1 } >>
}

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Originally posted by: lemzw...@googlemail.com

Indeed, your last examples look just right.

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Originally posted by: dak@gnu.org

Well, x\harmonic is a mixed harmonic, intended to be displayed in combination with a full notehead.  The Villa-Lobos, however, is supposed to demonstrate a full harmonic able to stand on its own.  The frets are 0-11-11-9-(12)-x so the harmonic notehead indicates both fingered and audible pitch (which is how first harmonics behave).

If I use
\relative f'' {
   \key e \minor
   <<
     { \tweak style #'harmonic b1 }
     \\
     {
       \set tieWaitForNote = ##t \stemUp
       \grace { e,,,16~[ gis'~ cis~ e~] } <e,, gis' cis e>1
     }
   >>
}

Then I still get a non-vertical notecolumn as opposed to omitting the tweak in order to get a normal notehead, and tweaked or untweaked there is a "clashing note column" warning as well which can be removed by putting \stemDown before the semibreve chord in the second voice.  Sort of absurd since whole notes don't have an actual stem.

However, getting rid of the note column warning does not change the alignment: it stays fine with the default notehead and gets skewed with the harmonic notehead.

I'd argue that the mixed harmonic notehead should always be employed inside of chords (and that's what \harmonic delivers) with its main note, so its alignment is not much of a cause for worry.

But the pure harmonic notehead should align even in a stack of whole notes.