Monday 24 January 2011

More trombone harmonics

On trombone, you can take the same note in more than one position. For instance, F3 can be played in both first and sixth positions, C♯4 (D♭4) in both second and fifth positions. Here’s the chart of trombone pedal tones and first five harmonics in seven positions:

The harmonic series go further than that but for a moment I constrain this chart only with those I can play.

Yesterday, I modified my blog template layout to enable the JavaScript-based SyntaxHighlighter by Alex Gorbatchev, with help of these instructions. SyntaxHighlighter does not understand the LilyPond syntax, but it is still useful. For one, it allows you to copy the code to clipboard in one click. Here’s how the LilyPond input for the above harmonic series chart looks like:

% ****************************************************************
% Trombone Harmonic Series / Positions
% ****************************************************************
\version "2.12.3"
\layout {
  ragged-right = ##f
}
\header {
 title = "Trombone Harmonic Series"
}
\score {
  \new Staff
  \transpose g bes 
 {
  \clef bass
   g,,1 g,1 d1 g1 b1 d'1
 }
  \header {
  piece = "1st Position"
  }
  \layout {
    \context {
      \Staff
      \remove "Time_signature_engraver"
      \remove "Bar_engraver"
     }
   }
 }
\score {
  \new Staff
  \transpose g a
 {
  \clef bass
   g,,1 g,1 d1 g1 b1 d'1
 }
  \header {
  piece = "2nd Position"
  }
  \layout {
    \context {
      \Staff
      \remove "Time_signature_engraver"
      \remove "Bar_engraver"
     }
   }
 }
\score {
  \new Staff
  \transpose g aes
 {
  \clef bass
   g,,1 g,1 d1 g1 b1 d'1
 }
  \header {
  piece = "3rd Position"
  }
  \layout {
    \context {
      \Staff
      \remove "Time_signature_engraver"
      \remove "Bar_engraver"
     }
   }
 }
\score {
  \new Staff
 {
  \clef bass
   g,,1 g,1 d1 g1 b1 d'1
 }
  \header {
  piece = "4th Position"
  }
  \layout {
    \context {
      \Staff
      \remove "Time_signature_engraver"
      \remove "Bar_engraver"
     }
   }
 }
\score {
  \new Staff
  \transpose g ges
 {
  \clef bass
   g,,1 g,1 d1 g1 b1 d'1
 }
  \header {
  piece = "5th Position"
  }
  \layout {
    \context {
      \Staff
      \remove "Time_signature_engraver"
      \remove "Bar_engraver"
     }
   }
 }
\score {
  \new Staff
  \transpose g f
 {
  \clef bass
   g,,1 g,1 d1 g1 b1 d'1
 }
  \header {
  piece = "6th Position"
  }
  \layout {
    \context {
      \Staff
      \remove "Time_signature_engraver"
      \remove "Bar_engraver"
     }
   }
 }
\score {
  \new Staff
  \transpose g e
 {
  \clef bass
   g,,1 g,1 d1 g1 b1 d'1
 }
  \header {
  piece = "7th Position"
  }
  \layout {
    \context {
      \Staff
      \remove "Time_signature_engraver"
      \remove "Bar_engraver"
     }
   }
 }
As you can see, I simply wrote the pedal tone and first five harmonics for 4th position (lines 065 through 081) and transposed it six times. The only new LilyPond trick here is \layout { ragged-right = ##f } which makes the staff length to be stretched to equal that of the line width.

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