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Relative

Octaves are specified by adding ' and , to pitch names. When you copy existing music, it is easy to accidentally put a pitch in the wrong octave and hard to find such an error. To prevent these errors, LilyPond features octave entry.

  \relative startpitch musicexpr

The octave of notes that appear in musicexpr are calculated as follows: If no octave changing marks are used, the basic interval between this and the last note is always taken to be a fourth or less (This distance is determined without regarding alterations; a fisis following a ceses will be put above the ceses)

The octave changing marks ' and , can be added to raise or lower the pitch by an extra octave. Upon entering relative mode, an absolute starting pitch must be specified that will act as the predecessor of the first note of musicexpr.

Entering music that changes octave frequently is easy in relative mode.

  \relative c'' {
    b c d c b c bes a
  }

And octave changing marks are used for intervals greater than a fourth.

  \relative c'' {
    c g c f, c' a, e'' }

If the preceding item is a chord, the first note of the chord is used to determine the first note of the next chord. However, other notes within the second chord are determined by looking at the immediately preceding note.

  \relative c' {
    c <c e g>
    <c' e g>
    <c, e' g>
  }

The pitch after the \relative contains a note name. To parse the pitch as a note name, you have to be in note mode, so there must be a surrounding \notes keyword (which is not shown here).

The relative conversion will not affect \transpose, \chords or \relative sections in its argument. If you want to use relative within transposed music, you must place an additional \relative inside the \transpose.

Please send GNU LilyPond questions and comments to lilypond-user@gnu.org.

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Copyright (c) 1997--2001 Han-Wen Nienhuys and Jan Nieuwenhuizen.

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