Re: Music Formatting Help

[Mats Bengtsson]

Kevin DeHoff wrote:
> I am trying to arrange a piece for handbells, and have run into some serious 
> formatting issues in terms of exactly where things have to go.  I was 
> wondering if anyone could give me a hand in figuring out whether the 
> following was even possible in lilypond, and if it is, setting it up.
>
> 1) (Most important) Any given voice has to be able to automatically split
> staves, with *any* middle C or below being in the bass clef, and *anything*
> above being in the treble, even if it splits chords across the staff.

See 
http://lilypond.org/doc/v2.0/Documentation/user/out-www/lilypond/Automatic-staff-changes.html#Automatic%20staff%20changes
However, it will not split chords that are input as chords such
as <c e g>4 but you may use simultaneous voices instead,
<< c \\ e \\ g >>.

> 2) The above property should be applicable to transposed music, no matter
> what key it is transposed to (i.e. they can't be manual staff switches).

I'm not sure how the above works with transposed music, try and see.

> 3) Any time a voice switches staffs, it has to be noted (all staff switches
> need to be followed)

Do you mean like 
http://lilypond.org/doc/v2.0/Documentation/user/out-www/lilypond/Staff-switch-lines.html#Staff%20switch%20lines

> 4) I would need a chart at the very beginning of the music to indicate all the
> bells used.  This would be a single line, bass and treble clef staves, whole 
> notes with no bar lines, and a forced line break at the end.

As someone pointed out earlier, the current support for ambitus
http://lilypond.org/doc/v2.0/Documentation/user/out-www/lilypond/Ambitus.html#Ambitus
is probably a very good starting point for such a feature. However,
some coding has to be done.

  /Mats