Problems with polyphony (rests, dynamics, lyrics, tempo)

[Reinhold Kainhofer]

Hi all,
I recently started using lilypond, and now I'm type-setting two SATB songs for 
our choir. I put the two files on our server (username: lily, password: 
pond):
http://www.fam.tuwien.ac.at/~reinhold/lyprobs/

I'm using GNU LilyPond 2.4.2 on Debian linux (installed from the snapshots at 
www.pedrokroeger.net)

And here are my problems:


1) How can I combine the rests of Soprano and Alto to one rest shown in the 
middle of the staff? I found several suggestions (basically overriding 
Voice.MultiMeasureRest's #'staff-position value), but none of them worked for 
me. They simply didn't have any effect. This problem appears in both 
IchHabDichLiebMeinWien.ly and SchoenbrunnDuMeinTraum.ly.


2) Since I also need the midi file, and possibly generate separate scores for 
each voice, I have to add the dynamics to every voice. However, then the 
piano, crescendo signs etc. appear twice, overwriting some notes (see 
SchoenbrunnDuMeinTraum.ly). How can I make lilypond print out these dynamics 
only once (for the staff instead of separately for each voice), while the 
midi will still apply them to both voices in the staff?


3) I have two stanzas (both are assigned to the soprano voice in the choir 
staff), but the lyrics look too much separated vertically. How can I decrease 
the spacing of two lyrics lines? (In both pieces)


4) In IchHabDichLiebMeinWien.ly, I'd like the || bar after measure 31 to span 
the whole choir staff. How can I do this? (Again, I'd also be able to 
generate separate sheets for each voice, so this shouldn't change the notes 
so much that they can be only used inside a ChoirStaff).


5) In IchHabDichLiebMeinWien.ly, the refrain is the same for both stanzas, 
only one phrase shortly before the end is different. Thus, I'd like to print 
the lyrics only once for both stanzas, and only have that short phrase with 
two lines of lyrics (ideally centered at the baseline with a {...} brace 
around so that it doesn't look like women/men's lyrics). Is this possible 
somehow?
Ideally, I'd like to have 1.-2. at the beginning of the refrain, and 1. and 2. 
at the beginning of the two lines of that short phrase (which should be 
grouped by a { brace as mentioned above). Is this possible in lilypond?

As a workaround, currently I'm using lots of \skip4 in the second stanza until 
that phrase (which means it's not vertically centered at the baseline, and it 
looks like separate women/men's lyrics). 
Also, for skipping the common lyrics in the refrain, using \skip2.*24 doesn't 
seem to work, it only skips one note (regardless of its length). Is this a 
bug?


5) How can I add a ritardando so that it also takes effect in the midi? Using 
markup doesn't help in that case since that is just a visual representation, 
but doesn't effect the midi.


6) How can I add a "rit. - - - - - - - - - - - - " indication, where the 
dashes range until a fixed, given note? What I have in mind is the same as 
the crescendo when using \setTextCresc.


7) How can I make the tempo indications not overwrite the measure counts, the 
fermatas and the dynamic symbols? This happens e.g. in 
SchoenbrunnDuMeinTraum.pdf .


Thanks a lot in advance!

Cheers,
Reinhold


-- 
------------------------------------------------------------------
Reinhold Kainhofer, Vienna University of Technology, Austria
email: address@hidden, http://reinhold.kainhofer.com/
 * Financial and Actuarial Mathematics, TU Wien, http://www.fam.tuwien.ac.at/
 * K Desktop Environment, http://www.kde.org, KOrganizer / KPilot maintainer

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