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

[Mats Bengtsson]

Reinhold Kainhofer wrote:
> 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.

If you do change a property on the MultiMeasureRest layout object, then
it only applies to multimeasure rests, not to ordinary rests. If you add
the following two lines to the end of your GlobalSettings, the rests
will be merged, even though you'll get some warning printouts.
GlobalSettings = {
        ...
        \revert Rest #'direction
        \revert MultiMeasureRest #'staff-position
}

There have been several discussions on using the part combiner feature
in LilyPond to handle also choir music, I'm not sure how well it works
yet.

> 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?

The ideas described in
http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/lilypond-user/2005-03/msg00063.html
should work here as well.

> 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)

See 
http://lilypond.org/doc/v2.4/Documentation/user/out-www/lilypond/Vertical-spacing.html#Vertical-spacing
Since you want to change the spacing of lyrics instead of staves, you
should change Lyrics.minimumVerticalExtent instead. To find the default
value, goto Documentation -> Program Reference -> Translation ->
Contexts -> Lyrics

> 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).

That's harder. If you replace the ChoirStaff by a GrandStaff not only
the || but also all normal bar lines will span the full staff. Of course
you could fiddle with the "transparent" property, but that's faily clumsy.

> 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?

The brace is a bit tricky, but since you can include a \markup{...} in
a lyrics line, it should be doable. One way to handle the different
number of lyrics lines is described in the manual for version 2.5 at

http://lilypond.org/doc/v2.5/Documentation/user/out-www/lilypond/Other-vocal-issues.html#Other-vocal-issues

> 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?

That's the way \lyricsto works, it doesn't treat "\skip.." differently
than any other syllable. See above for a better solution.

> 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.

Ritardandi in the MIDI isn't supported. The only workaround I can
think of is to insert a long series of \tempo indications in the
MIDI version.

> 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.

Read about "Text Spanners" in the manual.

> 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 .

Increase the property called "padding". See the section on the \override
command in the manual.

   /Mats