How to silently change the current duration in music?

[Rick Hansen (aka RickH)]

How can I change the "current" duration in my music without actually entering
something that will take up any beats?  IOW we all know that duration is
"sticky", it remains at whatever you last set it to so that you do not have
to continually type in duration numbers.  What command can I enter to "set"
the current duration but not actually put anything on the page?  I have a
feeling it would be with the make-moment command, but I'm not sure how to
use it.  Since it is syntactically incorrect to code a duration after a
variable like this:

\myVariable = { a }
\myVariable4

I would like to do something like this:

\myVariable = { a }
make-moment 1 4
\myVariable

So that the "a" comes out as a quarter note.

Is this possible?  If so what is the syntax to silently change the duration
without entering any music or rests etc.?

Thanks for any help on this.

Rick

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