Tip: lyrics with polyphony / stem directions (without specifically instantiated voices)

[Mark Dewey]

I've discovered a number of threads on this topic (how lyrics don't work when you use such 
as <<{a' b'} \\ { c' d'}>>.  I didn't seem to have trouble with lyrics in my 
early days of trying this . . . (but, maybe then I was just focusing on the music, before 
putting the lyrics in; whatever the case, I ended up not using them for another reason).  
Anyway, I've come across a situation where I needed to have this (i.e. stem directions 
pointing different ways on the same note, only a few times).  So . . . I looked through the 
LilyPond discussion and found various things, none of which in and of themselves provided a 
satisfactory solution (although they helped me come up with what follows).

Anyway, I found a way that works better for me (although it requires adjusting 
if you need to change the system width).  I did, however, discover a solution.

Basically, I just used underscores to make one word look like two, and I 
re-aligned the lyrics to make them shift over in the right direction.  This 
makes it look fine (although it would be nice if they made some way to have 
differing stem directions in the same chord without having multiple voices, on 
a chord by chord basis, rather than all of them that follow).

So, here's the code:
In the lyrics area:
\once \override Score . LyricText #'self-alignment-X = #-1
I________am \skip 1

(the skip is for the note without lyrics; 'am' overlaps onto it so it looks 
like it belongs there; the number of underscores may vary significantly, and 
also the integer assigned with the override up there, depending on the 
direction it needs to shift: i.e. -1, 1, 0, etc.)

Here's the note code I used for the spot to put the lyrics over:
<<{f'4.} \\ {f'4.}>>

It takes a little tweaking, but it works better and faster than anything else 
I've tried (it's not always practical to have multiple voices, especially when 
your number of staffs changes in the middle of the song, at least in certain 
ways, and you only want one midi for the song).  Anyway, this is just a tip for 
those needing a solution to this, since there are many I've seen asking the 
question.

I don't suppose they're planning to make a more standard solution, yet, are 
they?  I would personally suggest just adding a tweak to chords (rather than 
messings with voices) to add the ability to make the stems go in opposing 
directions (it's not the durations that matter so much).  Something simple like 
this:
<\stemUp f' \stemDown f'>4
or
<\stemUp c'' a' \stemDown f'> (This would signify that both c'' and a' were up, 
on the same stem, and only f' was down.  Making it so multiple up stems appeared 
would be bad, I think, in a chord context like this.  I don't think the middle notes 
should be able to go against both the top and the bottom, in this context.)