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Re: partcombine and/or engraver question


From: Neil Thornock
Subject: Re: partcombine and/or engraver question
Date: Tue, 9 Mar 2010 07:51:54 -0700

Hi Kieren,
Well, I'm clueless about how to help with your issue.  But congrats on
the premiere/recording!


On Mon, Mar 8, 2010 at 7:36 AM, Kieren MacMillan
<address@hidden> wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> I write [and engrave] a lot of choral music.
>
> There's one big thing I want to do in Lilypond, and wanted to get some 
> opinions on the matter...
>
> In my choral music, there are often large sections of unison and two-part 
> writing, as well as four- and [complex] eight-part writing. That is to say, 
> often the music can be completely represented on a single staff, but usually 
> it needs two or three or four, and every once in a while it requires eight 
> (i.e., one staff per vocal part).
>
> In a perfect world, I would like to indicate [in the .ly code] where a Voice 
> *requires* its own Staff context, and then have Lilypond make the 
> Staff-generating [partcombine?] decisions automatically, in order to get the 
> best overall spacing. So (e.g.) if half-way through a system a unison section 
> would [need to] break into four staves, either Lilypond would "back-quote" 
> the unison music to fill the first half of the system, or insert a break at 
> that point and respace the section accordingly, so that the "split" happens 
> at the beginning of the new system. [I hope I've adequately explained what 
> I'm looking for.]
>
> Right now, I'm using a somewhat complex combination of \quoteDuring [drawing 
> from a "unison" variable] and manual breaks to accomplish this task. But I 
> was hoping there might be a way to get it automated, mostly or fully.
>
> Since it would impact horizontal as well as vertical spacing, I imagine that:
>    1. The logic/algorithm/code would have to be in an engraver, and maybe 
> even in C++, as opposed to in a Scheme function.
>    2. It might require multiple passes [like the old two-pass spacing macro].
>    3. What I'm asking for might not be possible at all.
>
> Any suggestions or comments would be greatly appreciated.
>
> Cheers,
> Kieren.
>
> p.s. At the U.S. premiere (and CD recording) of my "Fantasy Variations" this 
> past weekend in Arizona, I got more compliments on the score/parts -- yay, 
> Lilypond!
>
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>



-- 
Neil Thornock, D.M.
Check out the newly designed website!
http://neilthornock.net
Assistant Professor of Music
Composition/Theory
Brigham Young University




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