Re: Mixed Time Signatures: Non regular alternantion between 5/8 and 8/8

[Kieren MacMillan]

Hi Reinhold,

> for 20th-century music it's no uncommon to have alternating time signatures.

Yes.

> The main problem for lilypond is not the display, since the stencil can be 
> easily overridden, but rather the automatic barline feature, which needs to 
> know how long a particular measure needs to be. With those alternating time 
> signatures, all you know is that the measure should have a length that is in 
> the list of given fractions, but you don't know which.

Yes, but once you've displayed the initial TS, you can just turn off the 
stencil:

\version "2.13.29"

#(define ((custom-time-signature one two three four five six) grob)
   (grob-interpret-markup grob
                          (markup #:override '(baseline-skip . 0) #:number
                                  (#:line ((#:column (one two))
                                           (#:column (three four))
                                           (#:column (five six)))))))

alternatingTS = \relative c' {
  \override Score.TimeSignature #'stencil =
    #(custom-time-signature "3" "4" "5" "8" "2" "4")
  \time 3/4 c8 c c c c c |
  \override Score.TimeSignature #'stencil = ##f
  \time 5/8 c8 c c c c |
  \time 2/4 c8 c c c |
  \time 5/8 c8 c c c c |
  \time 3/4 c8 c c c c c |
}

\score { \alternatingTS }

Cheers,
Kieren.