Re: Merge/Condense vocal parts arbitrarily, on a per-'master staff' basis

[Kieren MacMillan]

Hi Jeff,

> What I need to do, is to merge parts together, arbitrarily, differently within
> each "master staff" (each set of staves, on each new line on the
> printout...sorry, don't know the right terminology).

"System".

> And so on. This will condense the printout by a LOT, and it feels necessary if
> I'm going to dive further into LilyPond as an acapella arranger.
> 
> Perhaps I'm missing something easier? I would greatly appreciate your advice 
> on
> how to either do what I'm trying here, or perhaps I just need to think about
> this problem differently?

The basics of polyphony -- both single-staff and multi-staff -- are explained 
fairly well in the docs; see, for example,
<http://lilypond.org/doc/v2.13/Documentation/notation/multiple-voices#single_002dstaff-polyphony>
<http://lilypond.org/doc/v2.13/Documentation/notation/multiple-voices#automatic-part-combining>

As for your requirement/desire to have the merging done "arbitrarily, 
differently within each [system]"... that is much more difficult, and NOT 
currently supported by Lilypond. It's #1 on my Long-Term Feature Wishlist, but 
it's so large that I haven't even submitted it yet because the desired result 
has yet to be fully formed in my mind.

Essentially, Lilypond would have to consider all possible combinations (e.g., 
S+A+T+B, SA+TB, S+AT+B, SATB unis, etc.), calculate all possible layouts, and 
then come back with the "best fit", with the partcombiner doing its thing where 
appropriate -- spectacularly difficult algorithmically, and spectacularly (and 
nonlinearly) expensive from a compilation perspective.

Good luck!
Kieren.