Re: Levelling sustain-pedal indications

[Keith E OHara]

On Mon, 25 Oct 2010 00:51:11 -0700, <address@hidden> wrote:

> In a piano page chock full of bracket-style pedalling for chords at
> widely different pitch levels, I've managed to align the horizontal
> pedalling lines vertically, via a zillion little paragraphs like

Pete,
    You can put the pedal indications in their own separate row, which is placed as 
if it were a third staff.  One of the snippets, 
<http://lsr.dsi.unimi.it/LSR/Snippet?id=357>, defines an analog of Staff called 
Dynamics that can hold dynamics and pedaling, but does not print staff lines.  The 
essence of it is below, plus a \remove statement to remove the pedaling indications 
from the regular Staffs, so you can try this out without much retyping.  The leftHand 
part is included twice in the score block; the Staff prints the notes, while Dynamics 
just prints the pedal indications.
    People like this Dynamics context well enough that it will come standard in 
the next version of LilyPond.  I like it for pedaling, but actually don't use 
it myself for dynamics, because putting dynamics all on the same horizontal 
line forces the left and right-hand staves too far apart for my taste.

leftHand = \relative c {
   c4\sustainOn b g\sustainOff e
   c4\sustainOn b g\sustainOff e
   c4\sustainOn b g\sustainOff e
   c4\sustainOn b g\sustainOff e
}
\score {
   \new PianoStaff <<
     \new Staff { s1*4 }
     \new Staff {
       \clef bass
       \leftHand
     }
     \new Dynamics {
       \set Dynamics.pedalSustainStyle = #'bracket
       \leftHand
     }
%{%}  >>
   \layout {
     \context {
       \Staff
       \remove "Piano_pedal_engraver"
     }
     \context {
       \PianoStaff
       \accepts "Dynamics"
     }
     \context {
       \type "Engraver_group"
       \name Dynamics
       \consists "Piano_pedal_engraver"
       \consists "Axis_group_engraver"
     }
   }
}