Re: Ledger line visibility issue

[Keith OHara]

Peter Gentry <peter.gentry <at> sunscales.co.uk> writes:

> I have a score with many 
> repeated beamed quavers and semi-quavers on ledger lines. The default 
> layout is difficult to read as ledger lines and the staff produce an almost 
> hypnotic effect which confuses the reader. This results in loss of 
> concentration and rythmic stumbles. I would like to space these beamed notes 
> out to provide white space between the notes.

You can increase the gap between ledger lines:

  { \override Staff.LedgerLineSpanner #'minimum-length-fraction = #0.5
    \repeat "unfold" 4 { <c''' f'''>8 <d''' e'''>} }

Or, possibly it would be better in your case to enforce a minimum
spacing, so the short-duration notes do not get spaced as closely as
usual, whether there are ledgers or not.  Here I can only think of
an indirect way, by requesting extra space in teh note-spacing step
at the left of each stem:

 { \override Stem #'extra-spacing-width = #'(-1.5 . 0)
   \repeat "unfold" 4 { <c''' f'''>8 <d''' e'''>} }
 

> I am finding the syntax difficult to grasp 

The syntax is difficult.  Another difficulty is that you need to know 
to type such things as Staff.LedgerLineSpanner because ledger lines are
handled at the Staff level (which makes sense of you think of possible 
ledger lines in music with two voices).  LilyPond silently ignores
the request if you forget the Staff (for which there is some weak excuse
because users are free to engrave LedgerLineSpanners for each voice, if
they need to ).  There has been talk about trying to give a helpful message
instead of silence, but it did not look easy.