Re: Centering lyrics in piano music for children

[Matthew Collett]

On 1/10/2012, at 3:29 pm, Michael Rivers wrote:

> Most beginning children's piano music uses a format with a single-line melody
> broken between the treble and bass clefs and lyrics written in between. I'm
> assuming LilyPond doesn't have a way to automatically attach some lyrics to
> the treble and some to the bass as needed, so I'm trying to do this
> manually. 

You're assuming wrongly:

melody = \relative c' {
  c2 c | g2 g | c e4 f | g1 |
}

text = \lyricmode {
  Play pi -- a -- no  all day _ long.
}

\score {
  \new PianoStaff <<
    \new Staff = "up" { \new Voice = "melody" \key c \major \autochange \melody 
}
    \new Lyrics \lyricsto "melody" \text
    \new Staff = "down" { \clef bass}
  >>
}

The autochanger doesn't exactly match the layout you wanted: the third middle C 
is notated in the left hand. For finer control you can make explicit staff 
switches:

melody = \relative c' {
  c2 c | \change Staff = "left" g2 g | \change Staff = "right" c e4 f | g1 |
}

text = \lyricmode {
  Play pi -- a -- no  all day _ long.
}

\score {
  \new PianoStaff <<
    \new Staff = "right" { \new Voice = "melody" \melody }
    \new Lyrics \lyricsto "melody" \text
    \new Staff = "left" { \clef bass s1*4 }
  >>
}

Best wishes,
Matthew