Greetings all.
This forum was most helpful recently in showing me how to use \context { \Staff \RemoveEmptyStaves } to hide non-empty staves containing music.
The purpose of this was to swap a single staff with two combined voices for two separate staves with one voice each after a line break, and vice versa (combining two voices on different staves into a single staff after a line break).
(Lest anyone be confused, the voices that have the effect of appearing, in the score, to be split and recombined are separate Voice contexts that don't actually jump staves.)
The proposed solution was to use Staff context property "keepAliveInterfaces" to create hideStaff and showStaff commands.
hideStaff = \set Staff.keepAliveInterfaces = #'()
showStaff = \set Staff.keepAliveInterfaces = #'(
bass-figure-interface
chord-name-interface
cluster-beacon-interface
fret-diagram-interface
lyric-syllable-interface
note-head-interface
tab-note-head-interface
lyric-interface
percent-repeat-item-interface
percent-repeat-interface
stanza-number-interface
text-interface
rest-interface % added to allow keeping alive staves with only rests
)
This ends up working quite well for
* short to moderate-length pieces
* where only one score is to be created from music so annotated with \hideStaff and \showStaff
* and where explicit line breaks (\beak and \noBreak) are used.
For this project, it is just about imperative to use Lilypond's automatic line breaking instead of explicit \break \noBreak line breaking, due to the massive length of the piece and the need to produce multiple versions at different font sizes and with different combinations of parts.
The problem is that when I use \showStaff, as defined above, it causes Lilypond to display the staff, starting at the PREVIOUS line break. And I need it to delay showing the staff until the NEXT line break.
Anyone know how I can get Lilypond to unhide a staff at the NEXT line break?
Here's some pseudo-lilypond source the illustrates what I want to be able to write:
celloCombined = \relative c {
\clef bass
| c4 c c c
.
.
.
\barNumberCheck #10
| d4 d d d
% start overlap
| \hideStaff <c e>4 ^"divided" <c e> <c e> <c e> % staff hidden at next line break
| <d f>4 <d f> <d f> <d f>
| <c e>4 <c e> <c e> <c e>
| <d f>4 <d f> <d f> <d f>
% end overlap
| R1*10
}
celloI = \relative c {
\clef bass
R1*10
\barNumberCheck #11 % measure 1 + 10 measures rest = measure 11
% start overlap
| \showStaffNextBreak e4 e e e % staff shown at NEXT line break, not from previous line break
| f4 f f f
| e4 e e e
| f4 f f f
% end overlap
| g4\p\< g, f8 f' f'4\f % messy stuff, that's not good for one staff; voice crossing
.
.
. % continues
}
celloII = \relative c {\clef bass
R1*10
\barNumberCheck #11 % measure 1 + 10 measures rest = measure 11
% start overlap
| \showStaffNextBreak c4 c c c % staff shown at NEXT line break, not from previous line break
| d4 d d d
| c4 c c c
| d d d d
% end overlap
| d'2\f> d,,4 e\! % different dynamics
.
.
. % continues
}
\score {
\new GrandStaff <<
\new Staff \celloCombined
\new Staff \celloI
\new Staff \celloII
>>
\layout {
\context { \Staff \RemoveEmptyStaves }
}
}
This may not perfectly demonstrate everything, but the idea is that I code an overlap in the parts after the place I tell Lilypond to switch out the staves and as soon as Lilypond finds an optimal line break, it makes the switch. As long as the overlap is large enough, the dropping out staff will be removed before the end of the overlap and the change will appear seamless without having to encode the whole score twice-- once in two staves and one in a combined single staff.