Re: Left align first word of lyrics

[Carl Peterson]

Just thinking about some of the stuff I've been working on.

Would it be possible to pass the lyrics to Scheme as a list of lists (a list of verses, with each verse a list of words), so that for each syllable placement it could look at the nth item of each list and determine correct placement. This may require some manual line breaking (effectively a list of lists of lists, verse --> line --> syllables) so that it can take the 1st word of the nth line of each verse and align them.

Not sure if this helps anybody with a place to go on this idea.

On Tue, May 21, 2013 at 9:53 AM, Kieren MacMillan <address@hidden> wrote:

Hi Gregory,

>> A tedious solution is likely doable where you basically specify something like
>>
>> \syllable #1 { Cccc Ccccc Cc Ccc c }
>> in the first stanza,
>> \syllable #2 { Cccc Ccccc Cc Ccc c }
>>
>> in the second stanza and so on: then each stanza would typeset the whole column, align it, and pick out the right row.
>>
>
> That's an interesting idea.  A bit tedious as you write, but better than nothing however.

This is far too complicated and tedious for 99% of works with lyrics — including, I'm assuming, yours. If your layout is [relatively] static, simply add an appropriate alignment override to all lyrics *except* the one that's properly centered:

\version "2.17"

theNotes = \relative c' {
  \time 3/2
  \repeat "unfold" 6 c
  \break
  \repeat "unfold" 6 c
}

theWordsI = \lyricmode {
  one two three four five six sev -- en eight nine ten ’leven
}

theWordsII = \lyricmode {
  \once \override LyricText #'self-alignment-X = #5 A B C D E F
  \once \override LyricText #'self-alignment-X = #3.5 G H I J K L
}

theWordsIII = \lyricmode {
  \once \override LyricText #'self-alignment-X = #-10 I simp -- ly ad -- just -- ed the cor -- rect syl -- la -- bles!
}

\score {
  <<
    \new Staff \theNotes
    \addlyrics \theWordsI
    \addlyrics \theWordsII
    \addlyrics \theWordsIII
  >>
}

The tiny bit of trial-and-error necessary to accomplish this is far less tedious than David's \syllable suggestion, except in trivial situations (e.g., songs with less than ten syllables per verse).

Best regards,
Kieren.

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