Re: How to structure piano music?

[Urs Liska]

Am 16.11.2013 20:33, schrieb Noeck:
> Hi,
>
> I am trying to engrave small pieces for piano and I realize how
> difficult that can be. What should be my approach?
>
> The example is meant to be one staff of a piano staff group
> (PianoStaff). I don't want to have any shifts for notes played at the
> same time. The voices should combine to chords (as it is in the last
> measure).
>
> I tried 4 possibilities (shown in four measures):
> 1) << {} {} {} >> : default way to stack music
> 2) \voiceOne|Three|Two : mark them as voices to avoid collisions
> 3) \voiceOne|Four|Two : just a variant of 2)
> 4) version 1) with manual setting of stem and slur directions
>
> 1) to 3) are not what I want. 4) looks ok, but is that really the way to
> go? Do I really have to set all directions of stems, slurs,
> articulations, etc. manually? Or is there a way to automatically combine
> voices to chords for piano, such that they split when necessary like on
> the first beat and that they form chords wherever possible like
> during the remainder of the example measure?
>
> Cheers,
> Joram

It's not completely clear from your example how the logical structure of 
the music is.
Do you actually have independent voices that you just want to appear as 
chords?
Or do you basically have chorded music that sometimes happens to split 
into different voices (actually the example looks like this).?

If the latter is the case you should enter it as one voice and only 
split it temporarily where necessary.
Use the << { } \new Voice { } >> construct, then the first voice will be 
the same as the surrounding music, which is necessary to continue the 
slur in your example.

If the first is the case you'd have to make all \voiceOne and change 
(all voices) to \voiceTwo if you want the stem downwards. Use the 
override I sent earlier to avoid the huge number of warnings.

HTH
Urs