Finishing touches on hymn, lyrics spacing

[Ian Barclay]

Hi Folks,

I am new to the list.  I am mainly interested in using LilyPond to produce hymns and psalms in four-part harmony.  I have gotten pretty far "on my own" (not really -- with plenty of help from the manuals and archives) but now I need to request some help.

Attached is a version of Psalm 3.  I would like to 

a) reduce the spacing between stanzas so they are closer to each other

b) left-align the stanzas to each other on the left side of each line of music.

I'll also want to produce a custom header at some point but will worry about that later.

I have read quite a bit in the archives about reducing the spacing between stanzas, but this is the most confusing part of LilyPond I have come up against yet.  Nonstaff-nonstaff spacing?  Stretchability?  LyricSpace?  VerticalAxisGroup?  I'm not really comprehending how these things work together.  Does the script go in my layout block or somewhere else?  In any case nothing I try seems to work.  So partly I am attaching the whole file since I would like some advice not only on what to add but where to put it into the script.

In this particular version of Psalm 3, stanza spacing is not really an issue, since there is plenty of space, but I need to get familiar with making these adjustments for any song to better fit them on the page.

If there is anything else funny about the way I have put together this script I would be interested to know about it (other than not using partcombine which was intentional).  I am trying to work towards a generally useful template.

Thanks in advance, Ian

ps_3_southwell_1311.ly
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