Re: Getting merge-differently-headed to work

[Keith OHara]

Knute Snortum <ksnortum <at> gmail.com> writes:

> 
> I have a piece that I'm working on that has a measure with four very 
crowded voices.  I expected to have to resolve note collisions, but I'm 
having some problems with \shiftOn and \mergeDifferentlyHeadedOn.

You don't need mergeDifferentlyHeadedOn because the heads are both filed.

Two things make merging the inner voices awkward in LilyPond
LilyPond considers merging only the voices the with the smallest \shift.
LilyPond moves voices with larger shifts always toward the stem side.

The simplest, I think, is to remove the two instances of
  \mergeDifferentlyHeadedOn \shiftOn
and set the voices as usual with outer voices One and Two outer,
inner voices Three and Four inner, but 3 overrides

    \new Voice { \voiceOne
      \shiftOnn % with 2 'n's to indicate that this voice
         % this voice shifts a lot, more than voiceFour, ...
      \override NoteColumn.force-hshift = -0.2 % but force the direction
      \highVoice }
    \new Voice { \voiceThree \upperMiddle 

    \new Voice { \voiceFour
      \stemUp  % unusual for voiceFour 
      \lowerMiddle }
    \new Voice { \voiceTwo \lowVoice 

Maybe the things noted with comments are temporary deviations from the 
usual arrangement of voices, so you might insert them in sequence in
the definitions of the variables that contain the notes.