Re: chorus staff then hymn

[Simon Albrecht]

Hello Brother Gabriel,

Am 23.07.2015 um 00:58 schrieb Brother Gabriel-Marie:

My hymn starts with a chorus and then goes to the verses, so I want to put the chorus on its own staff, then put the verses together as numbered lyrics.

Let’s start from the structure here, since LilyPond code is generally designed to represent the musical structure as closely as possible.
If I understand your hints correctly, you have only a single voice, the melody, and chorus and verse come after each other. The chorus has only one line of lyrics, and the verse multiple ones. That means:
– only one staff with one voice. No staff grouping necessary.
– multiple lyrics lines, with one of them containing the text for the chorus and one stanza, the others skipping the chorus and only one stanza.
The rest may be selfexplanatory, if you try and compile the following shallow example:

%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
\version "2.18"

music = \relative {
  \mark "Chorus"
  c'4 f e d
  c1
  \bar "||"
 
  \mark "Verse"
  g'4 e f d
  g1
  \bar "|."
}

verseOne = \lyricmode {
  That’s the cho -- rus text.
  \set stanza = "1."
  Ver -- ses will come next.
}

verseTwo = \lyricmode {
  \repeat unfold 5 % number of syllables skipped
  { _ }
  \set stanza = "2."
  That’s the se -- cond verse.
}

\score {
  <<
    \new Staff \music
    \addlyrics \verseOne
    \addlyrics \verseTwo
  >>
}
%%%%%% end snippet %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%

Now, did I guess correctly what you were about to do? Perhaps some example output might have helped.
A comprehensive reference may be found in <http://lilypond.org/doc/v2.18/Documentation/notation/vocal-music>.

Best regards, Simon

P.S.:

Problem is that the staves always group together as if they were polyphony and I don't want them grouped.
I tried without \staffgroup but it doesn't work.

It needs to be \new StaffGroup and \new Staff (with CamelCase), by the way. Do you use Frescobaldi? It’s the most convenient tool for editing lilypond code, with autocompletion, autoformatting, syntax highlighting… And it has a score wizard which is very useful in the beginning.