Re: Optional chords

[Robin Bannister]

Herbert Liechti wrote:
> In Jazz notation you find often chords symbol in parenthesis (see the
> attached picture for an example). It this case it indicates what to play
> when doing a turnaround in other cases it indicates an alternative to the
> standard chords.

For a quick pointer to an old function, look up stencilCN.ly in
http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/lilypond-user/2012-09/msg00183.html

Copy over the besideCN definition and run it through convert-ly.py.
The example for your case is in bar 2 of the demo, i.e.
   \besideCN #LEFT "(" g2:m7  \besideCN #RIGHT ")" c2:7


The code is a bit clumsy because it harks from when you couldn't 
usefully override the text property.
But it does leave the chord name in its original position, which some 
other methods don't.


Cheers,
Robin