Re: Reducing staff numbers in LilyPond

[David Kastrup]

Ken Williams <address@hidden> writes:

> On Mon, Oct 16, 2017 at 11:53 AM, David Kastrup <address@hidden> wrote:
>
>> Simon Albrecht <address@hidden> writes:
>>
>> > On 16.10.2017 18:01, David Kastrup wrote:
>> >> Chris Yate<address@hidden>  writes:
>> >>
>> >>> Many choral basses can't read treble clef, and tenors might sing the
>> wrong
>> >>> pitch, as they're used to reading octave treble...
>> >> Tenors (and basses) are supposed to be singing one octave lower in
>> >> "unisono" passages.
>> >
>> > That’s why the OP clarified that he meant “true unison, not octaves”.
>>
>> Oh.  That's going to be a puzzler for all men, I guess.  Quite unusual.
>>
>
> That's a question for the composer, not the engraver.  And it is
> legitimate for a composer to request unison.

If the engraver indicates unison in a manner that everybody else uses
for expressing an octave split between male/female voice types, he is
not going to satisfy the composer's idea of an actual unison.

> Really hoping that LilyPond will be a suitable platform for
> experimenting with stuff like this, I'm a well-experienced programmer
> and musician, but pretty new to LilyPond.

This is not as much a problem of telling LilyPond what you want to do
but of telling the singers.  At any rate, something like

\version "2.19.65"

{
  \new StaffGroup
  {
    << \new Staff \repeat unfold 16 c''1
       \new Staff \repeat unfold 16 g'1
       \new Staff = "tenor" \repeat unfold 16 e'1
       \new Staff \repeat unfold 16 c'1
     >>
    \new Staff \with { alignAboveContext = "tenor"
                       \override VerticalAxisGroup.staff-affinity = #CENTER }
    {
      \repeat unfold 16 { c'4 e' g' e' c'1 }
    }
  }
}

appears to do the trick.

-- 
David Kastrup