Re: How do you insert measures into scores with many parts?

[Sebastian Menge]

I am not an expert in lilypond, but as a language it does not have the proper semantics/structures to do that - it is not XML or Json or so. Other Notation programs have internal data structures that make it easy to implement that.

So the editor has to overcome it. And the editor then needs hints, e.g. line numbers or bar checks.

I think there simply is no solution possible for this.

Regards, Sebastian.

David Zelinsky <dsz@dedekind.net> schrieb am Sa., 28. Sept. 2024, 18:24:

David Bellows <davebellows@gmail.com> writes:

> This is a question that came up on Reddit the other day and I didn't
> have an answer (it never happens to me).
>
> Say you are working on a score with multiple parts (like an orchestra)
> and you need to insert some measures into all the parts somewhere in
> the middle of the piece. Is there a way to organize things to minimize
> the hassle? Having to go to each file for each part and insert the
> measures would be a huge pain especially when compared to how
> relatively easy this is for other notation programs (so I'm told). And
> if you have to do this more than once then it's especially cumbersome.
>
> I know with some editors you can search and replace multiple files at
> once but this feels like it would mess up any internal organization
> with respect to bar numbers in the LilyPond file (in the comments).
>
> I understand that many people only use LilyPond for engraving so this
> isn't a problem for them, but there are those of us who compose
> directly in LilyPond and this could be a potential issue.
>
> I guess I'm wondering if there is a way of writing your LilyPond files
> in such a way to make this easier than just manually going through
> each part and changing them.

As others have said, this is much easier if you write your parts with
one bar per line, and also label them in some stereotypical way.  (I use
emacs, and I've modified lilypond mode to add a newline with a bar check
and a commented bar number label when I type Control-Return.)  Then it
would be easy enough to make one file with the list of bars to be
inserted for each instrument labeled with the filename for that
instrument, and write a script to automatically insert them all.

If I had to do this once, rather than fuss with writing and debugging a
script I would probably do it manually in emacs, recording a keyboard
macro while I do the first instrument, and then doing each of the rest
by calling that macro with a single key stroke.

As for messing up the bar numbering, this is a standard problem in
musical theater, where bars are often added or removed during rehearsals
or previews, and the standard solution is to label bars inserted after,
say, bar 17 as 17a, 17b, etc.  If you want the bars numbered accordingly
in the output, I guess you could define a barNumberFormatter for this
purpose. (I've never done that, so I'm not sure if that's the right
solution.  Maybe someone can suggest the right way. There is
Score.alternativeNumberingStyle that can be set to
#'numbers-with-letters, but that only applies to volta alternatives.)
Then set Score.currentBarNumber to what it had been after the inserted
passage.

Alternatively, it would be easy to write a script that modifies all the
commented bar numbers in a file (or section thereof) to make them
consecutive.  (My modified emacs lilypond mode has a function that does
this.)

Really, rather than being a drawback (as someone suggested), I feel it
is a great advantage that Lilypond's plain text format allows one to use
very general text processing tools.


--
David Zelinsky