>>| MusicXML has an interesting construct to deal with this kind of situation.
>>| The <backup> and <forward> tags have the effect of moving the time point,
>>| so you can use <backup> to go back to the start of a measure in order to
>>| add an extra layer of notes.  This means that you can deal with temporary
>>| voices which appear and disappear in the course of a piece.
>>|
>>| Maybe we need something similar in abc?

>>Now what was that syntax? ...
>
>I don't remember that.  Anybody know?
>
>Otherwise let's think about how we might implement it.  Perhaps it's time
>to make use of one of the few remaining precious ascii symbols like $ or &.
>We only need one symbol for <backup> since <forward> is an invisible rest,
>and x will do fine.  Then again, none of the currently-unused symbols
>have the necessary negative connotations.  < would be the obvious choice
>if it were not already in use.  How about using the invisible rest with
>a negative number following:
>
>x-4 means backup four default note lengths
>x-  means backup one default note length
>x-/ means backup half a def note
>and so on.

Might work.  Another way would be to use a syntactic analogue of the
repeat construct to write the parallel lines one after the other.  We
can recycle + by now, so

   +: ABcd efga ++ FGAB cdef :+

means

   [FA][GB][Ac][Bd] [ce][df][eg][fa]

and perhaps you could combine more than two lines that way.  Use x's
where the added line doesn't have anything in it, so say we include
a triple stop:

   +: ABcd efga ++ FGAB cdef ++ xxxx G,xxx :+

means 

   [FA][GB][Ac][Bd] [G,ce][df][eg][fa]


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