Hello David and Aaron
You'll find my message at the bottom ...
On 2021-05-16 23:41, David Wright wrote:
On Sun 16 May 2021 at 06:07:22 (+0200), Kaj Persson wrote:
[ … ] I think I have read most of the
relevant parts in Notation manual and also Learning manual, but,
according to what I can remember, I have nowhere seen a declaration of
the conditions when LilyPond in fact uses the duration figure of
\skip. Obviously I have happened to run across such a condition.
Aaron explains this better than I could, using the name of the
mechanism involved.
[ … ] All this, until these conditions are
presented, about when LilyPond uses the figure, makes me, from now on,
skip the \skip and instead use one of the alternatives which I by
chance happened to discover in the snippets manual (I think it was)
namely the empty string ("") or the underscore (_), which at a quick
test seem not to have the drawbacks of \skip.
Most replacements for \skip have some sort of side-effect. For example,
if you use _ as the first in a sequence of skips, it indicates a
melisma, which will left-shift the preceding syllable, and can even
generate a lyric extender. Under some circumstances, using "" can
produce a benign warning in the log, which could be annoying if
automatically scanning this. And so on.
Aaron's function (thank you) the obvious way to go, though I shall
name it ¬ because it's easy to type (it's present on a GB keyboard,
and I have ¬ set up as CapsLock - , or CapsLock , -) and in context,
it's undistracting, eg: … end of phrase. \¬ 7 Start of phrase …
The method of defining
the duration for every word/syllable really does not entice me much.
Letting the notes alone define the durations is too comfortable for
that.
AIUI if you need a score to work, whether or not its repeats are
unfolded, then you have no choice over using durations.
Moreover I have not found how to return to the normal mode, if I
at a short, special section, does define the durations for lyrics
words.
AIUI that decision is made at the level of \new Lyrics <stuff> { }
depending on what stuff is.
All this so long, however, does not explain the extra space introduced
by \lyricsto, so that is another question.
Cheers,
David.
Hello David and Aaron
Thank you for your lessons, they are indeed clarifying a lot. Sorry for
my late answer, I have spent the time with experimenting.
My original problem/task was how to write a real piece of music, a bit
longer than these snippets describing special characteristics of
LilyPond. I have been searching for a simple method to code a piece of
music containing one or more repeats with alternatives, and these are
not situated near the beginning of the piece, which almost all examples
seem to presume, also in yours, Aaron. In these simplified examples, it
is easy to count \skip:s before the \repeat. But in reality, say you
have 50 or more measures with varying contents, then it is a wee harder
to count. Yes, I know, you can guess a figure and do a test compilation
to see, and that way iterate to the correct figure. But it will be
sensitive, if you change the music in these tones, then you must not
forget to change also that figure.
So I have looked at the alternative method, suggested in Notification
Reference, to divide the piece, the voices in parts with one boundary at
at the \repeat. In my current case the repeat point also is where the
number of choral parts change, before that they have common words, so
the method with double angle brackets in the lyrics should be applicable
and suitable But unfortunately I have not succeeded in this work, and
this was what I tried to present in my first post. However I do not
think the solution I presented is fully correct, but it was a try. I
also had come across the case when a second \lyricsto introduced an
extra \skip. With this post I include a special presentation of that.
But back to the original task, probably it is impossible to solve it in
the present version of LilyPond. My wish is that with the "<< >>" method
you can forget all counting syllables in the first part of the piece.
/Kaj
Here is the snippet presenting the \lyricsto issue:
\version "2.22.0"
tA = \lyricmode { play }
tB = \lyricmode { the game }
\paper {
score-system-spacing.basic-distance = #20
}
{
\time 3/4
<<
\new Staff {
\new Voice = "melody" {
\mark "With \lyricsto in the second lyrics"
\relative { c'2 e4 g2. } } }
\new Lyrics = "TEXTa" \lyricsto "melody"
{
\tA << \tB
\new Lyrics = "textA" \lyricsto "melody"
{ \set associatedVoice = "melody"
now
}
>>
}
>>
}
{
\time 3/4
<<
\new Staff {
\new Voice = "melody" {
\mark "No \lyricsto in the second lyrics"
\relative { c'2 e4 g2. } } }
\new Lyrics = "TEXTb" \lyricsto "melody"
{
\tA << \tB
\new Lyrics = "textB" % \lyricsto "melody"
{ \set associatedVoice = "melody"
now
}
>>
}
>>
}
