Re: Temporarily combine two Voices on the same Staff

[Simon Albrecht]

On 20.12.2016 22:54, H. S. Teoh wrote:
> I'm typesetting some complex polyphonic music, and have 3 Voices sharing
> the same Staff. In the middle of the bar, the top two Voices share the
> same rhythm, so I'd like to combine stems beams on them just for 2
> beats, and have them be treated independently again afterwards. There is
> a 3rd Voice on the same Staff with downward Beams, so without combining,
> the top two Voices would have hard-to-read clashing beams.

Please give an example, else it’s hard to judge. But it would be very 
unusual in an otherwise strictly polyphonic work to use chords for just 
two beats.

> Is there a way to do this without using \partcombine?  I realize that
> it's probably possible to rewrite this with \partcombine, but it seems
> to be overkill for just 2 beats.

Actually, I don’t think it’s even possible. \partcombine can’t handle 
more than two voices. The only thing I could imagine is (assuming 
partcombine’ voices id’s were "1", "2" and "N" (for ‘neutral’) and it 
used \context:

\new Staff <<
  \new Voice = "1" { \voiceOne #(skip-of-length musicOne) }
  \new Voice = "2" { \voiceThree #(skip-of-length musicTwo) }
  \new Voice = "N" { \voiceOne #(skip-of-length musicOne) }
  \partcombine \musicOne \musicTwo
  \new Voice = "3" { \voiceTwo \musicThree }
>>

That would be kind of neat, though I don’t know if it works/can be made 
work reasonably easy.

Best, Simon