Re: Setting Gregorian chant: Note spacing for two note neumes seem to depend on length of lyric text

[Matthew Fong]

Hello Aaron,

You're quite right. I don't need to alter the note duration in the scope -- it's simply a graphical articulation I wish to add, like the tenuto.

I actually do prefer the first solution. The second one for falsobordone (or current problem). I suppose I could also use markup on the note if it's a graphical articulation?

Many thanks,

mattfong

On Wed, Oct 7, 2020 at 10:06 AM Aaron Hill <lilypond@hillvisions.com> wrote:

On 2020-10-07 8:44 am, Matthew Fong wrote:
> Hello Aaron,
>
> I did find an issue with your syllable function. It seems to swallow up
> dots, that is, if I take your sample code
> \syllable { a'\( \melisma c'' b'\tenuto \melismaEnd }
>
> and add a dot, it is ignored. I am playing around with an episema vs.
> dot.
> \syllable { a'4.\( \melisma c'' b'\tenuto \melismaEnd }

The dot is part of the duration, which is overridden by \syllable.  In
fact, \syllable completely ignores any durations that might be
specified.  The intention here is that \syllable is fully responsible
for defining duration, so as a user you would be advised not to include
any durations within the music _expression_.

Do you need the actual rhythmic Dot or simply a dot-shaped articulation?

----

Another way of looking at the problem is for a function to manage
scaling provided music of arbitrary length to fit within the measure. 
This is a significantly easier task from the engineering perspective, as
LilyPond provides all the building blocks:

%%%%
\version "2.20.0"

fitTo =
#(define-music-function
   (duration music)
   (ly:duration? ly:music?)
   (ly:music-compress music
     (ly:moment-div
       (ly:duration-length duration)
       (ly:music-length music))))

{ \time 1/4 \hide Staff.BarLine \omit Stem \omit Flag
   \fitTo 4 { a'4\( c'' b'4*3\tenuto }
   \fitTo 4 { a'2 b'2*4\) }
   \fitTo 4 { a'4. c''8-> a'4_( b'4*2) }
   \fitTo 4 { b'\breve } }
\addlyrics {
   lor -- _ _ em _ i -- _ _ psum
}
%%%%

The results above are similar to earlier examples I posted in terms of
spacing and clumping of notes.  The added bonus is that different note
heads are possible, as \syllable only outputs quarter notes.  Of course,
I had to \omit Flag due to the presence of an eighth note in the third
note group.

\syllable is still much nicer from the user's perspective, as one can
safely think in terms of pitch only.  The above example required me as
the user to manually compute the durations of notes so that they would
scale properly and be consistent from measure to measure.  Try changing
the "2*4" in the second note group to "2*3" or "2*5" and note how the
entire spacing of the piece is impacted.


-- Aaron Hill