Re: Shortening eighth note beamed stems and other typesetting questions

[Carl Sorensen]

On 5/4/21, 9:35 AM, "lilypond-user on behalf of Knute Snortum" 
<lilypond-user-bounces+carl.d.sorensen=gmail.com@gnu.org on behalf of 
ksnortum@gmail.com> wrote:

    Hi, everyone.  This will probably be a long post.  I hope you will bear 
with me.
    
    I have two questions: one as experts in LilyPond and one that just has
    to do with typesetting, but they are related.
    
    First, I am trying to shorten the stems of beamed eighth notes.  I
    found that Stem.details.beamed-lengths could do that, but it seems to
    have minimums that it won't go past. Consider this snippet:

I was able to get it to almost exactly replicate the old-edition example by 
changing Beam.details.stem-length-limit-penalty:

\version "2.22.1"
\language "english"

staffUp = \change Staff = "upper"

voiceFive = #(context-spec-music (make-voice-props-set 4) 'Voice)
voiceSix = #(context-spec-music (make-voice-props-set 5) 'Voice)

globalNoFour = {
  \time 3/4
  \key ef \minor
}

rightHandUpperNoFour = {
  bf8 ef df4^> cf8 bf |
  af8 f4. s4 |
}

rightHandLowerNoFour = {
  gf4 g2 |
  s2. | 
}

rightHandNoFour = \relative c'' {
  \globalNoFour
  << { \rightHandUpperNoFour } \\ { \rightHandLowerNoFour } >>
}

leftHandUpperNoFour = {
  <<
    \new Voice { 
      \voiceThree 
      ef2 ef4~ |
      ef4 d( \staffUp ef^>) |
    }
    \new Voice {
      \voiceSix 
      \override Voice.Beam.details.stem-length-limit-penalty = #1
      bf2. * 2/3 ef8 df |
      % Below are the eighth notes in question, without any intervention.
      % Using \override Stem.details.beamed-lengths = #'(2) does not work.
      cf8 af s2 | 
    }
  >>
}

leftHandLowerNoFour = {
  ef4 ef2~ |
  ef2. |
}

leftHandNoFour = \relative c' {
  \globalNoFour
  \clef bass
  << { \leftHandUpperNoFour } \\ { \leftHandLowerNoFour } >>
}

\score {
  \new PianoStaff <<
    \new Staff = "upper" \rightHandNoFour
    \new Staff = "lower" \leftHandNoFour
  >>
}

HTH,

Carl

P.S. I found your solution to be more readable than the LilyPond default 
solution, but it loses the voice indication of the stem direction.  I think I 
like the original better.  But I'm not a good resource for making hard 
decisions on music engraving -- I'm not an expert at all.