Re: Shortening eighth note beamed stems and other typesetting questions

[Knute Snortum]

Carl, Lukas-Fabian, Thomas, thank you all.  I now have enough
information to make the score work.

--
Knute Snortum


On Wed, May 5, 2021 at 2:05 AM Thomas Morley <thomasmorley65@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Am Di., 4. Mai 2021 um 17:34 Uhr schrieb Knute Snortum <ksnortum@gmail.com>:
> >
> > 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:
> >
> > %%% Start
> > \version "2.22.1"
> >
> > \relative {
> >   \override Stem.details.beamed-lengths = #'(2)
> >   c''8 c c c
> >   \override Stem.details.beamed-lengths = #'(3)
> >   c b a g |
> >   \override Stem.details.beamed-lengths = #'(3)
> >   c a f d
> > }
> > %%% End
> >
> > I can't get the repeated "c" eighth notes lower than 2 or the
> > descending eighth notes lower than 3. Is there a way to get past these
> > minimums? Or am I doing something wrong?
> >
> > Now the typesetting question: I have a piano piece that has several
> > voices and there is a run of descending eighth notes inside of other
> > voices that gets really cramped. Attached is a screenshot of how some
> > older editions dealt with it (old-edition-solution.png). It requires
> > shortening the eighth note beam down to almost nothing.
> >
> > Here is how the two measures look without any intervention
> > (eighth-note-stems-without-intervention.ly produces
> > lilypond-solution.png). It's an interesting solution, but I don't
> > think it will work.
> >
> > And here is my solution (eighth-note-stems-my-solution.ly produces
> > my-solution.png). Is it readable? Should I try to make it look like
> > the old edition? If so, how?
> >
> > Thanks for reading this to the end.
> >
> > --
> > Knute Snortum
>
> For completeness:
>
> The override for Stem.details.beamed-lengths is not always sufficient,
> because Stem.details.beamed-extreme-minimum-free-lengths and
> Stem.details.beamed-minimum-free-lengths provide some minimums.
> In own scores I had set them to zero, adjusted
> Stem.details.beamed-lengths to taste and used Beam.positions for
> fine-tuning.
>
> \relative {
>   c''8 c c c
>   \override Stem.details.beamed-lengths = #'(1)
>   \override Stem.details.beamed-extreme-minimum-free-lengths = #'(0)
>   \override Stem.details.beamed-minimum-free-lengths = #'(0)
>
>   \override Stem.no-stem-extend = ##t
>   c8 c c c
>   c b a g
>   \once \override Beam.positions = #'(1.8 . 0.5)
>   c b a g
>   c a f d
>   \once \override Beam.positions = #'(1.8 . -1.1)
>   c' a f d
> }
>
> As soon as 16th happen other values are preferable, thus Carl's method
> looks superior (not tested, though).
>
> Cheers,
>   Harm