Re: Lyrics and Repeats

[David Wright]

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.