Re: Lyrics and Repeats

[Kaj Persson]

Hello David and Aaron

You'll find my message at the bottom ...



On 2021-05-16 23:41, David Wright wrote:

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.

Hello David and Aaron

Thank you for your lessons, they are indeed clarifying a lot. Sorry for 
my late answer, I have spent the time with experimenting.

My original problem/task was how to write a real piece of music, a bit 
longer than these snippets describing special characteristics of 
LilyPond. I have been searching for a simple method to code a piece of 
music containing one or more repeats with alternatives, and these are 
not situated near the beginning of the piece, which almost all examples 
seem to presume, also in yours, Aaron. In these simplified examples, it 
is easy to count \skip:s before the \repeat. But in reality, say you 
have 50 or more measures with varying contents, then it is a wee harder 
to count. Yes, I know, you can guess a figure and do a test compilation 
to see, and that way iterate to the correct figure. But it will be 
sensitive, if you change the music in these tones, then you must not 
forget to change also that figure.

So I have looked at the alternative method, suggested in Notification 
Reference, to divide the piece, the voices in parts with one boundary at 
at the \repeat. In my current case the repeat point also is where the 
number of choral parts change, before that they have common words, so 
the method with double angle brackets in the lyrics should be applicable 
and suitable  But unfortunately I have not succeeded in this work, and 
this was what I tried to present in my first post. However I do not 
think the solution I presented is fully correct, but it was a try. I 
also had come across the case when a second \lyricsto introduced an 
extra \skip. With this post I include a special presentation of that.

But back to the original task, probably it is impossible to solve it in 
the present version of LilyPond. My wish is that with the "<< >>" method 
you can forget all counting syllables in the first part of the piece.

/Kaj


Here is the snippet presenting the \lyricsto issue:

\version "2.22.0"

tA = \lyricmode { play }
tB = \lyricmode { the game }

\paper {
score-system-spacing.basic-distance = #20
}
{
  \time 3/4
  <<
    \new Staff {
      \new Voice = "melody" {
        \mark "With \lyricsto in the second lyrics"
        \relative { c'2 e4 g2. } } }

    \new Lyrics = "TEXTa"   \lyricsto "melody"
    {
      \tA << \tB
             \new Lyrics = "textA"  \lyricsto "melody"
             { \set associatedVoice = "melody"
               now
             }
      >>
    }
  >>
}
{
  \time 3/4
  <<
    \new Staff {
      \new Voice = "melody" {
        \mark "No \lyricsto in the second lyrics"
        \relative { c'2 e4 g2. } } }

    \new Lyrics = "TEXTb"   \lyricsto "melody"
    {
      \tA << \tB
             \new Lyrics = "textB"   % \lyricsto "melody"
             { \set associatedVoice = "melody"
               now
             }
      >>
    }
  >>
}

With-without-lyricsto.png
Description: PNG image