Hi Richard,
It was my understanding that changing the value in parentheses in
\override VerticalAxisGroup #'staff-staff-spacing = #'(basic-distance . 3)
would alter the distance between staves, but though I attempted to do so, the
staves remained at the default spacing.
You're basically correct, but there are two problems in your code:
1. You want [or so I infer] to adjust the spacing of the RhythmicStaff,
not that of the main Staff -- so you should put the override there.
2. Your override value is incorrectly constructed: if you read the output
log, you can see that it needs to be a list (not just a single value).
The following modified version should do what you want:
\version "2.14.0"
\layout {\context {\Score
}}
<<\new Staff = "main"
{\time 6/8
%{1 %} r8 g8 [ b8 ~ ] b8 [ d8 f8 ~ ]
%{2 %}<<{ f8 [ f8 f8 ~ ] f8 d8 r8 %{3 %} r8 g8 [ g8 ~ ] g8 [ e8 c8 ] ~ }
\new RhythmicStaff \with {
\override VerticalAxisGroup #'staff-staff-spacing = #'((basic-distance .
1))
alignAboveContext = #"main" fontSize = #-3
\override Stem #'length = #5
\override Stem #'length = #5
\remove "Time_signature_engraver"
\remove "Staff_symbol_engraver"
\remove "Bar_engraver"
}
{ b4 b8 r4 b8 r8 b4 b4 b8}>>
%{4 %} c8 a4 r4 f8
}>>
Of course, change the basic-distance value as you desire.