Re: Trouble with alternative melody and lyrics

[Trevor Daniels]

Peter wrote Monday, April 27, 2015 8:25 AM

>  I have a song with two verses.  The lyrics to the second stanza occasionally 
> have an extra syllable, such that there is a rest on that beat in the first 
> verse but a note in the second verse.  I'm trying to address this using the 
> code found in notation manual (v. 2.18.2) in Section 2.1.3 "Stanzas", 
> subsection "Switching to an alternative melody".  See 
> http://www.lilypond.org/doc/v2.18/Documentation/notation/stanzas#stanzas-with-different-rhythms.
>   But I cannot get the lyrics to recognize and line up with the added beat in 
> the second stanza.  An example, as minimal as I was able to get it, follows 
> below.  Can anyone help?  Also, is there a simpler approach that works for 
> this, so I don't have to define a new alternative voice every time this 
> situation occurs?

I'd use a simpler approach, like this (it's usually easiest to keep as many 
notes as possible in the music associated with the lyrics, using skip or " " to 
skip them as necessary):

\version "2.18.2"

melody_verse = \relative c' {
  c4
  <<
    { \once \voiceTwo f }
    \new Voice { d'4\rest }
  >>
  g,4 a |
}

\score {
  <<
    \new Staff {
      \new Voice = "main" {
        \repeat volta 2 { \melody_verse  }
      }
    }

    \new Lyrics \lyricsto "main" { 
      One " " three four.
    }
    \new Lyrics \lyricsto "main" {
      Uno dos tres quatro.
    }
  >>
}

Trevor