Re: [Best Practices] splitting and combining choral parts

[Kieren MacMillan]

Hi Simon,

> first of all: Looks like a nice piece!

Thanks! You can hear it at <http://kierenmacmillan.info/withers-carol/>, if 
you’re interested.

> Second: offtopic nitpicks. There are some superfluous LyricExtenders there – 
> I’d rather leave them out if they are very short

I include all LyricExtenders, until the layout is finalized; only then can I 
possibly know whether they’re “too short”.  :)

> And note the mid-air bar-numbers, where they are aligned with ScoreMarks. I’d 
> move Bar_number_engraver to the topmost staff.

That’s a whole separate Lilypond bug, which I deal with using the 
edition-engraver. Note also that your solution is insufficient, since the 
topmost staff will periodically disappear and reappear (frenched score).

> And I like for long syllables to be increasingly left-aligned

This is one of the many, many lyric-related problems in Lilypond. (See my 
numerous other posts and sponsorship offers on that topic.) I solve almost all 
of them post-hoc, using the edition-engraver.

> for which I wrote a custom grob callback.

I’d be happy to look at that, if you’re willing to share it.
(I have yet to find a callback that satisfies me in that regard.)

> I’d vote to keep with four staves, at least in this example.

Thanks for the vote…  :)

But I’ll be outputting at least four different scores for this piece: full 
score (U.S. letter), vocal score (U.S. letter), and vocal score (octavo). I am 
trying to reduce the number of pages, both to keep page turning to a minimum, 
and because many customers will be downloading PDFs and printing their own (and 
I want to minimize their printing costs).

Additionally, I find unnecessary redundancy in scores irritating as both a 
conductor/performer and as an aesthete. My goal is always to include the bare 
minimum information to get the job done as efficiently and elegantly as 
possible.

> It _would_ of course be great to have a good mechanism for that in LilyPond, 
> but it looks like a really involved task.

I don’t think so… We have \quoteDuring, and \divisi, and a number of other 
great features. I was just hoping I didn’t have to roll my own solution, 
without any extra eyes.

Thanks,
Kieren.
________________________________

Kieren MacMillan, composer
‣ website: www.kierenmacmillan.info
‣ email: address@hidden