Re: questions in regards to combining multiple parts

[Carl Sorensen]

From: <address@hidden>
Reply-To: <address@hidden>
Date: Friday, June 15, 2018 at 11:19 AM
To: "address@hidden" <address@hidden>
Subject: questions in regards to combining multiple parts

After looking and not finding much, on top of asking in the mailing list 
without much return, I have a few questions in regards to \partcombine

- Considering a number of scores have an odd number of instruments combined 
(i.e. 3 Trumpets, 3 Clarinets, etc.), why partcombine only works on an even 
number of parts? Shouldn't partcombine work on *n* number of parts instead?

Perhaps it should, but it doesn’t.  As written, partcombine only works on two 
voices.  Combining parts is quite challenging, really, and I think we are 
fortunate it works as well as it does.

- If you can only combine two parts, how you get things like the usual "1,2", 
"a3", "2,3", "1,3" and similar to work and print properly? If you chain two 
partcombines, there's no third part, so "2,3" is impossible to ever print, let 
alone "a3" or "1,3". 

Manually adding them to the score.

- If, instead of partcombining the parts, you make them separate voices of a 
single staff, how you get the markups mentioned before to print in the combined 
staff without making them be something inside one of the parts?

Add a fourth voice to the score that contains only spacer rests and the part 
markups.

\version "2.18"

\new Staff <<
  \new Voice {\voiceOne a' b' c'' g'}
  \new Voice {\voiceThree f' g' a' \voiceOne g'}
  \new Voice {\voiceTwo d' e' f' \voiceOne g'}
  \new Voice {s s s s^\markup{\bold "a3"}}
>>