Re: Adding a staff in the middle of a piece

[Mats Bengtsson]

Martin Frankland wrote:
> I have the same problem. I have an SATB choir with female and male soloists
> on top. I'd like to start the soloists' staffs after the choral intro.
> Everything I've tried so far hasn't worked:
>
>
> 2. The Frenched score using \RemoveEmptyStaffContext doesn't work for me
> since the male and female soloists alternate, so it displays only the one
> singing and hides the other one. I want BOTH solo staffs displayed, the one
> with the notes AND the one with rests, otherwise it's hard to read. Can we
> tell Lilypond to hide whole *groups* of staffs that contain only rests?
>   
This is probably the easiest approach. Just do
\set Staff.VerticalAxisGroup #'remove-empty = ##f
in the staves for the solo parts, after the introduction.
Then, they will stay even if they only contain rests.
> 3. I've tried writing the choral intro and the rest of the song as two
> consecutive parts of the score, like this:
>
> \score {
>  {
>   \ChoirIntro
>   << \Soli \Choir >>
>  }
>  \layout{}
>  \midi{}
> }
>
> but it doesn't work. The pdf displays the intro correctly followed by some
> kind of empty system.
>   
This solution should also work well, at least if you make sure
to use named contexts so that the choir parts appear in the same
Staff contexts both in the intro and in the main part of the score.
The following small example illustrates the idea:
\score{
{ \new Staff = soprano \relative c' { c d e f | g1 |  }
 << \context Staff = soprano \relative c'' { g4 f e d | c1 | }
    \new Staff = solo \relative c'' {g8 c g f e g e d | c1 | }
 >>
}
}


Yet another alternative is to just introduce the additional staves
at the point in the score where they should first appear:
\score{
{ \new Staff = soprano \relative c' {
   c4 d e f | g1 | 
   << { g4 f e d | c1 | }
    \new Staff = solo \relative c'' {g8 c g f e g e d | c1 | }
   >>}
}
}

Note that it probably is a good idea to include a \break after the
intro, regardless of which of the above strategies you use.

  /Mats