Re: Improving alignment of pedal marks

[Trevor Daniels]

Arle, you wrote Saturday, December 15, 2012 10:04 PM

> The second problem remains. How can I improve the vertical alignment of pedal 
> marks? The piece I am working on has a lot of situations like the following:

> I know that this is acceptable at some level, but it would look MUCH nicer 
> (neater and more intentional) if all of the pedal marks were vertically 
> aligned rather than arrayed here and there to avoid other objects. I realize 
> that not everyone would want this and that for many pieces it would be 
> needed, but for the one I'm working on if all the pedal brackets lined up (at 
> least within a row), it would be a marked improvement, especially as this 
> piece is already quite visually noisy.

I've expanded a bit on your suggestion to use a separate Staff/Voice to carry 
the pedal marks.  This will need some refinement, but it seems to do the trick:

<<
  \new Staff
  \with {
    \override VerticalAxisGroup.staff-staff-spacing =
      #'((basic-distance . 1)
         (minimum-distance . 1)
         (padding . 1))
    } {
    \new Voice {
      \relative c' {
        f,, f' f, f''
        \repeat unfold 8 { f f' f, f'' }
        f,, f,, f f''
      }
    }
  }
  \new Staff
  \with {
    \remove Staff_symbol_engraver
    \remove Clef_engraver
    \remove Time_signature_engraver
  } {
    \new Voice {
      \set Staff.pedalSustainStyle = #'mixed
      \repeat unfold 5 { s s\sustainOn s s s\sustainOff s s }
      s s\sustainOn s s s\sustainOff
    }
  }
>>

Trevor