Alternate endings with chord names above (or below) them look bad

[Sam Whited]

Hi all,

I recently asked this question over on Music.SE [1], but as they don't
have a huge LilyPond user base I thought I'd ask here as well (see the
question there for rendered examples).

I'm working on a score (in LilyPond 9.17.97) that contains some volta
repeats with alternate endings. It also has chords printed above the
staff. By default, the chords are printed below the alternate ending
brackets, which I think looks bad, so I've moved the chords above the
alternate endings by removing the `Volta_engraver' from the score context:

> \layout {
>   \context {
>     \Score
>     \remove "Volta_engraver"
>   }
> }

and adding it to the staff that contains the alternate endings:

> \new Staff = "melody" \with {
>   \consists "Volta_engraver"
> }{
> ...
> }

This works alright, but now the chords that aren't above the alternate
ending marks end up way above the staff with tons of whitespace below
them, which looks equally bad.

I've been digging through my sheet music collection, but haven't found
anything with both alternate endings and chord names to look at; what's
the usual way of engraving this? Would one simply move the chords that
aren't above an alternate ending down closer to the staff? It seems like
this would make the chords hard to read (since they'd be at different
levels). If this is how it's normally done, how can I achieve that
effect in LP?

Thanks,
Sam


[1]:
http://music.stackexchange.com/questions/14143/lilypond-vertical-spacing-alternate-endings-and-chords