Re: How write cross-staff slur (in combination with lyrics)

[Simon Albrecht]

Hello Jurgen,

On 05.10.2015 12:46, address@hidden wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> I'm a complete newbie here, so please bear with me ;-)
>
> I already spent a couple of hours, reading all manuals and mailing lists,

Reading the manuals is always helpful, but at the beginning it’s a huge 
heap – and after four years there are still parts of the NR I discover 
for the first time… but you’ll get the hang :-)

> trying to engrave something as simple as this:
>
>
> Notice: the "full-measure rests" are not shown in the screenshot 
> (beginner piano book), but I want to engrave them anyway.

I’d suggest working with spacer rests, for the following reason: There 
is only one voice here, so there is no need for visible rests.

> Result: please check lilypond attachment.
>
> 2 problems:
>
> 1.cross-staff slur:
> a. using the list archive, apparently a possible solution is changing 
> staffs.

And a very natural solution, given that it’s the same melody in the same 
voice, which only – changes staff :-) Sometimes LilyPond does have quite 
intuitive syntax.

I attach a version, which shows how I’d do it. There is a certain amount 
of indivuality in how everybody uses to code music in LilyPond. But the 
methods I used here tend to be very robust and versatile, so I may 
recommend studying that.
A few comments:
– the `\context SomeContext = "name-of-the-context" \content` command is 
used to reference an already existing context. In this example, the 
\lyricsto can only be used after the associated Voice has been created, 
so I create an empty Lyrics context first and insert the content later.
– Nitpick: the typographical apostrophe ’ – hard to achieve, alas, on 
most keyboard layouts. And apparently most people don’t seem to mind, 
but I find it much nicer.
– LyricHyphen, \shape and phrasing slur have already been explained. I 
really think they are phrasing slurs, especially in the context of such 
an elementary school, where they just indicate the analysis of the form.
– Separating "global" and "aux" variables will come in handy in more 
complicated situations, here it’s not yet necessary.
– \override VerticalAxisGroup.staff-affinity tells the Lyrics context, 
to which staff it belongs – this changes spacing. Default is #UP.

Happy Ponding!
Yours, Simon

beginners-piano-melody.ly
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beginners-piano-melody.preview.png
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