Choral staff for complex vocal music

[JM Pim]

Hi!

I have an idea to create a new staff group context, based on ChoirStaff, 
that tries to automatically format choral music.

The amount of staves in choral music can vary even during the same piece - 
if a section were in unison across all vocal parts only one stave might be 
printed, if the music is fairly homophonous (almost identical rhythms 
across all parts, little/no part crossing) two staves might be used, 
complicated 8 part music might be displayed in 8 separate staves. The 
assignment of voices to staves can change virtually every system.

(for an example, see 'In dulci jubilo' arranged by R.L. Pearsal in '100 
Carols for Choirs', published by Oxford University Press)

What I would like to do is to input music in a similar way to the satb.ly 
example file - so each distinct vocal part (Soprano 1, Bass 2 etc.) has a 
voice and lyrics context defined. These contexts would feed into the 
ChoralStaff (sic) context which would decide when to combine voices into 
the same stave/voice and when to separated them out. The user could maybe 
specify what arrangements they are prepared to accept.

I am quite happy to try to implement it myself but could do with a bit of 
help to tell me the best way of going about it, which files to extend etc.

Trying to do complicated vocal music in most modern notation packages (qv 
Finale) is a nightmare, this feature could really be the killer feature for 
people like me who mostly work on choral music.

Any help would be very useful!

Mark