Re: support for hymns?

[Mats Bengtsson]

Ted Walther wrote:

> FEATURE TWO:
>
> Many times with hymns there will be the actual music of the hymn.  But a
> convention in some churches is to play a few bars of the hymn, then
> pause, then actually play it.  And possibly at the end play a coda.
> This helps the congregation by reminding them of the tune so they can
> sing along.
>
> Is there a feature to tell the midi output to act in this way?  That is,
> output a few bars, pause a configurable amount of time (3 seconds is
> good) then play the whole thing from the beginning?  And specify a coda
> to play at the end too?

How about:
intro = \relative c'{g e f d | c1 }

tune = \relative c'{c d e f | g2 g | g4 e f e | c1 }

coda = \relative c'{c2 g | c1}

% For the printed output, without the extra intro:
\score{
 {\tune \coda }
}

% For the MIDI output, with the intro:
\score{
 {\intro R1*2 \tune \ coda}
\midi{\tempo 4 = 100}
}

> FEATURE THREE:
>
> With hymns, the music needs to be played once for each verse.  I would
> like to use lilypond to generate accompaniment music for singing along
> to.  Is there a feature to tell lilypond to repeat the midi output once
> for each verse?

Just use
\repeat unfold 5 \tune
to repeat it 5 times.

Conclusion: Just use a separate \score{...} block for your MIDI output
and use the ordinary LilyPond constructs.

  /Mats