RE: Lyrics without visible notes

I came up with the following kludge that works for the Soprano/Alto staff:

% Hidden Note
H = { \hideNotes c'4 \unHideNotes }

then in the score, I enter as many hidden notes as necessary for the number of syllables until the next pitch change

f'4 \H \H \H \H \H \H \H \H \H \H \H \H f'4 g'4 a'2 g'4 f'4 e'2

The only catch is the note is not truly hidden because the spacing below the staff takes the c' into account even if there are no visible notes below the staff. So, a different definition may be required for the Tenor/Bass staff if you don't want the spacing for a middle c above it.

I still believe a solution using skip notes would be preferable.

Another option, if someone out there understands scheme function definitions, is to come up with a function like

f'4 \repeatHidden { c' 12 } f'4 g'4 a'2 g'4 f'4 e'2

which would allow you to easily specify the true pitch for the repeated note and the number of times to repeat the hidden note.

Putting a skip in the lyrics prints a note without lyrics under it. But putting a skip in the music does not print the lyrics without a note over it; instead, the words are just shifted to the next note.

It is useful to able to use note skips to fix spacing issues around bar lines, but I believe it would be much more intuitive to have the behavior of skips completely reciprocal between music and lyrics. If you want both blank music and lyrics for spacing, it would make more sense to enter a skip in BOTH.

There is another way to enter hidden notes, but the directions are in the documentation under "Educational Use", and if you have to do this over and over it gets tedious, especially since you have to enter the pitch:

f4 \hideNotes f4 f4 f4 f4 \unHideNotes f4

Up to now I have been using a breve to represent repeated pitch for chant music (see snippet below), but I'm finding that sometimes this makes the music too cluttered and confusing for the choir because of spacing issues around the lyrics in quotation marks, especially if ragged-right = ##f. I would rather print the words without anything over them until the pitch changes and use hidden notes to fix the spacing.

NM = { \cadenzaOff \bar "|" \cadenzaOn }

NL = { \cadenzaOff \bar ":" \break \cadenzaOn }

\score { \new StaffGroup <<
\new Staff = women <<
  \clef treble
  \key f \major
  \new Voice = "Soprano" {\voiceOne \cadenzaOn \override Stem #'length = #5
            #(set-accidental-style 'forget)
            f'4 f'\breve f'4 g'4 a'2( g'4 f'4) e'2 \NM \break
            e'4 e'\breve e'4 f'4 g'2 f'4( e'4) f'2 \NM \break
            d'4 d'\breve d'4 e'4 f'2( e'4 d'4) cis'2 \NM \break
            cis'4 cis'\breve cis'4 d'4 e'2( d'4 cis'4) d'2( e'2) \bar "|"
   }
  \new Lyrics \lyricsto "Soprano" {
            Re- "joice, O chosen by God of all" gen- e- ra- "tions!" |
            Re- "joice, holy ves-" sel of God the "Word!" |
            Re- "joice, fulfillment of pro- phet-" ic fore- tell- "ing!" |
            Re- "joice, most hon- or- a- ble crown of" the dis- ci- "ples!"
   }
  >>
>>
\layout { \context { \Staff
   \remove "Time_signature_engraver"
   }
   between-system-padding = 0.1\in
   between-system-space = 0.1\in
   indent = #0
   ragged-right = ##t
   ragged-last = ##t
}
\header {
  piece = ""
  opus = ""
  }
}

From:	Paul Harouff
Subject:	RE: Lyrics without visible notes
Date:	Mon, 27 Aug 2007 14:50:28 -0500