Re: Making lyrics quicker

[Aaron Hill]

On 2020-08-11 1:08 am, Paul McKay wrote:
> I'm working on transcribing some movements of an oratorio. In common 
> with
> that genre, the same words (more or less) get repeated over and over 
> again.
> I'm trying to minimize both typing and errors and have come up with the
> following which does most of what I want:
>
> \version "2.20.0"
>
> Lord = \markup \concat { "L" \smallCaps "ord" }
> noSee = \lyricmode { Yet doth the \Lord see it not; }
> mock = \lyricmode { He mock -- eth at us; }
> curse = \lyricmode { His curse hath fal -- len down up -- on us; }
>
> sopranoVerse = \lyricmode {
>     %{p20%}  \mock \noSee \mock \mock \curse
> }
> I still need to type in explicit lyrics for when half-phrases are 
> repeated.
> The real shortcoming is that the phrases actually tend to be followed 
> by
> different punctuation. I've hard coded semicolons in this example, but 
> I'd
> like to be able to replace them with other things without doing much
> typing. Making each one a function would be fine: something like 
> \*curse ! *No
> problem putting punctuation after each one, but I'm only a beginner 
> with
> *define-music-function* and this isn't a music function.

Why would it not be a music function?  Lyrics are music, after all.  In 
particular, \lyricmode results in SequentialMusic consisting of 
LyricEvents.

Here is a function that modifies the text of the last LyricEvent, 
appending the specified punctuation:

%%%%
\version "2.20.0"

#(define (lyrics? x)
  (and (ly:music? x)
       (music-is-of-type? x 'sequential-music)
       (every (music-type-predicate '(lyric-event))
              (ly:prob-property x 'elements))))

addPunct = #(define-music-function
  (lyrics punct)
  (lyrics? markup?)
  (let* ((elts (ly:prob-property lyrics 'elements))
         (last (car (take-right elts 1)))
         (text (ly:prob-property last 'text)))
    (ly:prob-set-property! last 'text
      #{ \markup \concat { $text $punct } #})
    lyrics))

foo = \lyricmode { foo foo foo }

\new Voice \fixed c' { g8 fis g4 a4. b8 | c'1 }
\addlyrics { \addPunct \foo "," \addPunct \foo "!" }
%%%%


-- Aaron Hill

lyric-add-punct.cropped.png
Description: PNG image