Lilypond: How to Change the Vertical Position of Raised Suffixes in Chord Names?

Question

The Problem

In Lilypond, the raised suffixes in chord names – such as the “sus4” in “C^sus4” – don’t seem to be proportionally changed with chord name font size changes. For example:

\score {
  \new ChordNames {
    \chordmode {
      c:sus4
      \override ChordName.font-size = #-3
      c:sus4
      \override ChordName.font-size = #10
      c:sus4
    }
  }
}

As can be seen, irrespective of the font size, the baseline of the suffix always has the same vertical position.

My Question

How can I correct the vertical position of suffixes in chord names when changing the font size?

I use the latest stable version of Lilypond (v2.18.2).

What I’ve tried

I have already looked at the chordRootNamer and chordNoteNamer properties but neither of them affects the suffixes in chord names: chordRootNamer only affects the “C” in “C^sus4” while chordNoteNamer only affects the “F” in “C^sus4/F”.

I guess I could override the chordNameFunction but then it seems that I would have to entirely format the chord names myself. Ideally I would be able to only partly override the existing chordNameFunction (which seems to be ignatzek-chord-names) or to only decrease the raising amount it applies to suffixes. Any ideas how that could work?

Answer 1

I had the same problem and found a "non-definitive" solution taking into account that I was not using 7+ chords. First I moved all 7 chords to 7+ chords and then defined how I wanted 7+ chords to appear. I know that this is not the best solution, but it worked for me.

You can do that from a terminal as follows:

sed -i 's/:7/:7+/g' *.ly

sed -i 's/\\italianChords/\\italianChords \\set majorSevenSymbol = \\markup{\\raise #-1.0 7}/g' *.ly