4

I created this minimal example :

\version "2.21.0"

\include "italiano.ly"

soprano_notes = \relative do' {
  fad fad16 sold8 la16 re4 re16 re8 re16
  re4 re16 dod8 si16 dod2 
}

alto_notes = \relative do' {
  re2 re mi2. mi4
}

tenor_notes = \relative do {
  \clef "G_8"
  la2 fad sol2. ( fad4 ~ fad2) 
}


bass_notes = \relative do {
  \clef bass
  re4 dod si lad
  si2 lad
}

\score {
  \new ChoirStaff <<
    \new Staff
    <<
      \new Voice = "soprano" {
        \soprano_notes
      }
    >>
    \new Staff
    <<
      \new Voice = "alto" {
        \alto_notes
      }
    >>
    \new Staff
    <<
      \new Voice = "bass" {
        \bass_notes
      }
    >>    
  >>
}

And here is the result I have :

minimal example result

As you can see in the third stave, the 4 notes have the same duration but the spacing is incorrect (and the same kind of problem appears in the second measure). I want to have all the notes with the same duration to take the same horizontal space, is that possible?

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  • 2
    What you want is possible, but is frowned upon IMHO. It does not increase the legibility of the score. – yo' Feb 8 '18 at 12:49
  • Right. Horizontal space is not supposed to represent the exact duration of notes, that is indicated by the notes themselves! – leftaroundabout Feb 8 '18 at 15:58
  • @yo' to me it is tremendously helpful when I see a score like this since it provides a second visual cue about where the notes fall in respect to one another. If I was to take your argument to the extreme, we wouldn't need to align bars either since the notes would provide the duration anyways – Thomas Feb 8 '18 at 16:06
  • Well, I can count to four quite well :) But counting to 800 in a 200-bar piece would be tougher :) And also, the point is that simultaneous notes are vertically aligned either way! – yo' Feb 8 '18 at 16:26
7

LilyPond calls this "proportional duration," and you can find it in the manual here.

Within your score block, you'll want to add a layout block:

\layout {
  \context {
    \Score
      proportionalNotationDuration = #(ly:make-moment 1/20)
  }
}

You can adjust the ly:make-moment 1/20 to be 1/16, 1/8, etc. That number tells LilyPond "use this fraction of a whole note as the unit of spacing." It can be any fraction, so experiment to see what works best for you.

The entire code would thus be:

\version "2.21.0"

\include "italiano.ly"

soprano_notes = \relative do' {
  fad fad16 sold8 la16 re4 re16 re8 re16
  re4 re16 dod8 si16 dod2 
}

alto_notes = \relative do' {
  re2 re mi2. mi4
}

tenor_notes = \relative do {
  \clef "G_8"
  la2 fad sol2. ( fad4 ~ fad2) 
}


bass_notes = \relative do {
  \clef bass
  re4 dod si lad
  si2 lad
}

\score {
  \new ChoirStaff <<
    \new Staff
    <<
      \new Voice = "soprano" {
        \soprano_notes
      }
    >>
    \new Staff
    <<
      \new Voice = "alto" {
        \alto_notes
      }
    >>
    \new Staff
    <<
      \new Voice = "bass" {
        \bass_notes
      }
    >>    
  >>
  \layout {
    \context {
      \Score
        proportionalNotationDuration = #(ly:make-moment 1/20)
    }
  }
}

Which creates:

enter image description here

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  • Thanks a lot. If I want a small spacing between notes I will always have this strange spacing when different durations are involved but now I have something to play with ;-) And I don't know how I didn't see it in the manual... :-( – Lhooq Feb 8 '18 at 12:05

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