# Horizontal spacing of notes with multiple staves

I created this minimal example :

``````\version "2.21.0"

\include "italiano.ly"

soprano_notes = \relative do' {
re4 re16 dod8 si16 dod2
}

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

tenor_notes = \relative do {
\clef "G_8"
}

bass_notes = \relative do {
\clef bass
}

\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 :

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?

• 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

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' {
re4 re16 dod8 si16 dod2
}

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

tenor_notes = \relative do {
\clef "G_8"
}

bass_notes = \relative do {
\clef bass
}

\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:

• 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