Lilypond layouts - position Instrument Name for a concert band part

Question

I'm creating pdfs with a single melodic part. In this case I'm not crazy about the instrument name in an indent of the music, so I was started putting the instrument name as a sub title and remove the Instrument_name_engraver and indents from the layout. I recently started repeating the same part in the same document for different transpositions for a variety of solo instruments, and customizing layouts for instruments individually just feels cumbersome.

I'm looking for a way, ideally without just shifting the position manually, to move the results of the lilypond Instrument_name_engraver to the top left corner (almost) of the page, in a template, the way I see the majority of individual instrument parts for concert band. Lilyponds defaults seem to be better suited for scores or when multiple voices are being staved together.

My experience with moving the instrument name field manually, is that it changes somewhat depending on the title and other annotations such as tempo markings.

Answer 1

See here for the documentation on creating custom titles.

In your case, you need to add a new field at the top level, here listed as:

\fill-line {
  \bold \box \fromproperty #'header:instrument
  \null
}

---

in the scoreTitleMarkup. Then, simply add your instrument in the \header for each score that you are creating. The title will be added automatically.

\version "2.18.0"
\header {
  title = "Baa Baa Black Sheep"
  poet = "Anonymous"
  composer = "Nursery Rhyme"
  tagline = ##f
}
\paper {
  indent = #0
  print-page-number = ##f
  bookTitleMarkup = ##f
  scoreTitleMarkup = \markup \center-column {
    \fill-line {
      \bold \box \fromproperty #'header:instrument
      \null
    }
    \fill-line {
      \bold \fontsize #3 \fromproperty #'header:title
    }
    \fill-line {
      \fromproperty #'header:poet
      \fromproperty #'header:composer
    }
  }
}
example = \relative c' {
  \key c \major
  \time 4/4
  c4 c g' g a8 a a a g2
  f4 f e e d d c2
  \bar "|."
}
\bookpart {
  \score {
    <<
      \new Staff \transpose c d { \example }
    >>
    \header {
      instrument = \markup \concat { "B" \flat " Trumpet" }
    }
  }
}
\bookpart {
  \score {
    <<
      \new Staff \transpose c c' { \example }
    >>
    \header {
      instrument = "Flute"
    }
  }
}