8

I’m trying to improve the legibility of my scores by increasing the basic-distance between systems. There needs to be some whitespace between the last verse and the next system below.

Here's what I’ve tried so far

nonstaff-unrelatedstaff-spacing.basic-distance = #18

=> does not work between systems, but only staves in the same system.

system-system-spacing.basic-distance = #14

=> increases the basic distance between the staves that are facing each other across systems, but does not include the lyrics between them. I would thus have to increase the distance depending on the number of verses.

I am also not sure, where to put the lines. Mostly I’ve placed them in a \paper block at the top of the file

\paper {
  system-system-spacing.basic-distance = #18
}

but I have also tried putting them in layout in the lyrics’ context

\score {
  \layout {
    \context { \Lyrics
      \override VerticalAxisGroup.nonstaff-unrelatedstaff-spacing.basic-distance = #18
    }
  }
  %{ … %}
}

this did not yield any noticeably different results from the above examples.

example

Any pointers would be welcome, all this seems like an oversight to me but I am starting to get the feeling that nobody has thought about this so far. I'd be happy to help filing an issue with the dev team, should it come to that.

edit: Using padding instead of basic-distance solved the problem.

correct spacing

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1
  • Possible kludge: add a whitespace-only line above and below the existing text block.
    – Carl Witthoft
    May 29, 2018 at 11:22

2 Answers 2

Reset to default
5

If something like what you have posted is not working, it may be because your instructions are attempting to reference a part of your score that you haven't spelled out (that is, while you may be attempting to put space between systems, with lyrics below them, maybe your score isn't structured that way).

For instance: (code here: http://lilybin.com/36udgm/1)

\version "2.18.2"
\paper {
  system-system-spacing = #'((padding . 20))
}
melody = \relative c' {
  \repeat unfold 12 { 
    b'4 b b b
  }
}
words = \lyricmode {
  \repeat unfold 12 {
    Lor -- em ip -- sum
  }
}
\score {
  <<
    \new ChoirStaff <<
      \new Voice = "sing" { \melody }
      \new Lyrics \lyricsto sing \words
      \new Lyrics \lyricsto sing \words
      \new Lyrics \lyricsto sing \words
      \new Lyrics \lyricsto sing \words
      \new Voice = "sing" { \melody }
    >>
      \new Lyrics \lyricsto sing \words
      \new Lyrics \lyricsto sing \words
      \new Lyrics \lyricsto sing \words
      \new Lyrics \lyricsto sing \words
  >>
}

enter image description here

Is this what you are trying to achieve?

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3
  • I think I see what you mean. It has to be independent of the number of verses. I'll compile a visual example to illustrate.
    – user47377
    May 30, 2018 at 17:50
  • After playing around with your example I realised that my mistake has been to use basic-distance instead of padding, works perfectly now, thank you.
    – user47377
    May 30, 2018 at 19:01
  • @JoëlMeyer-Hamme - Try reading through here: lilypond.org/doc/v2.18/Documentation/notation/… for an explanation on the other options --- I have always used padding because I don't understand their definitions of most of the others.
    – Neal
    May 30, 2018 at 19:12
2

Just for completeness, here are all the parameters for that function, with their default values:

system-system-spacing =
  #'((basic-distance . 12) 
     (minimum-distance . 8)
     (padding . 1)
     (stretchability . 60))
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