32
votes
Accepted
When did the anonymous "you" become popular in western pop music?
I'm going to go with "it was always common". Certainly many Renaissance madrigals are written to "you" (or "thee", as the case may be):
Come again!
Sweet love doth now invite
Thy graces that ...
- 20.9k
17
votes
Accepted
Lilypond is not aligning lyrics correctly
It turns out the Word document I copied the lyrics from contained some non-breaking spaces; these don't stand out in the Lilypond editor* but the compiler doesn't recognize them as word separators. It ...
- 3,644
13
votes
Accepted
Accent alignment in Japanese music with English lyrics
Japanese doesn't have "stress" the way English does. The closest thing is "pitch accent," which is non-lexical and varies by region. Every mora in Japanese (represented by a single ...
- 2,000
9
votes
How to spell "W" in lyrics
I've found three general takes.
In sheet music, the most common is just to write "W___", where the bar extends under the relevant notes/rhythm.
(Image source)
In lyrics-only websites, it ...
- 95k
8
votes
How would you arrange the lyrics to this sheet music for Amazing Grace?
The problem is that your tune is wrong in bars 9 to 11. At least, it's different from the versions I've heard. I prefer your version, but then I'm old and jaded and wouldn't care if I never heard the ...
- 5,543
8
votes
Accepted
Add text at the end of the score in LilyPond
Yes, it is very simple.
In your lilypond file, you can use any number of \score and \markup blocks, one after another, and Lilypond just typesets it all and puts it into one file in the same order. So ...
- 6,690
8
votes
Accepted
How do I get started again when I've lost heart?
You've experienced significant trauma, and it doesn't take a licensed psychologist to say you're experiencing (quite understandable) depression. By all means, you can aspire to return to making music, ...
- 19.2k
8
votes
If you write a song by doing the lyrics first isn’t that technically starting with time (rhythm) rather than with pitch? Is the term for it phrasing?
Starting with lyrics — and only lyrics — does not imply starting with time or pitch. Lyrics could have any duration or rhythm depending on the desires of the composer.
As soon as measures, beats, or ...
- 95k
7
votes
Can non-voice instruments produce the sounds of vocal lyrics?
Speaking piano
The idea behind synthesizing speech from a mechanical instrument is that since speech sounds are (highly complex) combinations of sine waves, and each sine wave represents a pitch, ...
- 95k
7
votes
How do I get started again when I've lost heart?
When you have a problem, you should deal with the problem.
Your problem is not musical.
It's completely off topic to advise you about your actual problem. No one here knows anything about your ...
- 59.5k
7
votes
Accepted
LilyPond lyrics affecting horizontal spacing in score
There is a snippet that tries to make LilyPond favor the spacing of notes at the cost of moving lyric words around.
https://lsr.di.unimi.it/LSR/Item?id=1154
% Snippet author: Jean Abou Samra <jean@...
- 1,941
7
votes
Accepted
How can I condense calls to create lyrics into a single variable call?
You’re almost there, all you have to do is to wrap the various \new Lyrics blocks in double chevrons << & >>. This will make each of these occur simultaneously rather than ...
- 14.9k
6
votes
If I just change the lyrics and flow (very slightly) of a song is it called a cover or a remix?
If you play and sing it yourself, then it's a cover. If you merely use editing tools to change it around, then it's a remix. A remix generally doesn't include a new performance or recording, it's ...
- 58.6k
6
votes
Accepted
A rest with a lyric syllable under it? Is this a typo?
In this case this is very likely a typo. Reasons for it:
It would make little sense with Tallis
There are other editions having a reasonable note there
It is questionable how much editorial structure ...
- 23.1k
5
votes
Accepted
Beams in classical vocal music
There have been various fashions over the years. There seems no justification for syllabic beaming in a modern edition. I sometimes, semi-jocularly, wonder if the practice might be responsible for ...
- 95.6k
5
votes
Scansion. Vocabulary
A poetic foot need not have an even number of syllables, and a poetic line need not have an even number of feet. Furthermore, in some styles of poetry, if not most, it is not uncommon to vary the ...
- 26.4k
5
votes
How would you arrange the lyrics to this sheet music for Amazing Grace?
Look at this version of "Amazing Grace" from the Gather 3rd edition hymnal. It uses the same version of the melody as your sheet music.
Link to image source
- 9,673
5
votes
melisma extender line minimum length
You're almost there! Using \override LyricSpace.minimum-distance = #1.0 is what you're looking for. This changes the space between the words (or syllables) themselves, in doing so also changing the ...
- 85.1k
5
votes
Lilypond avoid \melisma code
It depends on the situation. You have three paradigms: One is using either slurs or beams or using \melisma (which basically just sets melismaBusy to true). The other one is manually skipping notes ...
- 23.1k
5
votes
How to create synthetic speech with a musical synth?
The problem with your Audacity experiment is probably that the EQ filters just aren't steep and selective enough. (and using a single sine wave as input, which leaves the filters with nothing to ...
- 28.7k
5
votes
Accepted
Lilypond: How to avoid overshooting melisma in last stanzas [incl. MWE and output]
Reposting my message to the mailing list here for transparency:
This behaviour is caused by defining new Lyrics contexts in Lyrics contexts as
it seems. I’ve also never seen someone use such notation ...
- 23.1k
5
votes
Accent alignment in Japanese music with English lyrics
The Japanese language does borrow words from other languages and changes them to fit with their standard rules of pronunciation. So the word satellite becomes a word that is pronounced as Sa-Te-Ra-I-...
- 111
4
votes
What's the term for speaking fast in a verse
Patter song is the term you are looking for.
The patter song is characterised by a moderately fast to very fast tempo with a rapid succession of rhythmic patterns in which each syllable of text ...
- 41
4
votes
Rhythm notation for lyrics?
Personally, I prefer as simple notation as possible. Every line will start on the first beat by default. I separate anacrusis (pickup) with the character | (example, line 1 & 3). For rests (...
- 41
4
votes
Can lyrics be added interleaved with notation in lilypond
A quick and dirty way of doing this is to put your music and lyrics into variables like this:
musicA={c d e f | g a b c}
lyricsA=\lyricmode {do re mi fa so la ti do}
musicB={c b a g | f e d c}
...
4
votes
Engraving rules for lyrics (Word "didn't")
So, there is actually a rather comprehensive set of rules regarding syllabification in music, and it differs immensely from standard dictionary syllabification. Dictionaries are made for giving ...
- 41
4
votes
Accepted
What does a cross mean in lyrics?
This character is called a dagger, and is used to indicate a footnote when the asterisk * has already been used. Usually, when there's more footnotes, people tend to use multiple asterisks to indicate ...
- 206
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