Often, different stanzas of one song are put to one melody in slightly
differing ways. Such variations can still be captured with
\lyricsto
.
One possibility is that the text has a melisma in one stanza, but
multiple syllables in another one. One solution is to make the faster
voice ignore the melisma. This is done by setting
ignoreMelismata
in the Lyrics context.
There has one tricky aspect. The setting for ignoreMelismata
must be set one syllable before the non-melismatic syllable
in the text, as shown here,
<< \relative \context Voice = "lahlah" { \set Staff.autoBeaming = ##f c4 \slurDotted f8.[( g16]) a4 } \new Lyrics \lyricsto "lahlah" { more slow -- ly } \new Lyrics \lyricsto "lahlah" { \set ignoreMelismata = ##t % applies to "fas" go fas -- ter \unset ignoreMelismata still } >>
The ignoreMelismata
applies to the syllable “fas”, so it
should be entered before “go”.
The reverse is also possible: making a lyric line slower than the
standard. This can be achieved by insert \skip
s into the
lyrics. For every \skip
, the text will be delayed another note.
For example,
\relative { c c g' } \addlyrics { twin -- \skip 4 kle }
More complex variations in text underlay are possible. It is possible
to switch the melody for a line of lyrics during the text. This is
done by setting the associatedVoice
property. In the example
the text for the first stanza is set to a melody called “lahlah”,
\new Lyrics \lyricsto "lahlah" { Ju -- ras -- sic Park }
The second stanza initially is set to the lahlah
context, but
for the syllable “ran”, it switches to a different melody.
This is achieved with
\set associatedVoice = alternative
Here, alternative
is the name of the Voice
context
containing the triplet.
Again, the command must be one syllable too early, before “Ty” in this case.
\new Lyrics \lyricsto "lahlah" { \set associatedVoice = alternative % applies to "ran" Ty -- ran -- no -- \set associatedVoice = lahlah % applies to "rus" sau -- rus Rex }
The underlay is switched back to the starting situation by assigning
lahlah
to associatedVoice
.
This page is for LilyPond-2.6.3 (stable-branch).