Lilypond: Convenient code for basso continuo horizontal lines?
In basso continuo you sometimes want to place horizontal lines to indicate stable harmony. This is done in LilyPond using bassFigureExtendersOn:
version "2.18.2"
score {
<<
new Staff {
<b' g' f'>4
<c'' g' e'>4
<b' g' d'>2
|
<b' g' f'>4
<c'' g' e'>4
<d'' g' d'>2
}
new Staff { clef bass
d4
e8 c
g2
|
d4
e8 c
b,2
}
figures {
bassFigureExtendersOn
<4 3>4
<6>8 <6> % <- this is problematic
r2
|
<4 3>4
<6>8 <6> % <- this is problematic
<6!>2 % <- this is problematic
}
>>
}
However, this has two drawbacks:
the <6> for c is incorrect technically-speaking (it will show rubbish things if bassFigureExtendersOn is not used.
the b in the second bar needs ! to show the proper thing.
So I wonder whether it's possible to activate an extender manually. Something like <6>8~ q would be great, because while the c shouldn't have a <6>, this would already make the code clear. (This would basically have the opposite effect of !.)
(1)1 Comments
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In Lilypond there is no off-the-shelf way of doing this. However, these things don’t strike me as problematic. The extra 6 on the c here does not mean that the chord is in first inversion, it simply tells the engraver how far to print the line - i.e. it tells it where to ‘tie’ to. It’s not harmonic semantic content, it’s a markup instruction. Using q here would be the same as writing the 6 so I’m not sure how that helps conceptually - nor does it save much typing. q would also not help if the next figure was <6 x> and needed an extender. bassFigureExtendersOn effectively puts a ~ after each <> If you don’t want to use ! then just turn the extenders on and off as required (fwiw this is how I deal with extenders).
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