Re: Why does skip cause extender line to grow?

[David Wright]

On Wed 09 Oct 2019 at 09:16:27 (-0500), Patrick Karl wrote:
> On 10/8/19 1:58 PM, Kieren MacMillan wrote:
> > > I don't understand why the extender includes the d4 in the third measure.
> > Because you didn’t tell it to stop extending.  ;)
> I thought the single "__" initiated an extender that ended either at
> the end of the current note, in the case of a sequence of tied notes
> (which creates a single note), or at the end of the slur if a slur
> starts on the current note. 

I think you're conflating melismas (§ Multiple notes to one syllable)
and Extenders. The latter are normally stopped by the next lyric.

> If that's true, then, since the initial
> c1 can't be and isn't tied to the d4 and the initial c1 is not slurred
> to the d4,  I had in effect told it to stop extending. 

"In effect", you hadn't.

> If I wanted
> the extender to include the d4, I would (should) have written the
> extender as "__ _".  And for some reason that I can't find explained
> in the Notation RM, LilyPond evidently assumed that that ("__ _") is
> what I had written.

No, \skip and _ don't behave the same. Basically, \skip is impotent:
it just uses up time. It doesn't create anything, but it doesn't stop
anything either. _ is quite different in that it signals that the
notes it is set to are part of a melisma.

One difference is masked by the fact that your first note has a tie.
If you remove it, you can see the effect of _ on c' and, less
dramatically, on e'.

> > > Is there a way to shorten it to the tied c1 in the second measure?
> > If you really want a gap [under the d], then use
> > 
> > %%%  SNIPPET BEGINS
> > \version "2.19.83"
> > music = \relative c' {
> >      c1 ~ c1
> >      d4 e f g }
> > 
> > words = \lyricmode {  Tra __  \markup \null la la la }

And, of course, you can define your melisma-stopper as a variable,
like n = \markup { \null }, used as just \n.

Cheers,
David.

meli.ly
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