Lilypond templates for shape-note music

Write music and lyrics; the heavy lifting is done for you.

The layout template takes care of some shape-note standards:

• Repeats with four dots
• Removing brackets over alternate endings
• Forcing hyphens to appear in lyrics
• Multi-page headings ("Continued" and "Concluded")
• Adjustments to the default note, lyric, and staff size and weights.

A repeat mark can be placed at the beginning of the piece by adding an explicit \bar.

D.C. can be indicated using two markup commands: \dc and \fine.

% examples/pardoning_love.ly
tenorMusic = \relative do' {
  \bar ".;"                 % Explicit beginning repeat mark
  \repeat volta 2 {
    % [music]
    \fine                   % "Fine." markup
  }
  \time 6/4
  % [music]
  \bar "|."                 % Explicit ending bar
  \dc                       % "D.C." markup
}

D.C. can be indicated in the lyrics using \stanzaDC.

A separate (hidden) score is created for midi output, which does the following:

• Lowers the pitch a whole step, to approximate the key the music would be sung in.
• Unfolds repeats and D.C. (as long as you used \dc and \fine).
• Attempts to accent the music in sacred harp style with primary and secondary accents, according to the time signature.

  • This works by attaching dynamics to each note based on where it falls in the measure

  • The amount of accent can be adjusted:

    % These are the default settings
    \setAccentDynamics "ff" "f" "mp"   % primary, secondary, unaccented

Parts can be muted:

trebleMusic = \relative do' {
  \mute
  sol'2 sol4 mi mi4 sol do do do2
}

Or a single part can solo:

trebleMusic = \relative do' {
  \solo
  sol'2 sol4 mi mi4 sol do do do2
}