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If specified, text marks may be aligned with notation objects other than bar lines. These objects include ambitus, breathing-sign, clef, custos, staff-bar, left-edge, key-cancellation, key-signature, and time-signature.

In such cases, text marks will be horizontally centered above the object. However this can be changed, as demonstrated on the second line of this example (in a score with multiple staves, this setting should be done for all the staves).

By default, lyrics syllables that start a melisma are left aligned on their note. The alignment can be altered using the lyricMelismaAlignment property.

The ends of hairpins may be aligned to the LEFT, CENTER or RIGHT of NoteColumn grobs by overriding the property endpoint-alignments, which is a pair of numbers representing the left and right ends of the hairpin. endpoint-alignments are expected to be directions (either -1, 0 or 1). Other values will be transformed with a warning. The right end of a hairpin terminating at a rest is not affected, always ending at the left edge of the rest.

By default, vertically oriented fingerings are positioned outside the staff; that behavior, however, may be disabled. Attention needs to be paid to situations where fingerings and stems are in the same direction: by default, fingerings will avoid only beamed stems. That setting can be changed to avoid no stems or all stems; the following example demonstrates these two options, as well as how to go back to the default behavior.

Sometimes you may want to get a sorted index of the pieces contained in a book. Often the \table-of-content command does this job quite well. However, the problem with it is that it always sorts by page numbers. For books containing many songs it is common to have an index sorted by letters or topics.

Both is possible with this snippet. It takes the code of LilyPond's ly/toc-init.ly file and defines three new commands \indexItem, \indexSection, and \index. The first two are used to define index items, the last one will create the output.

\indexItem and \indexSection both take two arguments (string, markup). The first is used to calculate the order of the items in the output, the second one contains the markup that is actually printed.

  \markuplist \index

  \indexItem #"Berta" \markup "Berta"
  \indexItem #"Clown" \markup "Clown"
  \indexItem #"Adam" \markup "Adam"

By setting the first argument of \indexItem and \indexSection to a different value than the second it is possible to create heavily customized sorted indices. For example, a topic-based index can be achieved by

  \markuplist \index

  \indexSection #"spring" \markup \smallCaps "Songs of Spring"
  \indexItem #"spring - I Like the Flowers" \markup "I Like the Flowers"
  \indexItem #"spring - Der Winter ist vergangen" \markup "Der Winter ist vergangen"

  \indexSection #"rock" \markup \smallCaps "Rock Songs"
  \indexItem #"rock - Stairway to Heaven" \markup "Stairway to heaven"
  \indexItem #"rock - Nothing Else Matters" \markup "Nothing Else Matters"

Limitations:

It is not yet possible to create multiple indices, for example, an alphabetically sorted and a topic-based one. To achieve that a few additions to the snippet would be necessary, which I had not yet time to implement.

Stem lengths on beamed notes can be varied by overriding the beamed-lengths property of the details of the Stem. If a single value is used as an argument, the length applies to all stems. When multiple arguments are used, the first applies to eighth notes, the second to sixteenth notes and so on. The final argument also applies to all notes shorter than the note length of the final argument. Non-integer arguments may also be used.

You can alter the number of stems in a beam. In this example, two sets of four 32nds are joined, as if they were 8th notes.

If you want to adjust the shape of a slur, one way is to specify a new list of control-points. This function offers a different approach by allowing you to adjust existing control-points. This is done by entering a list of offsets (in staff spaces) to the default coordinates:

\shapeSlur #'(x1 y1 x2 y2 x3 y3 x4 y4)

Setting a value to 0 leaves the default coordinate unchanged, so it is easy to maintain a slur's attachment-points while changing its interior.

If you want to adjust the shape of a slur, one way is to specify a new list of control-points. This function offers a different approach by allowing you to adjust existing control-points. This is done by entering a list of offsets (in staff spaces) to the default coordinates:

\shapeSlur #'(x1 y1 x2 y2 x3 y3 x4 y4)

Setting a value to 0 leaves the default coordinate unchanged, so it is easy to maintain a slur's attachment-points while changing its interior.

This snippet is a revised version, by David Nalesnik, of the original (snippet 639).

When preparing song sheets, it's sometimes useful to have the lyrics of all the verses inside the score, correctly lined up to the notes. However, this makes it easy for the singer to mix up verses -- especially when changing systems. A common solution is to alternate the display properties of the lyric lines. This snippet demonstrates how to use such an approach in LilyPond.