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With a little Scheme code, the current date can easily be added to a score.

There are a couple ways to get the current date in your score - using Scheme and a header that suits you (as you may find in the Adding the current date to a score example), or placing the same Scheme code in a \markup block.

One more option is to place the date in the tagline. This places the date at the bottom of the last page and appears like this -

Engraved on April 26, 2009 with Lilypond 2.12.2 (http://lilypond.org)

The format of the date can be changed according to these parameters:

• %a - is replaced by the locale's abbreviated weekday name.
• %A - is replaced by the locale's full weekday name.
• %b - is replaced by the locale's abbreviated month name.
• %B - is replaced by the locale's full month name.
• %c - is replaced by the locale's appropriate date and time representation.
• %d - is replaced by the day of the month as a decimal number [01,31].
• %I - is replaced by the hour (12-hour clock) as a decimal number [01,12].
• %j - is replaced by the day of the year as a decimal number [001,366].
• %m - is replaced by the month as a decimal number [01,12].
• %M - is replaced by the minute as a decimal number [00,59].
• %p - is replaced by the locale's equivalent of either a.m. or p.m.
• %U - is replaced by the week number of the year (Sunday as the first day of the week) as a decimal number [00,53].
• %w - is replaced by the weekday as a decimal number [0,6], with 0 representing Sunday.
• %W - is replaced by the week number of the year (Monday as the first day of the week) as a decimal number [00,53]. All days in a new year preceding the first Monday are considered to be in week 0.
• %x - is replaced by the locale's appropriate date representation.
• %X - is replaced by the locale's appropriate time representation.
• %y - is replaced by the year without century as a decimal number [00,99].
• %Y - is replaced by the year with century as a decimal number.
• %Z - is replaced by the timezone name or abbreviation, or by no bytes if no timezone information exists.

Skipped beats in very long glissandi are sometimes indicated by timing marks, often consisting of stems without noteheads. Such stems can also be used to carry intermediate expression markings.

If the stems do not align well with the glissando, they may need to be repositioned slightly.

The Volta_engraver by default resides in the Score context, and brackets for the repeat are thus normally only printed over the topmost staff. This can be adjusted by adding the Volta_engraver to the Staff context where the brackets should appear; see also the Volta multi staff snippet.

In some instances of complex polyphonic music, additional voices are necessary to prevent collisions between notes. If more than four parallel voices are needed, additional voices can be added by defining a variable using the Scheme function context-spec-music.

In figured bass, specially designed glyphs for 6\\, 7\\, and 9\\ are used by default. Similarly, specially designed glyphs for symbols 2\+, 4\+, and 5\+ are used by default if plus signs appear after the number.

To change that, pass an alist to figuredBassPlusStrokedAlist and set the glyph in question to #f (or omit it).

The space given to grace notes can be adjusted using the spacing-increment property of Score.GraceSpacing.

This snippet shows how to bring the lyrics line closer to the staff.

Using \override Slur.positions it is possible to set the vertical position of the start and end points of a slur to absolute values (or rather, forcing LilyPond's slur algorithm to consider these values as desired). In many cases, this means a lot of trial and error until good values are found. You probably have tried the \offset command next just to find out that it doesn't work for slurs, emitting a warning instead.

The code in this snippet allows you to tweak the vertical start and end positions by specifying relative changes, similar to \offset.

Syntax: \offsetPositions #'(dy1 . dy2)

The shortest-duration-space property may be tweaked to adjust the shape of falls and doits.