7.3 Vocal music

Since LilyPond input files are text, there are two issues to consider when working with vocal music:

• Song texts must be entered as text, not notes. For example, the input d should be interpreted as a one letter syllable, not the note D.
• Song texts must be aligned with the notes of their melody.

There are a few different ways to define lyrics; the simplest way is to use the \addlyrics function.

• Setting simple songs
• Entering lyrics
• Hyphens and extenders
• The Lyrics context
• Melismata
• Another way of entering lyrics
• Flexibility in placement
• Spacing lyrics
• More about stanzas
• Ambitus
• Other vocal issues

Commonly tweaked properties

Checking to make sure that text scripts and lyrics are within the margins is a relatively large computational task. To speed up processing, lilypond does not perform such calculations by default; to enable it, use

\override Score.PaperColumn #'keep-inside-line = ##t

To make lyrics avoid barlines as well, use

\layout {
  \context {
    \Lyrics
      \consists "Bar_engraver"
      \consists "Separating_line_group_engraver"
      \override BarLine #'transparent = ##t
  }
}