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In Lilypond, I am writing a vocal score in closed form (Sop & Alto on top line, Tenor & Bass on bottom) and occasionally I need the parts to divide. This is fine in most cases because the note stems indicate which note belongs to which part, but not when the note has no stem!

The usual method that I've seen is to insert a left square bracket indicating the notes to be grouped together, like so:

divisi whole notes

I have tried searching the documentation high and low for a snippet or something to do with vertical brackets or braces but unfortunately I can't think of any keywords that don't throw up a lot of false hits.

Can anyone help?

mpgrayer
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  • As far as I can tell, this is the wrong place to ask this question. See [/help/on-topic](/help/on-topic) and https://music.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/lilypond – starball Jan 27 '23 at 01:52
  • I think you can do this with an arpeggio. I'll try to provide an answer in a minute. Documentation is here: https://lilypond.org/doc/v2.22/Documentation/notation/common-notation-for-keyboards – ksnortum Jan 27 '23 at 14:53
  • @user I believe that that question comes up regularly, and I don’t know of any consensus. My answer is that writing Lilypond source counts as coding and therefore the question can be seen as on topic here. Music Stackexchange certainly is a fine option too. I ave myself just joined {the Lilypond mailing list](https://lilypond.org/contact.html) and have so far been extremely satisfied with the help I have got there. – Ole V.V. Jan 28 '23 at 11:23
  • If you can post questions about HTML here, you certainly should be able to post questions about LilyPond, although the mailing list and Music StackExchange are good places too. – ksnortum Jan 28 '23 at 15:08

1 Answers1

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It's done with arpeggios, which can be counterintuitive. Here is the basic setup:

\version "2.24.0"

\score {
  \new StaffGroup <<
    \override StaffGroup.Arpeggio.stencil = #ly:arpeggio::brew-chord-bracket
    \new Staff <<
      \new Voice { \voiceOne c''1 }
      \new Voice { \voiceTwo g'1 }
    >>
    \new Staff <<
      \clef bass
      \new Voice { \voiceThree e' }
      \new Voice { \voiceFour <c g>1\arpeggio }
    >>
  >>
}

You may have to adjust the bracket length, but that's another question.

ksnortum
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  • Sure, but wouldn't it make more sense (in this case) to place the override in the staff block and use `\override Staff...`, or in voice block and use `\override Voice...`? – Elements in Space Jan 28 '23 at 00:21
  • @ElementsinSpace, sure either of those work, but I was thinking that since regular arpeggios are not used in SATB, you should override globally so that the brackets can be placed anywhere. – ksnortum Jan 28 '23 at 15:02
  • I was thinking that it's only the basses that are ever going to be divisi, so keep the arpeggio override local to that voice. But your reasoning makes sense too. – Elements in Space Jan 28 '23 at 15:42