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Musical cues

Musical cues can be inserted in Vocal Scores, Vocal Books and Orchestral Parts to indicate what music in another part immediately precedes an entry. Also, cues are often inserted in the piano reduction in Vocal Scores to indicate what each orchestral instrument is playing. This aids the conductor when a full Conductors’ Score is not available.

The basic mechanism for inserting cues is fully explained in the main text, see Quoting other voices and Formatting cue notes. But when many cues have to be inserted, for example, as an aid to a conductor in a vocal score, the instrument name must be positioned carefully just before and close to the start of the cue notes. The following example shows how this is done.

flute = \relative {
  s4 s4 e'' g
}
\addQuote "flute" { \flute }

pianoRH = \relative {
  c''4. g8
  % position name of cue-ing instrument just before the cue notes,
  % and above the staff
  <>^\markup { \right-align { \tiny "Flute" } }
  \cueDuring "flute" #UP { g4 bes4 }
}
pianoLH = \relative { c4 <c' e> e, <g c> }

\score {
  \new PianoStaff <<
    \new Staff {
      \pianoRH
    }
    \new Staff {
      \clef "bass"
      \pianoLH
    }
  >>
}

If a transposing instrument is being quoted the instrument part should specify its key so the conversion of its cue notes will be done automatically. The example below shows this transposition for a B-flat clarinet. The notes in this example are low on the staff so DOWN is specified in \cueDuring (so the stems are down) and the instrument name is positioned below the staff.

clarinet = \relative c' {
  \transposition bes
  fis4 d d c
}
\addQuote "clarinet" { \clarinet }

pianoRH = \relative c'' {
  \transposition c'
  % position name of cue-ing instrument below the staff
  <>_\markup { \right-align { \tiny "Clar." } }
  \cueDuring "clarinet" #DOWN { c4. g8 }
  g4 bes4
}
pianoLH = \relative { c4 <c' e> e, <g c> }

\score {
  <<
    \new PianoStaff <<
      \new Staff {
        \new Voice {
          \pianoRH
        }
      }
      \new Staff {
        \clef "bass"
        \pianoLH
      }
    >>
  >>
}

From these two examples it is clear that inserting many cues in a Vocal Score would be tedious, and the notes of the piano part would become obscured. However, as the following snippet shows, it is possible to define a music function to reduce the amount of typing and to make the piano notes clearer.

Selected Snippets

Adding orchestral cues to a vocal score

This shows one approach to simplify adding many orchestral cues to the piano reduction in a vocal score. The music function \cueWhile takes four arguments: the music from which the cue is to be taken, as defined by \addQuote, the name to be inserted before the cue notes, then either #UP or #DOWN to specify either \voiceOne with the name above the staff or \voiceTwo with the name below the staff, and finally the piano music in parallel with which the cue notes are to appear. The name of the cued instrument is positioned to the left of the cued notes. Many passages can be cued, but they cannot overlap each other in time.

cueWhile =
#(define-music-function
   (instrument name dir music)
   (string? string? ly:dir? ly:music?)
   #{
     \cueDuring $instrument #dir {
       \once \override TextScript.self-alignment-X = #RIGHT
       \once \override TextScript.direction = $dir
       <>-\markup { \tiny #name }
       $music
     }
   #})

flute = \relative c'' {
  \transposition c'
  s4 s4 e g
}
\addQuote "flute" { \flute }

clarinet = \relative c' {
  \transposition bes
  fis4 d d c
}
\addQuote "clarinet" { \clarinet }

singer = \relative c'' { c4. g8 g4 bes4 }
words = \lyricmode { here's the lyr -- ics }

pianoRH = \relative c'' {
  \transposition c'
  \cueWhile "clarinet" "Clar." #DOWN { c4. g8 }
  \cueWhile "flute" "Flute" #UP { g4 bes4 }
}
pianoLH = \relative c { c4 <c' e> e, <g c> }

\score {
  <<
    \new Staff {
      \new Voice = "singer" {
        \singer
      }
    }
    \new Lyrics {
      \lyricsto "singer"
      \words
    }
    \new PianoStaff <<
      \new Staff {
        \new Voice {
          \pianoRH
        }
      }
      \new Staff {
        \clef "bass"
        \pianoLH
      }
    >>
  >>
}

See also

Musical Glossary: cue-notes.

Notation Reference: Aligning objects, Direction and placement, Formatting cue notes, Quoting other voices, Using music functions.

Snippets: Vocal music.

Internals Reference: CueVoice.

Known issues and warnings

\cueDuring automatically inserts a CueVoice context and all cue notes are placed in that context. This means it is not possible to have two overlapping sequences of cue notes by this technique. Overlapping sequences could be entered by explicitly declaring separate CueVoice contexts and using \quoteDuring to extract and insert the cue notes.

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