Making an object invisible using \hide

Applying \hide to a grob causes objects of this type to be printed with „invisible ink“. They are not printed, but all of their other behavior is retained:

This snippet demonstrates how to connect different voices using ties. Normally, ties only connect two notes in the same voice. By introducing a tie in a different voice, and blanking the first up-stem in that voice, the tie appears to cross voices.

\relative {
  \time 2/4
  <<
    {
      \once \hide Stem
      \once \override Stem.length = #8
      b'8 ~ 8\noBeam
      \once \hide Stem
      \once \override Stem.length = #8
      g8 ~ 8\noBeam
    }
    \\
    {
      b8 g g e
    }
  >>
}

\paper {
  line-width = 40\mm
  ragged-right = ##f
}
[image of music]

LilyPond snippets v2.25.33 (development-branch).