Hello, Lilypond! I've transcribed my first simple piece, and now I'm trying to learn some more sophisticated features, and I ran into strange new syntax in many of the examples: << >>
In order to figure out what this means, here's what I tried: - Looked in the symbol section of the index (it's not there): https://lilypond.org/doc/v2.25/Documentation/notation/lilypond-index - Used the search box on the documentation page (which uses google.com, which is not so good at searching for non-alphanumeric symbols) - Tried searching these same places for descriptions and synonyms, like "less than" - Tried searching for other grouping symbols (like {} and []) which I thought might be synonyms (but aren't) - Tried a general web search for all of the above, too - Downloaded the Lilypond notation reference as a PDF (930 pages!), and tried a full-text search for the string "<<" (450 matches!) Eventually, I ran across the description of this syntax, purely by luck: it's a "temporary polyphonic passage" -- https://lilypond.org/doc/v2.24/Documentation/notation/multiple-voices#single_002dstaff-polyphony The notation reference is huge but that's OK because it's generally good at letting me learn syntax on an as-needed basis. But in the case of << >> I'm not sure how I could have looked this up, short of reading the entire manual cover-to-cover. The reference manual uses << >> in examples 73 times before finally describing (on page 213) what it means. I guess this is a long-winded way of saying that I think << >> should be in the index. Thanks for a great program! - Ken
