Hello Andrew, Right, so I'm not asking for two rests to actually be tied. I was just hoping that the behavior of a lone duration value would repeat the rest right before it and not skip back till it finds a note.
For example, instead of {c4 r4 16} resulting in "C, rest, C", it would be "C, rest, rest" with no ties anywhere. But if that is not the expected behavior from most people then perhaps adding a tie to the rest could tell LilyPond to make that lone duration a rest instead of skipping back till it finds a note. So {c4 r4~ 16) would result in: C, rest, rest (with no ties in the actual sheet music). If not the tilde then perhaps some other symbol to signify this behavior. > Why cant you just have a rest of the appropriate duration? You can have dotted rests you know, and durations can be scaled as can note durations. My software can handle all normal durations including dotted ones. But a quarter tied to a 16th can only be notated with a tie. There is no other simple way to notate it which means I need two notes or two rests in my LilyPond file. I don't think scaling the duration will produce something that a performer would understand. I'm sure I can eventually figure out how to make LilyPond's current behavior work with my software, it's just that it will take a lot of work. If a lone duration would use a previous rest instead of going back to find a note, then it would be much easier for me to implement. Dave On Sun, Feb 21, 2021 at 11:23 PM Andrew Bernard <andrew.bern...@gmail.com> wrote: > > Ties rests make no musical sense, even in relation to programmatically > generated music. Why cant you just have a rest of the appropriate > duration? You can have dotted rests you know, and durations can be > scaled as can note durations. > > a > > >