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The term ambitus denotes a range of pitches for a given voice in a part of music. It may also denote the pitch range that a musical instrument is capable of playing. Ambits are printed on vocal parts, so performers can easily determine it meets their capabilities.
Ambits are denoted at the beginning of a piece near the initial clef. The range is graphically specified by two note heads that represent the minimum and maximum pitch. To print such ambits, add the Ambitus_engraver to the Voice context, for example,
\layout {
\context {
\Voice
\consists Ambitus_engraver
}
}
This results in the following output
If you have multiple voices in a single staff and you want a single ambitus per staff rather than per each voice, add the Ambitus_engraver to the Staff context rather than to the Voice context. Here is an example,
\new Staff \with {
\consists "Ambitus_engraver"
}
<<
\new Voice \with {
\remove "Ambitus_engraver"
} \relative c'' {
\override Ambitus #'X-offset = #-1.0
\voiceOne
c4 a d e f2
}
\new Voice \with {
\remove "Ambitus_engraver"
} \relative c' {
\voiceTwo
es4 f g as b2
}
>>
This example uses one advanced feature,
\override Ambitus #'X-offset = #-1.0
This code moves the ambitus to the left. The same effect could have
been achieved with extra-offset, but then the formatting system
would not reserve space for the moved object.
Program reference: Ambitus, AmbitusLine, AmbitusNoteHead, AmbitusAccidental.
Examples: input/regression/ambitus.ly.
There is no collision handling in the case of multiple per-voice ambitus.
This page is for LilyPond-2.8.8 (stable-branch).