mpdolce - LilyPond

Chapter 3: Fundamental concepts 51
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This method of nesting new voices briefly is useful when only small sections of the music
are polyphonic, but when the whole staff is largely polyphonic it can be clearer to use multiple
voices throughout, using spacing notes to step over sections where the voice is silent, as here:
\new Staff \relative c' >
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Note columns
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Closely spaced notes in a chord, or notes occurring at the same time in different voices, are
arranged in two, occasionally more, columns to prevent the note heads overlapping. These are
called note columns. There are separate columns for each voice, and the currently specified
voice-dependent shift is applied to the note column if there would otherwise be a collision. This
can be seen in the example above. In bar 2 the C in voice two is shifted to the right relative to
the D in voice one, and in the final chord the C in voice three is also shifted to the right relative
to the other notes.
The \shiftOn, \shiftOnn, \shiftOnnn, and \shiftOff commands specify the degree to
which notes and chords of the voice should be shifted if a collision would otherwise occur. By
default, the outer voices (normally voices one and two) have \shiftOff specified, while the
inner voices (three and four) have \shiftOn specified. When a shift is applied, voices one and
three are shifted to the right and voices two and four to the left.
\shiftOnn and \shiftOnnn define further shift levels which may be specified temporarily to
resolve collisions in complex situations – see Section 4.5.3 [Real music example], page 116.