The point here is that grouping matters moreso than a simple stream of notes. If you just grab the notes as a stream (this is what happened to me the first tim

The point here is that grouping matters moreso than a simple stream of notes. If you just grab the notes as a stream (this is what happened to me the first time I used lilypond) you lose some of the control over what is considered voices. http://www.robertames.com/blog.cgi/entries/nexus-of-etude.html http://www.robertames.com/blog.cgi/entries/nexus-of-etude.ht... http://www.robertames.com/files/nexus-of-etude/etude.ly http://www.robertames.com/files/nexus-of-etude/etude.ly My mistake that I realize now is that I should have used a concept of "voices" to strictly separate the melody from the bass-line. See here as a contrast from somebody who is muuuuch better at lilypond than me and didn't start with a gui frontend. http://www.mutopiaproject.org/ftp/GiulianiM/O1/Etude4/Etude4.ly http://www.mutopiaproject.org/ftp/GiulianiM/O1/Etude4/Etude4... Relevant section is: \score { { << \new Staff = "giuliani-opus1" << \global \new Voice = "voix1" { \soprano } \new Voice = "voix2" { \basse } >> >> } Compared to my amateur: \score { << \VoiceI >> ...so the stream of notes is ~lossy~ compared to musically knowing that you're layering a repeating melody on top of a bass-line, or occasionally punctuating a melody with chords.