Ambitus - GNU LilyPond
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#### 7.3.10 Ambitus

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.

##### See also

Program reference: Ambitus, AmbitusLine, AmbitusNoteHead, AmbitusAccidental.

Examples: `input/regression/ambitus.ly`.

##### Bugs

There is no collision handling in the case of multiple per-voice ambitus.

This page is for LilyPond-2.8.8 (stable-branch).

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