I've been playing around with Lilypond for a while now, but I never really dug deep. Now I am digging deep, trying to typeset an adaption in D major of Bach's BWV 1006(a), also known as Partita IV for violin (or lute, depending on the presence of (a)).

When writing for guitar it's important to distinguish whether the thumb or one of the other fingers of your right hand should be used to play a note. The basic idea will be to use two voices, adding inline multiple voices whenever your index, middle and ring finger play simultaneously. Maybe when I feel like (and have more experience) I will write a short guide to writing classical guitar music in Lilypond with all its odds and ends.

Today's post is dedicated to something I've been struggling with for a while. A rhythm of semiquavers, alternating between your thumb and your index/middle finger. I.e., in measure 14 of the prelude I would like to write Alternating semiquavers in Lilypond: example

This is accomplished by wrapping the notes in each voice following the first in square brackets. I can't find any decent reference on this in the Lilypond manual, but you basically say "beam these notes together" this way. So the code necessary to produce the example is 

\relative c''
<<
  \time 3/4
  \key d \major
  { s16 [ d s d s d s d s d s d ] } \\ { d16 [ s fis s e s fis s g s e s ] } >>

Basically I've used two inline voices on top of eachother, fully writing out the measure in semiquavers twice but alternating between the actual notes and silent notes.