Hi Ryan,

I feared as much. I assume you are talking about the curve in the extract from 
your sample, attached for reference.

Lilypond slurs are Bezier curves that have two control points. That means you 
can’t create arbitrary wavy curves like that with that object – you need a 
large number of control points for that. (As an aside, if you do want to shape 
slurs there is an even nicer function that \shape called \shapeII in the 
openlilylib library.)

So what are the alternatives? Take a look at the NR section on graphics in 
markup.

http://lilypond.org/doc/v2.18/Documentation/notation/graphic

You could use the path command, which will allow an arbitrarily long list of 
curveto commands – consequently as many control points as you want. Since 
lilypond is not a graphical drawing tool, this approach, for the curves you 
show, would take a very large amount of effort, compiling and adjusting.

You can also use Postscript directly in markup, and you could write Postscript 
path commands. This has similar drawbacks to the above, but you can use 
Ghostscript as a development environment to see the curve. Again, painstakingly 
difficult. Also, if you incorporate Postscript into your lilypond file, it will 
not come out if you need to render the output in SVG.

The least nice way is to export to SVG and then create your curve in the 
document in Inkscape, or other SVG editor. This is a last resort, because once 
you go out to Inkscape you can’t come back again into lilypond.

Lilypond graphics markup allows the inclusion of EPS (encapsulated Postscript). 
So you could draw the curve in Adobe Illustrator, export as EPS, and include as 
an EPS file in lilypond.

I engrave vastly complex New Complexity School scores by a composer colleague 
of mine. The modernist notation challenges lilypond at every turn and every 
measure, so I am used to these issues! In the end, often, I feel defeated by 
the composer who has nothing more than an HB pencil!

Andrew



On 17/11/2015, 08:37, "Ryan Michael" <ryan.wiegh...@gmail.com> wrote:

The curves, say, on the second treble staff, in the image.
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