Using the whiteout property
Any graphical object can be printed over a white background to mask
parts of objects that lie beneath. This can be useful to improve the
appearance of collisions in complex situations when repositioning
objects is impractical. It is necessary to explicitly set the
layer property to control which objects are masked by the white
background. In this example the collision of the tie with the time
signature is improved by masking out the part of the tie that crosses
the time signature by setting the whiteout property of
TimeSignature. To do this TimeSignature is moved to a
layer above Tie, which is left in the default layer of 1, and
StaffSymbol is moved to a layer above TimeSignature so it
is not masked.
{
\override Score.StaffSymbol.layer = #4
\override Staff.TimeSignature.layer = #3
b'2 b'~
\once \override Staff.TimeSignature.whiteout = ##t
\time 3/4
b' r4
}
![[image of music]](../dc/lily-f1ada696.png)