Forget Finale or Sibelius or any commercial notation software. Among everything I've tried, Lilypond (http://www.lilypond.org/) invariably yields the best results. If you are not using Lilypond to generate your scores, you are producing inferior scores.

Sorry if you paid for an inferior product.

http://knowyourmeme.com/i/000/052/812/original/Deal_with_it_dog_gif.gif?1275684729

It may produce better quality scores, however most people don't want to take the time to learn it.


Hopefully you're using it and willing to start making transcriptions. This site can always use more transcribers, especially one capable of making the best-quality scores. =)

If you're not actually using it, but made this post to try to convince people to use it, well... I think you might be more persuasive using different (less confrontational) wording.

It may work for some people, but I disagree. I have tried Lilypond and I don't like it, because I'm the type of person that needs to see the notes and other things and not a code. As Solaphar said, if you are using it, we'd love to see your transcriptions. : )

As for paying for products, I use Noteflight (sadly...) which is online based (no downloading) and is free.

I'm all about FOSS software -- heck, 90% of what I do is done on open architecture FOSS programs. The problem I have with lilypond is that music is a symbolic language based on pictographs. If you were to sit down and write music in lilypond, you must take the time to think about not only what you're trying to do, but also mentally vision what it is that you're typing.

This is fine for those that are musically inclined and educated in such a way that they can perceive music in a textual form, but for most, it is an extremely difficult thing to do. This is why systems such as Finale and Sibelius have taken off, and FOSS programs such as Rosegarden and Muse are embraced; they provide immediate feedback without that extra level of thought.

I mean... consider the lilyscript below taken from the project documentation (http://lilypond.org/doc/v2.12/input/regression/musicxml/c2/lily-fc99fc2a.ly):

%% Generated by lilypond-book.py
%% Options: [alt=[image of music],printfilename,indent=0\mm,texidoc,line-width=160\mm]
\include "lilypond-book-preamble.ly"


% ************************************************** **************
% Start cut-&-pastable-section
% ************************************************** **************



\paper {
#(define dump-extents #t)

indent = 0\mm
line-width = 160\mm
force-assignment = #""
line-width = #(- line-width (* mm 3.000000))
}

\layout {

}



% ************************************************** **************
% ly snippet:
% ************************************************** **************
\sourcefilename "out-www/11e-TimeSignatures-CompoundMixed.ly"
\sourcefileline 0

\version "2.12.3"
% automatically converted from /main/src/gub/target/linux-x86/src/lilypond-git.sv.gnu.org--lilypond.git-stable-2.12/input/regression/musicxml/11e-TimeSignatures-CompoundMixed.xml

%% additional definitions required by the score:
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
% Formatting of (possibly complex) compound time signatures
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%

#(define-public (insert-markups l m)
(let* ((ll (reverse l)))
(let join-markups ((markups (list (car ll)))
(remaining (cdr ll)))
(if (pair? remaining)
(join-markups (cons (car remaining) (cons m markups)) (cdr remaining))
markups))))

% Use a centered-column inside a left-column, because the centered column
% moves its reference point to the center, which the left-column undoes.
% The center-column also aligns its contented centered, which is not undone...
#(define-public (format-time-fraction time-sig-fraction)
(let* ((revargs (reverse (map number->string time-sig-fraction)))
(den (car revargs))
(nums (reverse (cdr revargs))))
(make-override-markup '(baseline-skip . 0)
(make-number-markup
(make-left-column-markup (list
(make-center-column-markup (list
(make-line-markup (insert-markups nums "+"))
den))))))))

#(define-public (format-complex-compound-time time-sig)
(let* ((sigs (map format-time-fraction time-sig)))
(make-override-markup '(baseline-skip . 0)
(make-number-markup
(make-line-markup
(insert-markups sigs (make-vcenter-markup "+")))))))

#(define-public (format-compound-time time-sig)
(cond
((not (pair? time-sig)) (null-markup))
((pair? (car time-sig)) (format-complex-compound-time time-sig))
(else (format-time-fraction time-sig))))


%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
% Measure length calculation of (possibly complex) compound time signatures
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%

#(define-public (calculate-time-fraction time-sig-fraction)
(let* ((revargs (reverse time-sig-fraction))
(den (car revargs))
(nums (cdr revargs)))
(ly:make-moment (apply + nums) den)))

#(define-public (calculate-complex-compound-time time-sig)
(let* ((sigs (map calculate-time-fraction time-sig)))
(let add-moment ((moment ZERO-MOMENT)
(remaining sigs))
(if (pair? remaining)
(add-moment (ly:moment-add moment (car remaining)) (cdr remaining))
moment))))

#(define-public (calculate-compound-measure-length time-sig)
(cond
((not (pair? time-sig)) (ly:make-moment 4 4))
((pair? (car time-sig)) (calculate-complex-compound-time time-sig))
(else (calculate-time-fraction time-sig))))


%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
% Base beat lenth
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%

#(define-public (calculate-compound-base-beat-full time-sig)
(let* ((den (map last time-sig)))
(apply max den)))

#(define-public (calculate-compound-base-beat time-sig)
(ly:make-moment 1 (cond
((not (pair? time-sig)) 4)
((pair? (car time-sig)) (calculate-compound-base-beat-full time-sig))
(else (calculate-compound-base-beat-full (list time-sig))))))


%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
% The music function to set the complex time signature
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%

compoundMeter =
#(define-music-function (parser location args) (pair?)
(let ((mlen (calculate-compound-measure-length args))
(beat (calculate-compound-base-beat args)))
#{
\once \override Staff.TimeSignature #'stencil = #ly:text-interface::print
\once \override Staff.TimeSignature #'text = #(format-compound-time $args)
% \set Staff.beatGrouping = #(reverse (cdr (reverse $args)))
\set Timing.measureLength = $mlen
\set Timing.timeSignatureFraction = #(cons (ly:moment-main-numerator $mlen)
(ly:moment-main-denominator $mlen))
\set Timing.beatLength = $beat

% TODO: Implement beatGrouping and auto-beam-settings!!!
#} ))


\header {
texidoc = "Compound time signatures of
mixed type: (3+2)/8+3/4."
}

\layout {
\context { \Score
autoBeaming = ##f
}
}
PartPOneVoiceOne = \relative b' {
\clef "treble" \key c \major \compoundMeter #'((3 2 8) (3 4)) b8 [ b8
b8 ] b8 [ b8 ] b4 b4 b4 \bar "|."
}


% The score definition
\new Staff <<
\context Staff <<
\context Voice = "PartPOneVoiceOne" { \PartPOneVoiceOne }
>>
>>




% ************************************************** **************
% end ly snippet
% ************************************************** **************

That looks complex. What does it output?

See 11438.

In the programming world, we have a term used for doing stuff that's for configuring things which are just to change a system to work for your implementation. They're called situps. Injecting a time signature like that takes about 20 steps in a GUI. Lilypond's solution is closer to 166 steps without a GUI to assist.


Another strong point that lilypond suffers from is the lack of details and concise documentation. TIMTOWTDI exists everywhere in the world of TeX markup; this is horrible for trying to document something properly and to get people to advocate it.

Similar to the people above, I have tried lilypond and I have found that it is too difficult of a system for getting ideas out of my head. It does work as a fantastic engraver, as that's what it was designed to do, but it was horrible as a notation platform. This is it's third problem: unlike writing textbooks and novels, music composition is generally a one-stop shop. There isn't the process of write the music and then send the score off to an engraver. Generally all of this is put onto the writer of the score.


All in all, Lilypond does a great job at what it was designed for: Music Engraving, but it is not-so-good as a notation system.

Lilypond does what I need it to do. I'm not a programmer or CS student so I don't know, as per M's description, what the difference is between an engraver and a notation system. I prefer WYSIWYM anyway, so I guess I'm lucky that I can just write music straight through lilypond syntax.

But I'm at a plateau in the learning curve where there are things I'd like to do...but then I have to start doing these weird, complicated tweaks (kinda like the example M posted) that are way above my head (and for such a small product, like this (http://lsr.dsi.unimi.it/LSR/Item?id=204), uhhh O_O). Well, it's difficult for me to comprehend and so then I just stop transcribing or whatever all together, which is annoying.



Forget Finale or Sibelius or any commercial notation software. Among everything I've tried, Lilypond (http://www.lilypond.org/) invariably yields the best results. If you are not using Lilypond to generate your scores, you are producing inferior scores.

Sorry if you paid for an inferior product.


Also my lead sheets can be pretty horrendous, for instance having a section marker on top of a chord symbol on top of a special ending bracket. Getting a set number of bars per measure is an insane task (haven't found an "easy" solution to that yet). It took me ages to find a way to get a metronome marker in a suitable location (and my way was a hack and not really a legit "solution" per se). I just think lilypond's learning curve is way too high. Or, if there was some repository "glossary" of some sort that held desired layout changes just for copy pasting, that would be cool. I keep a glossary like that just 'cause it's faster than typing in the short but meh language for a cut time signature.

I forgot to explain what I meant between Engraver and Notation:

An Engraver for music is one that writes the music out. This is like a scribe is to writing a book. They don't necessarily need to understand the book, but they are absolute experts in typesetting and producing a written product.

A Notation System is one that does everything: engraving, transcription, input, audio output and sequencing. This is like Microsoft Word.

I forgot to explain what I meant between Engraver and Notation:

An Engraver for music is one that writes the music out. This is like a scribe is to writing a book. They don't necessarily need to understand the book, but they are absolute experts in typesetting and producing a written product.

A Notation System is one that does everything: engraving, transcription, input, audio output and sequencing. This is like Microsoft Word.

Oh. Yeah, lilypond's midi output is pretty lackluster IMO.

It may produce better quality scores, however most people don't want to take the time to learn it.


Hopefully you're using it and willing to start making transcriptions. This site can always use more transcribers, especially one capable of making the best-quality scores. =)

If you're not actually using it, but made this post to try to convince people to use it, well... I think you might be more persuasive using different (less confrontational) wording.


Of course I'm using it. This feels like an accusation. I mostly use it to produce arrangements for whatever particular instrument I need at the moment, but i have used it to score some original compositions, for example this simple untitled piano piece (https://sites.google.com/site/wurdfiles/untitledpiano.pdf), or simple sketches like this (https://sites.google.com/site/wurdfiles/melody19.pdf), which was automatically exported from TuxGuitar. It would look better if I did it by hand, but it is still very clear and presentable.

In any case it's easy to learn. To start out with very simple music, writing is as simple as {a b c}. Seriously. Then all you need to do is {a'} to go up an octave and {a,} to go down an octave. If this is hard to understand, there is another problem.



I'm all about FOSS software -- heck, 90% of what I do is done on open architecture FOSS programs. The problem I have with lilypond is that music is a symbolic language based on pictographs. If you were to sit down and write music in lilypond, you must take the time to think about not only what you're trying to do, but also mentally vision what it is that you're typing.

This is fine for those that are musically inclined and educated in such a way that they can perceive music in a textual form, but for most, it is an extremely difficult thing to do. This is why systems such as Finale and Sibelius have taken off, and FOSS programs such as Rosegarden and Muse are embraced; they provide immediate feedback without that extra level of thought.

Most of what you just said there is completely untrue (music symbology is not based on pictographs, etc.), but if it makes you feel any better, I often take down notes in another program (for example TuxGuitar) or simply on paper and then transcribe them into Lilypond. And if you can't look at a staff and transcribe the note names, what are you doing in the first place? If that doesn't suit your fancy, go ahead and try Rosegarden and Muse. If you haven't noticed, they are both designed to integrate with Lilypond to produce high quality output. That's still using Lilypond.


I mean... consider the lilyscript below taken from the project documentation (http://lilypond.org/doc/v2.12/input/regression/musicxml/c2/lily-fc99fc2a.ly):

Way to pick the sample with the highest ratio of input complexity to output complexity. I'll admit that weird time signatures are a little complicated (and rare), but the heart of that score is essentially this:


{b8 b8 b8 b8 b8 b4 b4 b4}



In the programming world, we have a term used for doing stuff that's for configuring things which are just to change a system to work for your implementation. They're called situps. Injecting a time signature like that takes about 20 steps in a GUI. Lilypond's solution is closer to 166 steps without a GUI to assist.

There is another programming term you should know. "Reinventing the wheel" refers to redoing this kind of preliminary work that has already been done by others. You could, for example, go to the project documentation to look up how to do things like complex time signatures, and then just copy that source and modify it as necessary instead of trying to figure out how to do all that yourself. That is if your GUI front end doesn't already handle whatever customization you need at the time. Maybe you should try Frescobaldi (http://www.frescobaldi.org/). But the defaults are suitable almost all the time, so it is rare that you'll need to do this.


Another strong point that lilypond suffers from is the lack of details and concise documentation. TIMTOWTDI exists everywhere in the world of TeX markup; this is horrible for trying to document something properly and to get people to advocate it.

How can it lack details and concise documentation? Either would seem to exclude the other.


Similar to the people above, I have tried lilypond and I have found that it is too difficult of a system for getting ideas out of my head. It does work as a fantastic engraver, as that's what it was designed to do, but it was horrible as a notation platform. This is it's third problem: unlike writing textbooks and novels, music composition is generally a one-stop shop. There isn't the process of write the music and then send the score off to an engraver. Generally all of this is put onto the writer of the score.

Don't you ever write and perform and rework your compositions? Maybe you shouldn't be composing in Lilypond, and I never suggested anyone use it for that. But once I've finished a composition and want to produce a nice-looking score, I go to Lilypond. I'm not going to print some ugly mess that I can't stand to look at.


Getting a set number of bars per measure is an insane task (haven't found an "easy" solution to that yet). It took me ages to find a way to get a metronome marker in a suitable location (and my way was a hack and not really a legit "solution" per se).

You can force line breaks by inserting "\break" after a measure. And to help organize everything, I give each measure its own line in the source file, with the \break on its own line and extra blank lines to divide staff lines or logical groups (blank lines in the source don't matter).
If you don't want to write out the "\break" every time, there is a trick that involves creating an extra voice and putting nothing it it but empty measures and a line break at the end, and then repeating that for the duration of the score. For example, if I want a line break every four measures for a 70-bar composition, I could create a voice containing something like this (assuming 4/4 in this case, but not necessarily):


\linebreaks={\repeat unfold 17 {s1 s s s \break}}

This produces 68 empty measures (17 lines * 4 measures), and any further measures (which will end up being two) will fall as they come on the line after this.

Then you just have to do something like this to put it together.


<{your music here}
\linebreaks>

It might seem a little complicated, but it's something you can do once with two extra lines and never have to redo again. All you have to do is copy, paste, and change the number of lines and blank spaces to suit your composition.
Also Frescobaldi (see above) can do metronome marks automatically, though maybe they aren't ideal.


Oh. Yeah, lilypond's midi output is pretty lackluster IMO.

It's still in development, so it may be missing certain features. What in particular is it lacking? If you show an interest, the developers may be more inlined to focus on adding it.


Sorry this post is so long. There were just so many replies before I could get back to it. If there's anything in particular I didn't address go ahead and ask again.

>>It's still in development, so it may be missing certain features. What in particular is it lacking? If you show an interest, the developers may be more inlined to focus on adding it.

Well I'm not sure if it's something missing from LY's development, or that midi can't support it at all. As for the linebreaks, I got it to work for a bit, but then I was trying to use it like a 12-part score and it got insane for some reason. That's my fault though. I think it's 'cause I don't understand precisely how their /staff and /voice things work. Here's (http://www.mediafire.com/?vpcgypagtvrdxwt) a typical lead sheet source file template thing I use all the time, if you're interested.

Most of what you just said there is completely untrue (music symbology is not based on pictographs, etc.), but if it makes you feel any better, I often take down notes in another program (for example TuxGuitar) or simply on paper and then transcribe them into Lilypond. And if you can't look at a staff and transcribe the note names, what are you doing in the first place? If that doesn't suit your fancy, go ahead and try Rosegarden and Muse. If you haven't noticed, they are both designed to integrate with Lilypond to produce high quality output. That's still using Lilypond.

Really now? Could you explain to me what language and glyphs modern music is written in? Music is written in pictographs stenographic script (my mistake) because to illustrate all the elements on a page in written text is too verbose for someone to read and play at the same time. It is it's own special language that's been refined over 3000 years. Trying to decompose it into English will always produce something more verbose.

And while I can sit down and read note names off from the staff, I can't help but ask the question of "why". It's been written once, why rewrite it again? If the score looks crappy, it's more of a problem with how you did something.

And I'm not denying the fact that Rosegarden and Muse have Lilypond interfaces; what I'm arguing is that directly interfacing with Lilypond is a difficult thing to do.


Way to pick the sample with the highest ratio of input complexity to output complexity. I'll admit that weird time signatures are a little complicated (and rare), but the heart of that score is essentially this:

{b8 b8 b8 b8 b8 b4 b4 b4}

I did have fun going through the examples to find a difficult to understand problem, and the point of me choosing this example was to illustrate a fundamental problem with Scheme and TeX: If the program can't do it out of the box, you're going to spend a lot of time trying to figure out how to do it. The program will be able to do it, it's just a matter of how much time and effort you want to put into the box.

Also, you forgot the situp code for a basic classic score when breaking apart the tutorial's example... Even in the most basic Lilypond score there's Scheme/TeX you'll have to write to get what you want... Here's the "real" code for to provide a basic example:

%Ensure version so that the score doesn't break
\version "2.12.3"

% Main melody variable
melody = \relative c'' {
\clef treble
\key c \major
\time 4/4
% Melody entry
b8 b8 b8 b8 b8 b4 b4 b4
}

% Produce score
\score {
\new Staff \melody %Feed the melody
\layout { } %Generate PDF
\midi { } %Generate MIDI
}

On one side, this is a nice way to distribute music as it's expressive and portable. On the other side, I cannot see people that have just started in music composition to use this as opposed to other tools. And, as the other tools have the same basic functionality all in one package, it's even harder to convert people.


There is another programming term you should know. "Reinventing the wheel" refers to redoing this kind of preliminary work that has already been done by others. You could, for example, go to the project documentation to look up how to do things like complex time signatures, and then just copy that source and modify it as necessary instead of trying to figure out how to do all that yourself. That is if your GUI front end doesn't already handle whatever customization you need at the time. Maybe you should try Frescobaldi. But the defaults are suitable almost all the time, so it is rare that you'll need to do this.

The problem with the "reinventing the wheel" argument is the steep learning curve there is to the actual realization that you are, indeed, reinventing the wheel. How is someone to know that they're reinventing something when they're not extremely familiar with it and it's community?

And that program actually looks pretty cool. Looks like things have moved forward quite a bit from when I tried Lilypond out in Emacs two years ago.


How can it lack details and concise documentation? Either would seem to exclude the other.

You can be concise with details. The problem is eliminating unnecessary discussion without abbreviating the subject at hand. Don't worry, this isn't just a Lilypond problem; it's a programming language problem that Lilypond inherits because of it's Scheme and TeX focus.

But what I was meaning was that the manual for Lilypond has a lot of chapters and a lot of howtos, I felt like I left it without learning a single thing. I had difficulty producing multi-voice scores; which is a fairly basic task in composition. Sure, I may have missed something, but after investing 20 hours of my life to learn how to use something, I expected to know more than what I actually did learn from it.


Don't you ever write and perform and rework your compositions? Maybe you shouldn't be composing in Lilypond, and I never suggested anyone use it for that. But once I've finished a composition and want to produce a nice-looking score, I go to Lilypond. I'm not going to print some ugly mess that I can't stand to look at.

But you clearly stated:


Forget Finale or Sibelius or any commercial notation software.

If my English isn't wrong, I believe this is read as "Don't use Finale, Sibelius, or Commercial Notation Software". Notation software is the whole shebang. Lilypond only does Engraving and MIDI production. I can understand it's worth for Engraving, as I use LaTeX daily and I understand the powergap between LaTeX and Word, but at the same time, composers want and thrive off of immediate feedback.

Basically, Lilypond is not rapid enough.

With this in mind, and considering rewriting music after completion, Lilypond is just an afterthought and added time needed to finalize a work. If you write things properly in Finale and Sibelius, their output is just fine. Especially since Finale and Sibelius have gotten eternities better in the last ten years.

And, to answer the rest, I write music, but I neither perform it nor publish it. Rather I proofread the output and obtain feedback from the performers. Majority of the time, it's not a typesetting issue; it's more about what's on the page than how it was presented.




The most important statistic of all for this argument is exactly how many music production companies use Lilypond for their commercially produced products? I haven't been able to find anything about this anywhere, and while learning it may be good, but if the commercial environment doesn't use it, the tool will become more of a personal hobby rather than a tool in the box when applying for a job.




Again, though, don't get me wrong: Things are moving in the right direction with music engraving. Considering the disaster of a markup MusiXTeX (http://www.mab.jpn.org/musictex/index_en.html) was, Lilypond isn't that bad of a system. But I don't think it's quite ready for the general public to interface with.

Really now? Could you explain to me what language and glyphs modern music is written in?

It is it's own special language that's been refined over 3000 years. Trying to decompose it into English will always produce something more verbose.

You just answered your own question.


Music is written in pictographs stenographic script (my mistake)

Bingo. Music notation doesn't pictographically represent music (What would a sound look like? A series of pressure waves, I guess). Music notes are a series of symbols that symbolically identify a note and are distinguished by such things as their shape and position on a staff. It is certainly a sort of graph, but it is also symbolic. It is just as easy and no less abstract to represent notes with other symbols, such as letters.


And while I can sit down and read note names off from the staff, I can't help but ask the question of "why". It's been written once, why rewrite it again? If the score looks crappy, it's more of a problem with how you did something.

That's not the sort of problem that comes to mind when I'm looking at sheet music with notes that are poorly aligned with all wrong proportions and have transparent grey beams for no particular reason. The really sad thing is that all of this can be fixed by simply exporting the file and building the PDF with Lilypond.



I did have fun going through the examples to find a difficult to understand problem, and the point of me choosing this example was to illustrate a fundamental problem with Scheme and TeX: If the program can't do it out of the box, you're going to spend a lot of time trying to figure out how to do it. The program will be able to do it, it's just a matter of how much time and effort you want to put into the box.

Well, there is nice documentation that tells you everything you need to know in one place. I guess we could argue about its quality, but I think it's enough to say that anybody can read this page (http://www.lilypond.org/text-input.html) and start writing Lilypond files in a few minutes.


Also, you forgot the situp code for a basic classic score when breaking apart the tutorial's example... Even in the most basic Lilypond score there's Scheme/TeX you'll have to write to get what you want... Here's the "real" code for to provide a basic example:

Whatever. It's good practice to include the version, but that won't matter for ordinary music. The beginner doesn't need to worry about it.
And while the rest is useful for organizing your music, most of it is not necessary most of the time. The fact is, if you enter it as I wrote it, it will build just fine. But whatever, Since you've gone and created a nice template for us, we don't have to do that part anymore. Or we can go copy one from somewhere else. Or use the Frescobaldi wizard. Or generate the file automatically with another program. Who cares where it comes from?


The problem with the "reinventing the wheel" argument is the steep learning curve there is to the actual realization that you are, indeed, reinventing the wheel. How is someone to know that they're reinventing something when they're not extremely familiar with it and it's community?

Not really because it works the same way no matter how difficult the issue. If I don't know how to manually change the beaming of notes, I will go look it up and find out that all I have to do is put square brackets around notes to cause them to be beamed them together (and not to to her notes) like so: [a8 g f]. Easy. If I don't know how to create ossia staves, I'll look that up and find some examples (http://www.lilypond.org/doc/v2.12/Documentation/user/lilypond-learning/Size-of-objects) that I can copy. No real struggle. If you can think of a specific problem that is really disproportionately difficult to tackle and you can't find a template to copy, please let me know.



And that program actually looks pretty cool. Looks like things have moved forward quite a bit from when I tried Lilypond out in Emacs two years ago.

Don't tell me Lilypond doesn't cut it if you just tried it and gave up on it two years ago. A lot of things have improved, including the documentation and Lilypond's own functionality. Things like Frescobaldi are just the icing.


But what I was meaning was that the manual for Lilypond has a lot of chapters and a lot of howtos, I felt like I left it without learning a single thing. I had difficulty producing multi-voice scores; which is a fairly basic task in composition. Sure, I may have missed something, but after investing 20 hours of my life to learn how to use something, I expected to know more than what I actually did learn from it.

I guess what you missed was angled brackets. Any two or more elements placed in angled brackets will be engraved together on the staff. This works for individual notes to build chords like <c e g> or for elements consisting of several notes: <{c f g} {c, f, g,}>. There is a more complex voice environment as well, but it does basically the same thing. And I always just set up voices automatically.



If my English isn't wrong, I believe this is read as "Don't use Finale, Sibelius, or Commercial Notation Software". Notation software is the whole shebang. Lilypond only does Engraving and MIDI production. I can understand it's worth for Engraving, as I use LaTeX daily and I understand the powergap between LaTeX and Word, but at the same time, composers want and thrive off of immediate feedback.

What I am saying is don't use them for producing scores unless you are okay with producing inferior scores. Go ahead and use them to compose if you want. But if you bought something to transcribe music, I'm sorry to tell you that you wasted your money. I also want to make it clear that I make no claim that Lilypond is the end-all and be-all of music notation, just that it is the absolute best program available at present for producing high-quality music scores. That is all.


And, to answer the rest, I write music, but I neither perform it nor publish it. Rather I proofread the output and obtain feedback from the performers. Majority of the time, it's not a typesetting issue; it's more about what's on the page than how it was presented.

Typesetting issues usually don't make music unreadable (unless they're really bad), but they can get annoying. If I were giving you feedback on a piece of music that you have generously transcribed/written and made available for me to play, I don't think I would stoop as low and wander as far off topic as to criticize the output of the program you're using. If it really bothers me a lot but I still really want to play it, I'll probably recreate it in Lilypond myself unless there is a particular licence that would prevent that. Basically what I'm saying is you wouldn't expect the feedback to be about this sort of thing unless it is so bad as to be unreadable, and the typical software at least produces functional if mediocre scores. I just think that it is best to strive for a better quality, especially when it is easy to automatically convert your composition.


The most important statistic of all for this argument is exactly how many music production companies use Lilypond for their commercially produced products? I haven't been able to find anything about this anywhere, and while learning it may be good, but if the commercial environment doesn't use it, the tool will become more of a personal hobby rather than a tool in the box when applying for a job.

How may companies use Finale? How many use Sibelius? I don't know that these kinds of numbers are known for any program. Clearly the number of companies using Lilypond for professional engraving is low for a few really obvious reasons.

Lilypond is fairly new compared to the big players in the industry
Lilypond is FOSS, and there is a strong resistance to free software in most industries (though it is catching on)
Companies will always be hesitant to switch to a new system that requires converting a back library (of music in this case), especially if there is the slightest learning curve or the very scary (but not really so difficult) challenge of having to switch from point-and-click to text input



Again, though, don't get me wrong: Things are moving in the right direction with music engraving. Considering the disaster of a markup MusiXTeX (http://www.mab.jpn.org/musictex/index_en.html) was, Lilypond isn't that bad of a system. But I don't think it's quite ready for the general public to interface with.

You're right about MusiXTeX. It is one of the worst.

Do you like, work for lilypond or something?

I wrote all my scores in sibelius. Transcriptions and compositions. They look just fine. And when youre creating a piece of music, its usually pretty useful to see what is coming out as you do it, so you can easily spot any mistakes.

I mean, how can one set of five straight lines, some ovals and some vertical lines be so astoundingly terrible compared to another? :unsure:

Gekkeiju spoke my mind.

Actually, I don't even think the sheet samples you linked were better than what Sibelius/Finale can produce. While I have not used Lilypond before, I find it inconceivable that it would have as much flexibility as the aforementioned notation software (eg. modifying the placement/curvature of your slur markings). Though Lilypond does have the advantage of being free, you'll have to explain what actually makes it superior.

As far as editing goes, I can't imagine anyone finding it actually easier to review Lilypond notation than to just look at the sheet music. While it may not be difficult to learn, it's simply not as intuitive as actually straight up putting notes into sheet music. In the end, you'll have to suppliment it with plenty of other commerical software for something the commercial software alone could have achieved.

All in all, it's just engraving software. What really matters is what's being engraved.

You keep saying that other programs are "inferior." That's an opinion, not a fact. For instance I think that Lilypond is "inferior." And yes, I've tried the program. But that's your opinion, and I respect that.

You keep saying that other programs are "inferior." That's an opinion, not a fact. For instance I think that Lilypond is "inferior." And yes, I've tried the program. But that's your opinion, and I respect that.

This is all that was seriously needed to be posted, however, I did enjoy reading through the argument between M and WurdBendur.

When it comes down to it, it's whatever you like and work best with. Jesus, you gotta get over yourself sometimes.

Of course I'm using it. This feels like an accusation
My goal was to clarify whether you were using the program yourself, while seemingly trying to convince others to use it. Sorry if I sounded too accusatory.


In any case it's easy to learn.
Well, I'd say ease is a matter of perspective. Certainly though, you've made many convincing points about how to more quickly learn some of the basic functions of the program.

If I ever feel the the desire to try it, I'll surely come back and reference your post to help me get started.

Um, obvious troll is obvious? WurdBendur --> Word Bender

Just a note for those who are really still citing the learning curve regarding typing your music, or the lack of instant gratification in writing music as valid reasons not to use LilyPond: I will remind you that several programs exist that can edit scores in a powerful WYSIWYG environment and use LilyPond to produce the final score for PDF or print. Some of these include Denemo (http://denemo.org/index.php/Main_Page), Rosegarden (http://www.rosegardenmusic.com/), NtEd (http://vsr.informatik.tu-chemnitz.de/staff/jan/nted/nted.xhtml), TuxGuitar (http://www.tuxguitar.com.ar/), MuseScore (http://musescore.org/), Canorus (http://canorus.berlios.de/wiki/index.php/Main_Page), and even Noteworthy (via NWC2LY (http://www.holmessoft.co.uk/homepage/software/NWC2LY/index.htm)). Another notable mention is RUMOR (http://www.volny.cz/smilauer/rumor/rumor.html), which can transcribe music in LilyPond format directly from MIDI input (for example, an electronic keyboard).
I understand that learning LilyPond syntax might seem daunting, but the truth is that you really don't have to do that to get most of its benefits. I hope this issue can be put to rest, and I don't intend to discuss it further unless there are specific problems with this approach. It's just that I only want to answer this once instead of repeating it every time somebody repeats the argument.


Do you like, work for lilyPond or something?

Nobody works for LilyPond. It's developed completely by volunteers, and nobody makes money from it, which is clearly what you're really getting at. I don't appreciate being accused of such an underhanded attempt to make a buck by somebody I must assume didn't even bother reading the thread, or else you would have noticed that LilyPond is free software.


I mean, how can one set of five straight lines, some ovals and some vertical lines be so astoundingly terrible compared to another?

Don't use LilyPond. It's not for you.


Gekkeiju spoke my mind.

Oh look, someone else who replied without reading the thread.


Actually, I don't even think the sheet samples you linked were better than what Sibelius/Finale can produce. While I have not used LilyPond before, I find it inconceivable that it would have as much flexibility as the aforementioned notation software (eg. modifying the placement/curvature of your slur markings).

"Inconceivable" is such a strong word. I guess you're saying you can't even imagine the possibility that a music engraving system written on top of and utilizing a complete programming language could be as flexible as the point-and-click tool that allows you to move slurs around? It is true that the more fine control you want over your score, the more complicated it is going to be, but things as simple as adjusting the position of a slur (http://www.lilypond.org/doc/v2.12/Documentation/user/lilypond-learning/Fixing-overlapping-notation#positions-property) can be done without too much trouble, in the somewhat uncommon occasion when you actually need to do that.


Though LilyPond does have the advantage of being free, you'll have to explain what actually makes it superior.

I think you misunderstood. I make no claims about the interface and functionality of LilyPond except that it is easy to learn the basics and that it is immensely powerful in the right hands. Nor do I mean to say that it is better because it is free (only that I feel sympathy for people who paid for software that does the same thing less well, if they bought it for the same purpose). What I claim is clearly superior is its output, which is finely tuned after exemplary models. There is already a background essay (http://www.lilypond.org/doc/v2.12/Documentation/user/lilypond-learning/Background.html) on the LilyPond site that will provide a much better explanation than I can give on exactly how and why it differs from the output of other programs.


All in all, it's just engraving software. What really matters is what's being engraved.

Sure, but I've seen a lot of scores with such severe problems that some notes do in fact become unreadable. A significant number of them also have weird issues such as a great big [Untitled] where the title should be, except on the headers of every other page but the first one, which makes no sense to me, and header text that sometimes overlaps the music. The other thing that consistently annoys me is grey note beams (whereas the note heads and stems and staff and everything else are in black), for which I am sure there is some purpose that I haven't thought of. But aside from the visual annoyance, I wonder if my printer will be able to print those when I start to run low on ink. The majority of these were created with Finale, which seems to be the go-to program around here. Certainly it could do far worse, but it would be so easy to do much better.


You keep saying that other programs are "inferior." That's an opinion, not a fact. For instance I think that LilyPond is "inferior." And yes, I've tried the program. But that's your opinion, and I respect that.

Okay. Use what you like. You are entitled to your opinion, and it would be rude and pointless for me to suggest you use a system you know you do not like. I appreciate your respect, and you have mine, but please see my comments above regarding my actual opinion.


Um, obvious troll is obvious? WurdBendur --> Word Bender

I guess nobody ever could have figured out my user name without your help! Too bad you're wrong (about my being a troll, that is, and about my username being any kind of evidence for that). WurdBendur is a pen name I started using in private writing (get it?) in 2003 or 2004 (I forget which), then used on some forums and mailing lists, particularly in the conlanging community (http://zbb.spinnwebe.com/memberlist.php?mode=viewprofile&u=1343) (where I create languages - get it?) and other language-related communities. It has since become my primary Internet identity. I'm sure if you look me up you can find my real name and pictures and all sorts of incriminating evidence of what a tremendous troll I am. If you're struggling, take a look at the PDFs I linked. They contain my real name, and the site where they are located is hosted by Google on an account that I have been using for approximately five years now (I guess - I don't really remember how long I waited before making the email address to go with the name, but it was no later than 2005). If I'm a troll it must just be who I am, and I'm sorry if I can't help that. But calling me a troll (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad_hominem) doesn't make me wrong.

Yes Joe I read your thread.

Just because something is for free, doesnt mean someone didnt work to create it. Did I say you were getting money from it? No.
Accused? pah.
You -did- just make a thread to tell us how it spits rainbows out its arse, ne?

Okay. Use what you like. You are entitled to your opinion, and it would be rude and pointless for me to suggest you use a system you know you do not like. I appreciate your respect, and you have mine, but please see my comments above regarding my actual opinion.

I did read it. But your original statement said that Lilypond was the best and stuff like that.

I think that when it comes down to it, we should use the programs we like. We try new ones see how they are, and if we like those better, we switch to them. If not, we go back to the others.

My opinion:
I think that it is great that Lilypond is free. However, even if there are other programs that can help, a lot of them cost money to use (please don't start listing free alternatives; I don't really want to hear them). Maybe I would pay for those if I could, but I'm not a legal adult and my parents aren't willing to pay for things like that. But others do and that's there choice.

But that's an opinion : )

Sincerely,
Sango

As my memory has it, I believe Jill Jenn uses Lilypond here. I'd actually like to see his opinion on the software as an internal source that has regularly used it.