Comments on: Typesetting music in LaTeX and LilyPond

By: Murray

Murray — Fri, 13 Jan 2012 13:03:19 +0000

Happy 2012 to you, John.

The B-flat issue reminded me of the German use of “B” for B-flat and “H” for B-natural. I imagine the Dutch may have used a similar convention.

Bach used it as a signature motif: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BACH_motif

By: Marco Fioramonti

Marco Fioramonti — Sun, 20 Nov 2011 16:36:51 +0000

Hello! I am looking for a program which allows me to type many little pieces of music (like a measure, four beats) in a line for my drum class. Do you know how can i do that if i can?

Thanks,

By: Geoffrey Knauth

Geoffrey Knauth — Tue, 08 Mar 2011 16:03:07 +0000

I would like to get my kids (14 and 12) into LaTeX (definitely in high school) and maybe LilyPond, but right now they’re having a blast with Sibelius, writing music, listening to their creations, and going back and forth between their instruments and the computer. I think LilyPond would slow them down, and I wouldn’t want them to get the wrong impression of free software, which is most of the time quite wonderful. I like the Scheme example Jason mentioned–it has the potential to show them connections between music and mathematics.

By: Sam Grainger

Sam Grainger — Wed, 19 Jan 2011 11:34:15 +0000

You’re best using lilypond-book for mixed LaTeX + Lilypond documents:
http://lilypond.org/doc/v2.12/Documentation/user/lilypond-program/Invoking-lilypond_002dbook

Otherwise, an uglier solution:
http://julovi.net/j/?p=76

Finally, you’re probably best having a hunt around http://lilypond.org/ for docs and support. Documentation there is pretty extensive.

By: Leon Gunther

Leon Gunther — Tue, 18 Jan 2011 23:59:59 +0000

I downloaded lilypond.
I also placed a lilypond code in a latex file.
Texshop won’t process it. It gives an error.
I don’t see from the attached info how to get Latex to recognize a lilypond command.
I use Snow Leopard.
THANKS for your help

By: Chris

Chris — Tue, 12 Oct 2010 19:34:00 +0000

Although not specifically for LaTeX, Impro Visor is pretty good at turning simple code into music notation. Or you can use their GUI. It whips up lead sheets nicely.

https://www.cs.hmc.edu/~keller/jazz/improvisor/

By: Sam Grainger

Sam Grainger — Mon, 12 Jul 2010 15:52:50 +0000

Stick with Lilypond. In terms of engraving quality, it’s far and above anything Finale and Sibelius will ever produce and nearly on par with the real music typesetting software such as SCORE. Although Sibelius / Finale may seem easier / faster, lily wins hands down because you very rarely have to mess around laying things out manually.

Lily will never be a composing tool (nor, for that matter will Sib / Finale). For that, Rosegarden + Ardour + JACK etc. is a great solution and can be integrated into a professional setup with the commercial sample libraries for realisations / demos and the like.

By: Ed

Ed — Sat, 11 Apr 2009 04:04:48 +0000

Thanks for this info. I'm going to have to give it a try some time. For most of my typesetting, I've been using Sibelius for years. But occasionally it seems like it makes some things far too hard. For very simple scores that you can post on a blog, take a look at noteflight.

By: Jason

Jason — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 19:19:17 +0000

I use Lilypond for all my music typesetting; I've gotten so it's about three times as fast for me to type Lilypond as to write out a score. I also have had fun with writing Scheme for it; this is an exceptionally fun example (not mine), but you can do simpler, less impressive things to cut out repetitive work. You could probably make a "virtual Philip Glass" and put him out of business . . .

By: Roger Peng

Roger Peng — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 02:49:49 +0000

I never quite got into using Lilypond for music. For some reason it just doesn’t feel right to me. I think, for me, it’s because writing music is still faster by hand than it is on the computer, unlike with typing regular text. Also, I think writing music is more of a spatial process, and so it helps to be able to see the whole sheet, which I find hard to do on the computer (same is true with software like Finale). I guess it might help to have a huge monitor or something (projector?).

By: Nicou

Nicou — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 01:59:30 +0000

I personally hate source code for sheet music. It looks so ugly, and it’s never implemented correctly because of the expressiveness of the songs. For only one instrument (or one hand), it’s kind of fine, though.