LilyPond in practice
With LilyPond we have tried to make the most beautiful music typography available for everyone. Let's see what that means in practice.
Lead sheets
One of the things you can typeset is pop music. Here is an example:
Click image to enlarge
This example shows chord names, drum notation and tablature in action. Note the polyphonic notation for the horn section, and note how the chords (The "Em7" and "Hm7" printed at the top) use Danish chord names. The latter simply is a layout option. By switching back a toggle, you can print English chord names.
Classical music
Our work on LilyPond is inspired by classical engraving, so classical music is no problem. Simple solo pieces are set in a breeze,
(Click image for a PDF file)
and with a little work, complex pieces are also possible
(Click image for a PDF file)
More samples of the latest LilyPond versions are included in the documentation pages. There are separate pages for the stable and for the development release.
Modern music
With its ASCII interface and flexible design, LilyPond is uniquely suited for various modern music and non-standard notation.
Collect music on-line
LilyPond is free (as in “freedom”), so it is a safe format for exchanging and archiving music. If a composer died more than 70 years ago, then his music is in the Public Domain. It may freely be put into (digital) libraries. This is what the Mutopia project is about: a collection of music, typeset in LilyPond.
All the music on Mutopia is in the public domain, so you can download and print it without costs. If you're not satisfied, then add other fingerings, transpose it, or use it in your own compositions.
Print databases
LilyPond can run unattended. For example, it can easily be scripted to convert complete databases of music automatically. One example is the Computer Science department at Utrecht University, with an online search service, with almost half a million music fragments for music retrieval research. LilyPond's automated engraving provided notation for all of them.
Curious?
Check out how prints like these are made.