LilyPond – Music notation for everyone
LilyPond
LilyPond is a music engraving program, devoted to producing the highest-quality sheet music possible. It brings the aesthetics of traditionally engraved music to computer printouts. LilyPond is free software and part of the GNU Project.
Read more in our Introduction!
Beautiful Sheet Music
LilyPond is a powerful and flexible tool for engraving tasks of all kinds, for example classical music (like the example above by J.S. Bach), complex notation, early music, modern music, tablature, vocal music, lead sheets, educational materials, large orchestral projects, customized output, and even Schenker graphs.
Browse our gallery of Examples and be inspired!
| Introduction | Start here to creating sheet music. | |
| Download | Get LilyPond. | |
| Manuals | Read The Fine Manuals (RTFM). | |
| Community | Contact other users. |
Introduction
Our Goal
LilyPond came about when two musicians wanted to go beyond the soulless look of computer-printed sheet music. Musicians prefer reading beautiful music, so why couldn’t programmers write software to produce elegant printed parts?
The result is a program that creates beautiful sheet music following the best traditions of classical music engraving. It takes care of the details of layout programmatically, allowing composers, transcribers and publishers to focus on the music instead of improving their software’s default output. Performers will get parts that let them concentrate on playing music instead of reading it.
What LilyPond does
- Features: What can LilyPond do?
- Examples: I want to see some music!
- Freedom: LilyPond is Free Software.
- Background: Our computational aesthetics.
How LilyPond works
- Text input: You write music as text?!
- Easier editing: Other ways of working with LilyPond.
| Features | What can LilyPond do? | |
| Examples | I want to see some music! | |
| Freedom | Freedom and the GPL. | |
| Background | Computational aesthetics. | |
| Productions | Real-life use of LilyPond. | |
| Reviews | What do people say about it? | |
| Text input | You write music as text?! | |
| Easier editing | Other ways of working with LilyPond. |
Features
Excellent classical engraving
LilyPond allows musicians to produce elegant sheet music that is easy to read. Its developer community has spent thousands of hours developing powerful music engraving software that results in beautifully engraved music. All of LilyPond’s style settings, font designs and algorithms have been inspired by the finest hand-engraved music. LilyPond output has the same strong, balanced and elegant look as the best-engraved classical scores. This is further explained in our Essay.
Text input
Everything is explicit
LilyPond processes text input, which contains all information about the content of your score and can easily be read by any human or another program. There are no obscure settings hidden behind menu items and binary file storage.
Read more about this concept on Text input.
Tweaks are robust and traceable
If you have to change anything in the layout this tweak will also be explicitly visible in the input file in human-readable form, so you will always be able to retrace what you’ve done. If you should accidentally break anything you can easily revert or modify any decision without being at the mercy of an Undo function.
Text files are failure- and future-proof
Text files are very robust against file corruption. And as they are human-readable, you will always be able to interpret them even if you don’t have access to the programs that created them.
Manage your scores with version control
Text files are applicable to be managed by version control. Go for it and experience infinite and selective undo/redo mechanisms and the full development history of your scores. Version control may also open up new (collaborative) workflows for you.
Usability
Effective layout choices
Spend less time with tweaking the output; LilyPond gets the formatting correct right from the start. It determines spacing by itself, and breaks lines and pages to provide a tight and uniform layout. Clashes between lyrics, notes, and chords are resolved and slurs and beams are sloped, automatically!
Mix music and text
Put fragments of music into texts without cutting and pasting pictures. Integrate music into LaTeX or HTML seamlessly, or add music to OpenOffice.org and LibreOffice with OOoLilyPond. Plugins are also available to allow LilyPond code in various blogs and wikis, making online collaboration possible.
Accessibility
Text-based input also makes score-writing possible for users with severe physical disabilities. Dexterity-impaired users who are unable to type or control a computer mouse can use speech-recognition software to edit LilyPond files. Even users who are totally blind can use screen-reading software to write LilyPond files – an impossible task in graphical-based score-writing programs. You can see a spectacular score on Examples.
Editor diversity
Several developers, themselves active LilyPond users, have written tools specifically aimed at making the process of editing LilyPond files faster and more effective; you are not tied to a single user interface but can use different tools for different tasks. You can even use a full-fledged LilyPond editor at home and use your mobile phone’s notepad app to edit the files on the go. For some examples, see Easier editing.
Extensible design
Easy management of style sheets
All layout settings can be changed to suit your personal typographical taste. So you can easily write style sheets that change every aspect of LilyPond scores’ default appearance. As these are also written as text and can be stored in separate files you can simply switch between two stylesheets to produce scores with a completely different appearance or layout. You want to print a score on A4 paper and project it with a beamer, one system per page? LilyPond’s layout engine will effortlessly produce both from the same input.
Add your own functions
If that still is not enough, there is always the built-in scripting language Scheme, which can access LilyPond’s layout engine at the same level as LilyPond itself does, making it a very powerful tool. Settings, variables and functions are all documented in the comprehensive program reference manual.
Process scores programmatically
LilyPond input files can fully be edited or even generated by programs and scripts. This can for example be used for algorithmical composition. But you can also access the musical content for analysis, or manage input fragments in a database. There are no limitations except your imagination.
Create new tools using LilyPond
As LilyPond isn’t a monolithic GUI program but a command line tool it can be used from within other applications too. This way it is possible to equip tools like, e.g., web applications with LilyPond’s engraving power. There already exist several online tools using LilyPond.
Environment
Excellent support
LilyPond runs on all popular platforms: GNU/Linux, MacOS X, and Windows. LilyPond comes with extensive documentation and hundreds of example files. There is an active user community answering questions on the lilypond-user mailing list, offering you friendly help. The response time is usually very short, and often brillant solutions to reported problems are developed. Thanks to the close interaction with the development team such solutions are regularly included in LilyPond itself. Read more in Community.
Free software
LilyPond can be downloaded free of charge! Yep - It’s free. Get it from the download page.
It’s also free (as in “speech”) software. It comes with source code, and permission to change and copy it. So, are you irritated by a bug, or yearning for a feature? Simply add it yourself, or pay someone else to do it. Read more on Freedom.
Where now?
Still not convinced? Look at some specific Examples. If you’ve already decided to try LilyPond, first read about our Text input.
Examples
Beautiful Examples
LilyPond is a powerful and flexible tool for engraving tasks of all kinds. Please browse our gallery of examples and be inspired!
Classical Music
This organ work by J.S. Bach is a fairly typical engraving project in LilyPond.
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Complex Notation
This example from Goyescas by Enrique Granados shows some of the more advanced features of typesetting, including kneed beams, cross-staff stems, and voice-follow lines.
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Early Music
LilyPond also supports various types of ancient notation, such as this passage of Gregorian chant.
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Modern Music
Contemporary composers find LilyPond well-suited to displaying unusual notation. Here is an excerpt from Trevor Bača’s Čáry, for unaccompanied bass flute.
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Efficient, flexible creation of performance materials
Various performance materials can be created from the same source code. This is an excerpt of Nicolas Sceaux’s engraving of Handel’s Giulio Cesare, in full score, piano-vocal reduction, and a violin part.
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Tablature
LilyPond supports tablature notation, which can be customized to suit any instrument that reads from tablature. The tablature staff is generated automatically from notes entered for the 5-line staff.
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Vocal Music
LilyPond is excellent for vocal music of all kinds, from sacred hymns to opera. Here is a medieval motet with slightly unusual requirements. The tenor voice is written in a different meter than the others, but must line up as if it were in the same meter. LilyPond handles this most elegantly. Note also the incipits with Vaticana style clefs, the slashed stems indicating plicated notes, and the ligature braces above certain groups of notes.
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Lead Sheets
It is simple to create lead sheets with melody, lyrics, chord names, and fretboards. In this example you see some of the predefined fretboard diagrams, but these can be heavily customized to suit nearly any situation.
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Educational Applications
LilyPond is perfectly suited for educational purposes as well. Here is an example of a simple counterpoint exercise.
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Large Projects
LilyPond is excellent for large projects like operas or works for full symphony orchestra, as well. In addition, the text-based input provides greater accessibility – this example was contributed by Hu Haipeng, a blind composer.
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Customized Output
A short excerpt from Stockhausen’s Klavierstück II to demonstrate LilyPond’s ability to provide customised output.
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Schenker Graphs
Standard output can be modified heavily. Here is an impressive Schenkerian analysis, created by Kris Schaffer, for an article in Linux Journal. The colors have been added for better visibility.
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Where now?
Still not convinced? LilyPond is Free software, granting you Freedom. If you’ve already decided to try LilyPond, first read about our Text input.
Freedom
Free Software
GNU LilyPond is written and maintained by a community of enthusiasts. It is published under the GNU General Public License and the GNU Free Documentation License, giving everybody the freedom to fix, modify, and extend the program. Creating beautiful music should not require hundreds of dollars of software!
What are the benefits to users?
- No cost: download and try it out! What do you have to lose?
- Sharing: if you like the program, give a copy to your friends, teachers, students, and colleagues!
- Source available: if you are curious about how LilyPond creates some notation, you can see exactly how it is done.
-
Extendible: you can add features, fix bugs, and change the
functionality. If you are not a programmer, you can hire somebody
to do those tasks.
This may not seem appealing to casual musicians, but the ability to extend software can be highly valuable to serious composers, companies, and academics.
- Future safety: if a commercial company goes bankrupt, what happens to any electronic music which depends on their products? This is not a concern with LilyPond; even if the entire development team quits (extremely unlikely), the program will still be legally available for copying, modifications, and distribution.
Why do LilyPond developers “give away” their work for free?
Most of us view LilyPond development as a hobby or volunteer work. So this question is really asking “why do people volunteer”?
- Fun: working towards a goal can be enjoyable, especially when you work as a team!
- Shared goals: we all want beautiful sheet music, but few people have the expertise (and nobody has the time!), to create a program which can handle all situations. By working together – one person improves the automatic beaming code, another person improves the shape of slurs, and a third person writes documentation explaining how to use these features – we can achieve our goal with only a fraction of the individual effort.
- “Gift culture”: the Free Software movement has created many great software projects, such as GNU/Linux, Mozilla Firefox, and Battle for Wesnoth. Having benefitted from these projects, some developers want to “give back” to the community.
- Work experience: contributing to free software projects is a great way to practice programming, documentation writing, documentation translation, or design. This experience has helped some developers gain job offers or scholarships.
Where now?
Still not convinced? Read our extensive essay about our engraving philosophy in Background. If you’ve already decided to try LilyPond, first read about our Text input.
Background
Background essay
We have an extensive essay describing computational aesthetics: the art of creating beauty with a computer.
This is interesting reading if you are interested in an in-depth discussion of our fundamental ideas. Due to its volume the essay is available as a "manual". If you would like to read it now, please progress to Essay. However, if you just want a quick introduction to LilyPond, you might skip it for now.
Where now?
Still not convinced? Read about some of our users’ Productions and sheet music. If you’ve already decided to try LilyPond, first read about our Text input.
Productions
Productions using LilyPond
Here you can read about people who actually use LilyPond in their productions, be it for performances of their music or as published scores. The list is limited to works released as public domain or under open content licenses.
Performances and Concerts
LilyPond engravings have been used for performances around the world. Some highlights:
- Marc Hohl has written musical scores for children and adolescents. Engraved using LilyPond (with LaTeX) and available for free, in German, from https://www.singspielschmiede.de/, all of the music was performed on stage at the School where Marc works.
-
Aurélien Bello arranged a version
of Richard Strauss’s Der Rosenkavalier for four singers and a
chamber orchestra of thirteen players. This was a commission by the
Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra who performed it in 2015 at the
Baden-Baden
and also at the
Berlin.
We are pleased to see musicians of such reputation playing from LilyPond
scores (who were reportedly very happy with them).
Aurélien also re-orchestrated Der Ring des Nibelungen by Richard Wagner for a family concert (ages 7 and above). It was written for a standard symphony orchestra, but with a reduced cast of singers and was performed by the Radio-Sinfonieorchester Berlin in 2014 at the Atze Musiktheater, Berlin. The Conductor was Heiko Matthias Förster.
Another re-orchestration by Aurélien was Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an exhibition which he also conducted for the Junge Philharmonie Brandenburg in 2011 and again in 2012.
-
Joe Smeets created sheet music for the children’s book Zing Mee
(Sing along) by Annie M.G. published by Querido –
ISBN 9789045106205. He also worked on the score and parts for an
arrangement of Mussorgsky’s Boris Godunov for wind quartet, piano
and percussion which was performed in 2014 by
Muziektheater Hollands Diep.
Joe also created the choir rehearsal scores for the Dutch translation of Benjamin Britten’s Saint Nicolas which was performed in 2011 by Muziektheater Hollands Diep see www.muziektheaterhollandsdiep.nl.
- Luca Rossetto Casel, for his Ph.D. thesis, created a critical edition of Tommaso Traetta’s Enea nel Lazio (1760), opera seria on a libretto by Vittorio Amedeo Cigna-Santi, in four parts: Part One Part Two Part Three Part Four
- Kieren MacMillan, composer and musical director of many works including; Go Thy Way, performed by the Salt Lake Choral Artists in 2012; The Just Out of Reach Suite performed by the Chrysalis Duo; and thrafsmata performed by the Pittsburgh New Music Ensemble in 2011.
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Mike Solomon was the winner of 172
entries from 22 countries for the
2011 Left Coast Composition Contest
with his work Anonymous Student Compliment or Complaint.
Other works for Mike include, Norman (age 1) for clarinet solo, performed at the University of Florida’s Electroacoustic Music Festival (FEMF) in October 2010.
- Thomas Griffin, Musicologist (Rome, Italy), edited a modern edition of the Serenata Erminia by Alessandro Scarlatti, which was performed in 2010 at the Galleria of the Palazzo Zevallos Stigliano, Naples, Italy in celebration of the composer’s 350th birthday. See http://www.ascarlatti2010.net.
-
Nicolas Sceaux engraved
the work of Lully’s Armide which was performed by
Mercury Baroque in 2009.
Nicolas also engraved the instrumental excerpts from Rameau’s Hippolyte et Aricie which were performed by Frederick Renz and his ensemble at St. James’s Church, Manhattan, New York in 2009. See Early Music New York.
- Valentin Villenave engraved a libretto of Affaire étrangère, an opera by Lewis Trondheim, which was premiered in 2009 at the L’Opéra National de Montpellier, France.
Published sheet music
Sheet libraries
- Mutopia Project, with over 2000 pieces of classical sheet music for free download, is the main showcase of LilyPond scores. Every piece comes with its LilyPond source file, allowing you to learn from other typesetters and also make your own edition.
- baroquemusic.it, started in 2005, collects over 800 scores of baroque music. The archive includes scores, separate parts and midi files, distributed with a Creative Commons license and available to subscribers only.
- Partitura Organum is a growing collection of organ pieces in the public domain, typeset by LilyPond and distributed under a Creative Commons license.
- Clairnote offers free sheet music in Clairnote notation. Clairnote is an alternative notation system that aims to make music easier to read and understand. The scores on the website are taken from Mutopia and other online resources and then converted to Clairnote’s own notation.
Sheet source repositories
- Mutopia Project repository: source files of all pieces in Mutopia library.
- LilyPond website examples: source files of the example gallery shown in Examples.
- Nicolas Sceaux: baroque music scores typeset with LilyPond by one of its developers.
If you are aware of any other concerts or sheet music which could be listed here, please let us know by writing a message to the bug-lilypond mailing list. If you’re not subscribed yet you can do so on the list’s info page.
Where now?
Still not convinced? Read some of our users’ Reviews. If you’ve already decided to try LilyPond, first read about our Text input.
Reviews
Published articles
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April 2011
Linux Magazine publishes an article titled Projects on the Move. It is an introductory article on MuseScore, LilyPond and Chordii. Author Carla Schroder states “LilyPond is driven from the command line, but don’t let the lack of a GUI scare you away; LilyPond is user-friendly and easy to learn”, and provides a hands-on example.
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May 2010
Peter Kirn, on the Create Digital Music website, publishes a LilyPond review. He takes a balanced view on usage, praises LilyPond’s high-quality notation and suggests to try it out.
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September 2009
The German LinuxUser magazine wrote an article about LilyPond.
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August 2009
Ann Drinan, on the Polyphonic.org website, presents comments by two orchestra librarians who talk about using software to maintain their libraries.
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June 2009
In an article published in the French National Conservatory Parent Association’s yearly magazine, French composer and LilyPond contributor Valentin Villenave explains how Free licenses, and specifically LilyPond-engraved scores, are instrumental in making written music accessible to all.
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February 2008
In articles on his personal site, Andrew Hawryluk compares Finale and LilyPond in general terms, and evaluates engraving capabilities of both pieces of software in detail. The second article is an instructive analysis of engraving issues in Rachmaninoff’s Piano Prelude No. 6, including comparisons with a hand-engraved reference edition.
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June 2006
DistroWatch awards LilyPond and writes “Ladies and Gentleman, we are pleased to announce that, based on readers’ requests, the DistroWatch May 2006 donation has been awarded to LilyPond (€190.00) and Lua (US$250.00).”
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December 2005
Linux Journal publishes an article titled Make Stunning Schenker Graphs with GNU LilyPond. It is an in-depth but hands-on feature article with crisp LilyPond graphics. Author Kris Shaffer remarks “GNU LilyPond generates beautiful graphics that make commercial alternatives seem second-rate.”
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August 20, 2005
The Belgian newspaper De Standaard investigates what drives Free Software authors in an article titled Delen van KENNIS zonder WINSTBEJAG (Non-profit sharing of knowledge) in its ‘DS2 bijlage’. LilyPond is used as an example and the article is interspersed with quotes from an email interview with Jan Nieuwenhuizen. This marks LilyPond’s first appearance in mainstream printed press.
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June 2005
A French article on the LilyPond 2.6 release appeared on linuxfr.org.
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October 2004
The editors of Computer!Totaal, a Dutch computer magazine, describe LilyPond in the October 2004 issue as: “Wonderful free (open source) software […] The sheet music produced by LilyPond is exceptionally pretty […] a very powerful system that can do almost anything.”
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July, August 2004
Dave Phillips wrote an introductory article for Linux Journal: At the sounding edge: LilyPond, parts one and two.
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March 2004
Chris Cannam interviewed Han-Wen Nienhuys and Jan Nieuwenhuizen on linuxmusician.com (original site defunct). This interview was also reviewed in a slashdot story.
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February 2004
Jazz singer Gail Selkirk writes about Diving into LilyPond. “… you can make lead sheets or full orchestral parts, and the results can be stunning.” Computer Music Special, issue CMS06.
User testimonials
Carter Brey, Principal Cellist, New York Philharmonic
“… I’ve written a couple of encore pieces for solo cello which I’ve printed with LilyPond and which I’m going to submit to Schirmer for publication. I’ll bet their engraved version wouldn’t look half as sharp as mine!”
Orm Finnendahl, professor of Composition, Hochschule für Musik und Darstellende Kunst Frankfurt am Main
“Although I don’t know [LilyPond] very well yet, I’m *very impressed. I used the program to input a motet of Josquin Desprez in mensural notation and there’s no doubt that lilypond outscores all other notation programs easily concerning speed, ease of use and look!”
Darius Blasband, composer (Brussels, Belgium)
“[..after the first orchestra rehearsal] I got numerous compliments about the quality of the scores. Even more importantly, while LilyPond provides numerous hacks to improve the way its scores look, what the orchestra got from me is basically the raw, untouched output.”
Kieren MacMillan, composer (Toronto, Canada)
“thanks and kudos to the development team for their incredible work. I’ve never seen anything approaching the output that I get from LilyPond – I’m totally confident that my music publishing needs will be fulfilled beyond my expectations using this great application. […] basically untweaked LilyPond output […] looks better than most recent ‘professional’ publications I’ve compared it to (q.v., just about any Warner Bros. score, and even many of the most recent by ‘the old houses’). […]” “Beat that, Finale/Sibelius/Igor/whatever!!!”
Chris Cannam, lead programmer of the RoseGarden project
“LilyPond is obviously the zillion-ton gorilla [of great music typesetting].”
Chris Snyder, Adoro Music Publishing
“The way that music is entered for LilyPond causes me to think in a more musical way – there have been times when I’ve been stumped as to how to tell Lily to engrave something, only to realize that even if I did get it exactly as the composer wanted, the music would be confusing to read. LilyPond makes it much easier for me to work in my dual editor+engraver role.”
“I’ve been using LilyPond exclusively for my fledgling music publishing business. Virtually without exception, every composer has been blown away by the quality of the engraving when presented with the proofs of their music about to be published. I deserve some of the credit for this – I spend a lot of time tweaking output, especially ties (mainly in chords) – but LilyPond gives me an excellent starting point, a very intuitive interface, and the ability to modify absolutely anything if I want to take the time. I’m convinced that no commercial product can come close.”
David Bobroff, Bass Trombone, Iceland Symphony Orchestra
“I think LilyPond is great […] The more I learn about LilyPond the more I like it!”
Vaylor Trucks, Electric guitar player (Yes, related to)
“I am super impressed with LilyPond […]”
“THIS IS THE BEST PROGRAM EVER!!!”
“Thank you all SO MUCH for your hard work and dedication!”
Nicolas Sceaux, Mutopia contributor
“I had a kind of hate-passion relationship with it. Passion because the first score I saw was so amazing! The description of LilyPond lies about its beautifulness, it is too modest! […] as LilyPond is getting always better, and as I look closer how things are done in scheme, I have less and less frustrations. Anyway, what I mean is: thank you for providing LilyPond, it is really good.”
Werner Lemberg, Conductor at the Theatre in Koblenz, Germany and distinguished GNU Hacker
“Anyway, LilyPond does an amazingly good job!”
Paul Davis, developer of JACK and Ardour
“I think [LilyPond is] an incredible program, and it produces wonderful, wonderful output. when i read an interview about it last year, i was raving to several friends of mine about its potential.”
Dr. Mika Kuuskankare, researcher at the Sibelius Academy Finland, composer and author of Expressive Notation Package (ENP)
“I have the deepest respect towards LilyPond and towards its creators and maintainers as I know from personal experience how difficult this kind of software can be.”
David Cameron, Musician, professional typesetter and long time SCORE user
“My heartfelt thanks to everyone who contributes to this project. I was a power SCORE user for big typesetting houses way back in the ’90s, but I feel LilyPond finally makes it possible for me to get exactly what I want on the page, especially when it isn’t "standard" practice.”
If you are aware of any other news articles or testimonals which could be listed here, please let us know by writing a message to the bug-lilypond mailing list. If you’re not subscribed yet you can do so on the list’s info page.
Text input
“Compiling” Music
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LilyPond is a compiled system: it is run on a text file describing the music. The resulting output is viewed on-screen or printed. In some ways, LilyPond is more similar to a programming language than graphical score editing software.
You do not write music by dragging notes from a graphical toolbar and placing them on a dynamically refreshing score; you write music by typing text. This text is interpreted (or “compiled”) by LilyPond, which produces beautifully engraved sheet music.
People accustomed to graphical user interfaces might need to learn a new way of working, but the results are definitely worth it!
Note: We present a quick overview of our text input – it’s not as complicated as it sounds! Don’t worry about understanding every detail in these examples; our beginner documentation covers everything at a much more gradual pace.
It’s as simple as A B C
Notes are encoded with letters and numbers. Special commands are entered with backslashes.
Alterations are made with different names: add -is for
sharp, and -es for flat (these are Dutch note names, other
languages are available). LilyPond figures out where to put
accidentals.
Pop music
Put chords and lyrics together to get a lead sheet:
Orchestral parts
The input file contains the notes of piece of music. Score and parts can be made from a single input file, so that changing a note always affects the score and parts. To be able to include the same music in multiple places, the music is assigned to a “variable” (a name).
This variable is then used in a single part (here transposed, with condensed rests spanning several measures):
The same variable is used in the full score (here in concert pitch):
Beginner Documentation
We realize that many users find this way of entering music a bit odd. For this reason, we have written extensive documentation to help new users, beginning with Learning. The Learning Manual is the best place to start, as many questions are answered before they come up!
Occasionally new users are unnecessarily confused by some aspects of LilyPond’s behaviour. Please read this manual before doubting whether LilyPond is working correctly.
More in-depth information is available in Manuals.
Ben Lemon, a LilyPond user, has created a range of video tutorials on his blog and which are aimed at new users.
Easier editing environments
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LilyPond is primarily concerned with producing top-quality engraved sheet music; creating a Graphical User Interface (GUI) would distract us from this goal. However, there are other projects aimed at making it easier to create LilyPond input files.
Some editing environments include syntax highlighting, automatic command completion, and pre-made templates. Other programs actually provide a GUI which allows direct manipulation of a graphical score. For more information, see Easier editing.
Easier editing
Front-end Applications
Frescobaldi
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Frescobaldi is a lightweight, yet powerful, music and text editor with many features added and enhanced particularly for LilyPond. Major features include point-and-click links between the code and music views, detailed score wizards, built-in LilyPond documentation browser, syntax highlighting and automatic completion. Frescobaldi is written in Python, with PyQt4 for its user interface, and will run on all major operating systems (GNU/Linux, Mac OS X and Windows).
Denemo
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Denemo is a graphical editor which generates LilyPond source code, and also allows audio playback. It allows users to view the LilyPond source code in parallel to the graphical view. Extra LilyPond tweaks can be attached to notes, chords, etc., and are stored with the Denemo file, so that users can continue to edit graphically.
Moving the cursor in the LilyPond text moves the cursor in the graphical view, and any syntax errors in your LilyPond tweaks are highlighted in the text view when printed from there.
Browser-based editors
LilyBin
A web-based LilyPond editor where you can typeset your scores directly online without needing to install LilyPond. Code snippets are kept available with a unique URL, like on so-called ‘pastebin’ websites. Its code is made freely available under the MIT license; it may be found on its development page.
Hacklily
An online sheet-music editor and publishing tool powered by LilyPond, with additional features such as autocompletion and contextual help. The underlying web hosting code is available under the AGPL license, on its own development page.
www.omet.ca
Since 2010, Online Music Editing Tools (OMET) offers a ready-to-use LilyPond service with a specifically-tailored web interface. Registration is required but free of charge.
WebLily.net
Initiated in 2009, WebLily.net is one of the first web services based on LilyPond, and has been regularly updated since then. It is free of use (although registration is required), and includes a clickable version of LilyPond’s documentation.
Word processor plug-ins
OOoLilyPond
https://extensions.services.openoffice.org/en/project/OOoLilyPond
An OpenOffice.org extension that converts LilyPond files into images within OpenOffice.org documents.
IDE Plug-ins
Elysium
https://github.com/thSoft/elysium
A complete environment for editing scores with LilyPond in Eclipse, offering a rich toolkit for conveniently managing LilyPond.
Text editors
Emacs
https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/ Emacs is a text editor with language-sensitive capabilities for many different computer languages. Emacs is a highly extensible editor and can be used as an Integrated Development Environment. There is a ‘lilypond mode’ which supplies the language definitions for working with LilyPond source files. A developer has written lyqi, an Emacs major mode.
If you are not already familiar with Emacs then you may probably prefer to use a different editor for writing LilyPond input files.
More information on setting up Emacs can be found in Text editor support.
Vim
https://www.vim.org
Vim is a minimal text editor and is an extension of the older Unix
vi editor. It is also extensible and configurable.
If you are not already familiar with Vi then you may probably prefer to use a different editor for writing LilyPond input files.
More information on setting up Vim can be found in Text editor support.
TeXShop
https://pages.uoregon.edu/koch/texshop/
The TeXShop editor for MacOS X can be extended to run LilyPond,
lilypond-book and convert-ly from within the editor,
using the extensions available at:
http://users.dimi.uniud.it/~nicola.vitacolonna/home/content/lilypond-scripts
Other programs that can export LilyPond code
Score, tab and MIDI editors:
-
bwwtolily attempts to
convert a
.bwwor.bmwfile to LilyPond. While not all of the embellishments may get converted properly (this is especially true with piobaireachd), the program will list them. - Canorus, a score editor, can also export to LilyPond, but is still beta-software. Testers are welcome, though.
- Enc2ly is a GNU/Linux program which converts an Encore music score into a LilyPond one.
- go-enc2ly is a Go tool that converts Encore files to LilyPond. It was created using Felipe Castro’s research and reverse engineering by tweaking existing .enc files and loading them using the 4.55 demo version.
- NtEd, a score editor based on the Cairo library, it has experimental support for exporting to LilyPond.
- NW2LY is a C# program which converts a NoteWorthy composer song into LilyPond.
- Ripple is a program that helps create scores and parts, including a mode for mixing different musical works together in a single score or part.
- Rosegarden, an audio and MIDI sequencer, which also has a score editor for single-staff editing.
Algorithmic code generators
- Abjad, a Python API for Formalized Score Control designed to help composers build up complex pieces of LilyPond notation in an iterative and incremental way.
- FOMUS, (FOrmat MUSic) is a music notation tool for computer music composers. It is written in the Lisp programming language, and has been tested in a variety of interpreters. A C++ port is also available.
- Strasheela, an environment built on top of the The Mozart Programming System.
Other programs no longer being actively developed
- LilyPondTool was created as a plugin for the jEdit text editor.
- LilyKDE has been replaced by Frescobaldi, and exists as LilyKDE3 for KDE 3.5 and lilypond-KDE4 for KDE 4.1 only.
- LilyComp is a graphical note entry program, acting much like a number-pad which produces LilyPond notes.
- MuseScore, a score editor. LilyPond export was dropped in version 2.0 but earlier versions are still available for download at Sourceforge.
- NoteEdit, which imported MusicXML, has been forked into NtEd and Canorus.
- Rumor, a realtime monophonic MIDI-to-LilyPond converter.
- tunefl Typeset your mini-scores directly online without needing to install LilyPond locally. It allows trying out all the program’s features using a convenient web interface.
- TuxGuitar, a multitrack tablature editor and player, includes a score viewer and can export to LilyPond.
Where now?
You are now ready to Download LilyPond.
Still not convinced? Many composers, musicians, and conductors have learned how to write music in our input format. Experienced users even report that they can enter a full score in LilyPond faster than with a piano keyboard or mouse+GUI! Perhaps you would like to review the Features, Examples, or the Freedom that LilyPond provides, or read about users’ Productions and Reviews. In addition, our approach to the computational aesthetics of classical engraving is explained in our Background.
Legalese
All logos and product images are copyright and trademark acknowledged.
Tux the Linux Penguin was created by lewing@isc.tamu.edu with the Gnu Image Manipulation Program.
The FreeBSD logo is a registered trademark of The FreeBSD Foundation.
The “X image” is not a registered trademark. It was created by Nihonjoe and CyberSkull, and placed under the GNU Free Documentation License version 1.2 or later. We found the image on this Wikimedia Commons page.
The “four colored rectangles image” is not a registered trademark. It was created by Rohitbd and placed under the GNU Free Documentation License version 1.2. We found the image on this Wikimedia Commons page.
Download
Downloads for LilyPond 2.22.2
Note: Links for the unstable version of LilyPond can be found at Development.
Note: LilyPond is a text-based music engraver; it is more similar to a programming language than a graphical score editing program. Before downloading LilyPond, please read about our Text input.
For developers
- Source: for packagers
- Old downloads: old versions
- Development: latest unstable version
Legalese
All logos and product images are copyright and trademark acknowledged.
Tux the Linux Penguin was created by lewing@isc.tamu.edu with the Gnu Image Manipulation Program.
The “X image” is not a registered trademark. It was created by Nihonjoe and CyberSkull, and placed under the GNU Free Documentation License version 1.2 or later. We found the image on this Wikimedia Commons page.
The “four colored rectangles image” is not a registered trademark. It was created by Rohitbd and placed under the GNU Free Documentation License version 1.2. We found the image on this Wikimedia Commons page.
Unix
Note: LilyPond is a text-based music engraver; it is more similar to a programming language than a graphical score editing program. Before downloading LilyPond, please read about our Text input.
Generic Packages or Distribution-Specific Packages?
Many distributions include LilyPond within their normal package repositories that are often significantly older than the current stable version. While these older packages may be easier to install, we strongly recommend that you use our generic packages. In this case, check that your LilyPond editor is using the correct version. See Easier editing.
Generic Packages
Download
-
GNU/Linux x86: LilyPond 2.22.2-1
32bit Systems.
-
GNU/Linux 64: LilyPond 2.22.2-1
64bit Systems.
Install
In the shell, type:
cd PATH-TO-DOWNLOAD-DIRECTORY sh lilypond-2.22.2-OS-TYPE.sh
Uninstall
In the shell, type:
uninstall-lilypond
Help
In the shell, type:
sh lilypond-2.22.2-OS-TYPE.sh --help
Compiling a file
Note: These instructions assume that you are familiar with working on the command line. If you are using any of the programs described in Easier editing, consult the documentation for those programs should you have any problems.
Step 1. Create your ‘.ly’ file
Create a text file called ‘test.ly’ with the following contents.
\version "2.22.2"
{
c' e' g' e'
}
Step 2. Compile (on the command line)
To process ‘test.ly’, type the following at the command prompt.
lilypond test.ly
You will see something resembling:
GNU LilyPond 2.22.2 Processing `test.ly' Parsing... Interpreting music... Preprocessing graphical objects... Finding the ideal number of pages... Fitting music on 1 page... Drawing systems... Converting to `test.pdf'... Success: compilation successfully completed
Step 3. View output
You may view or print the resulting ‘test.pdf’ file.
Legalese
All logos and product images are copyright and trademark acknowledged.
Tux the Linux Penguin was created by lewing@isc.tamu.edu with the Gnu Image Manipulation Program.
MacOS X
Note: LilyPond is a text-based music engraver; it is more similar to a programming language than a graphical score editing program. Before downloading LilyPond, please read about our Text input.
Packages
Download
-
Mac OS X x86 32-bit: LilyPond 2.22.2-1
For Mac OS X 10.4–10.14 running on Intel CPUs (for 10.15 see below).
-
Unofficial 64-bit application bundles for macOS 10.15 are
available at
https://gitlab.com/marnen/lilypond-mac-builder/-/releases.
-
MacPorts, a package manager
for Mac OS, has a LilyPond port.
-
Homebrew, another package manager
for Mac OS, has a LilyPond formula.
Install
Double-click the downloaded file, then drag it to wherever you want.
Uninstall
Delete the LilyPond.app folder.
Running on the command-line
Note: If you are happy with the GUI instructions below, then please ignore these instructions.
MacOS X on the command line
The most convenient way to run lilypond scripts is by setting up “helper” scripts of your own.
-
Create a directory to store these scripts,
mkdir -p ~/bin cd ~/bin
-
Create a file called
lilypondwhich contains#!/bin/bash exec DIR/LilyPond.app/Contents/Resources/bin/lilypond "$@"
Note: DIR will generally be
/Applications/ -
Create similar files
lilypond-book,convert-ly, and any other scripts you wish to use, by replacing thebin/lilypondwithbin/convert-ly(or other program name). -
Make the file executable,
chmod u+x lilypond
-
Now, add this directory to your path. Modify (or create) a file
called
.profilein your home directory such that it containsexport PATH=$PATH:~/bin
This file should end with a blank line.
Invoking individual scripts
The scripts — such as lilypond-book, convert-ly,
abc2ly, and even lilypond itself — are included
inside the .app file for MacOS X.
Scripts can also be run from the command line by invoking them directly:
path/to/LilyPond.app/Contents/Resources/bin/lilypond
The same is true for all other scripts in that directory, such as
lilypond-book and convert-ly.
Compiling a file
Note: These instructions assume that you are using the LilyPond application. If you are using any of the programs described in Easier editing, consult the documentation for those programs should you have any problems.
Step 1. Create your ‘.ly’ file
Double-click on LilyPond.app and an example file will
open.
From the menus along the top left of your screen, select
File > Save.
Choose a name for your file, for example ‘test.ly’.
Step 2. Compile (with LilyPad)
From the same menus, select
Compile > Typeset.
A new window will open showing a progress log of the compilation of the file you have just saved.
Step 3. View output
Once the compilation has finished, a PDF file is created with the same name as the original file; it gets automatically opened in the default PDF viewer and displayed on your screen.
Other commands
To create new files for LilyPond, begin by selecting
File > New
or File > Open to open and edit existing files you have
saved previously.
You must save any new edits you make to your file before you
Compile > Typeset and if the PDF file is not displayed
check the window with the progress log for any errors.
If you are not using the default Preview PDF viewer that comes with the Mac Operating system and you have the PDF file generated from a previous compilation open, then any further compilations may fail to generate an updated PDF until you close the original PDF file.
Legalese
All logos and product images are copyright and trademark acknowledged.
The “X image” is not a registered trademark. It was created by Nihonjoe and CyberSkull, and placed under the GNU Free Documentation License version 1.2 or later. We found the image on this Wikimedia Commons page.
Windows
Note: LilyPond is a text-based music engraver; it is more similar to a programming language than a graphical score editing program. Before downloading LilyPond, please read about our Text input.
Packages
Download
-
Windows: LilyPond 2.22.2-1
For current versions of Windows.
Install
- Locate the downloaded file and double-click on it to start the installer. Follow the instructions given to you by the installer; we recommend that you leave all the install options checked and use the default installation location. Click the ‘Finish’ button when the installer has completed. LilyPond is now installed.
Uninstall
To uninstall LilyPond either:
- Locate the LilyPond folder from the ‘Start’ menu and click on the ‘Uninstall’ icon. Click the ‘Finish’ button when the uninstaller has completed.
- Or from within the Control Panel, locate and select LilyPond and then choose the option to uninstall/remove the software. Click the ‘Finish’ button when the uninstaller has completed.
Running on the command-line
Note: If you are happy with the GUI instructions below, then please ignore these instructions.
Windows on the command line
The most convenient way to run LilyPond is by adding the folder which contains LilyPond executable files to the environmental variable “Path”.
- Open your “System” on the Control Panel, select Advanced tab and click Environmental Variables button.
-
Select the Variable “Path” from Environmental variables list
and click the Edit button.
You will be presented a window titled “Edit System Variable”;
append to “Variable value” the name of the folder
which contains LilyPond executable files like this:
[pre-set paths];DIR\LilyPond\usr\bin
Note: DIR will generally be
C:Program Files (x86)for 64 bit orC:Program Filesfor 32 bit systems.and click “OK” button to close the window.
Invoking individual executable files
LilyPond executable files – such as lilypond, lilypond-book, convert-ly, and so on – can be run from the command-line by invoking them:
lilypond test.ly
Compiling a file
Note: These instructions assume that you are using the built-in LilyPad editor. If you are using any of the programs described in Easier editing, consult the documentation for those programs should you have any problems.
Step 1. Create your ‘.ly’ file
Double-click on the LilyPond icon on your desktop and an example file will open.
From the menus that appear along the top of the example file,
select File > Save as. Do not use the File >
Save for the example file as this does not work until you have
given it a valid LilyPond file name.
Choose a name for your file, for example ‘test.ly’.
Step 2. Compile
To turn your LilyPond file into a music score, you need to compile it. This can be done in a number of ways – using drag and drop, with right-click, double-clicking, or using the command line. We now look at the first three options to start with; the fourth option is introduced later on.
1. Drag and drop the file directly onto the LilyPond icon on the desktop.
Not much will seem to happen, but after a short while, you should see two new files on your desktop – ‘test.log’ and ‘test.pdf’.
2. Right-click on the file, and from the pop-up context menu
select Generate PDF.
3. Simply double-click on the file ‘test.ly’.
Step 3. View output
‘test.pdf’ contains the engraved ‘test.ly’ file. Double-click on it and it should open in your PDF viewer:
Other commands
To create a new file, begin by selecting File > New
from within any previously created file or select File >
Open to open and edit any files you have saved before. You can
also edit a file by right-clicking on it and selecting
Edit source.
You must save any edits you make before you try to compile your file. If the PDF file is not created or the output is not what you expect, check the log file that will have been created during the compilation attempt for any errors.
This log file is overwritten each time you compile your LilyPond file.
If you are viewing your file in a PDF viewer you probably must close the PDF if you wish to try a new compilation as it may fail to create the new PDF while it is still being viewed. This is at least true for Adobe’s Acrobat Reader. Other programs like FoxIt’s PDF reader don’t have this problem.
Legalese
All logos and product images are copyright and trademark acknowledged.
The “four colored rectangles image” is not a registered trademark. It was created by Rohitbd and placed under the GNU Free Documentation License version 1.2. We found the image on this Wikimedia Commons page.
Source
Note: LilyPond is a text-based music engraver; it is more similar to a programming language than a graphical score editing program. Before downloading LilyPond, please read about our Text input.
Note: We do not recommend that you attempt to build LilyPond yourself; almost all user needs are better met with the pre-built version.
Source tarball
Source: lilypond-2.22.2.tar.gz
For an extensive listing of all versions (old and new), see our download site.
Old downloads
Note: LilyPond is a text-based music engraver; it is more similar to a programming language than a graphical score editing program. Before downloading LilyPond, please read about our Text input.
GPL
Software license
GNU LilyPond is published under the GNU General Public License. An introduction to this license, and our reasons for choosing it, is given in Freedom.
GNU General Public License
Version 3, 29 June 2007
Copyright © 2007 Free Software Foundation, Inc. https://fsf.org/ Everyone is permitted to copy and distribute verbatim copies of this license document, but changing it is not allowed. |
Preamble
The GNU General Public License is a free, copyleft license for software and other kinds of works.
The licenses for most software and other practical works are designed to take away your freedom to share and change the works. By contrast, the GNU General Public License is intended to guarantee your freedom to share and change all versions of a program—to make sure it remains free software for all its users. We, the Free Software Foundation, use the GNU General Public License for most of our software; it applies also to any other work released this way by its authors. You can apply it to your programs, too.
When we speak of free software, we are referring to freedom, not price. Our General Public Licenses are designed to make sure that you have the freedom to distribute copies of free software (and charge for them if you wish), that you receive source code or can get it if you want it, that you can change the software or use pieces of it in new free programs, and that you know you can do these things.
To protect your rights, we need to prevent others from denying you these rights or asking you to surrender the rights. Therefore, you have certain responsibilities if you distribute copies of the software, or if you modify it: responsibilities to respect the freedom of others.
For example, if you distribute copies of such a program, whether gratis or for a fee, you must pass on to the recipients the same freedoms that you received. You must make sure that they, too, receive or can get the source code. And you must show them these terms so they know their rights.
Developers that use the GNU GPL protect your rights with two steps: (1) assert copyright on the software, and (2) offer you this License giving you legal permission to copy, distribute and/or modify it.
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Some devices are designed to deny users access to install or run modified versions of the software inside them, although the manufacturer can do so. This is fundamentally incompatible with the aim of protecting users’ freedom to change the software. The systematic pattern of such abuse occurs in the area of products for individuals to use, which is precisely where it is most unacceptable. Therefore, we have designed this version of the GPL to prohibit the practice for those products. If such problems arise substantially in other domains, we stand ready to extend this provision to those domains in future versions of the GPL, as needed to protect the freedom of users.
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The precise terms and conditions for copying, distribution and modification follow.
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Manuals
Introduction
- Text input: LilyPond is a text-based music engraver. Read this first!
- Learning: a “must-read” gentle introduction to LilyPond. (details of Learning)
- Glossary: (optional reading) musical terms and translations. (details of Glossary)
- Essay: (optional reading) background information about computer engraving. (details of Essay)
Regular use
- Notation: syntax reference. (details of Notation)
- Usage: running the programs. (details of Usage)
- Snippets: short tricks and tips. (details of Snippets)
Infrequent Use
- FAQ: Frequently Asked Questions.
- Web: this document. (details of Web)
- Changes: what’s new? (details of Changes)
- Extending: fancy tweaks. (details of Extending)
- Internals: tweaks reference. (details of Internals)
Other material
- All: previous stable versions and current as a compressed archive.
- Translated: translation status for non-English readers.
- LilyPond Snippet Repository: user-created examples, hints and tips.
- Video Tutorials: Ben Lemon, a LilyPond user, has created a range of video tutorials on his blog and which are aimed at new users.
- LilyPond’s Scheme: an external tutorial to learn Scheme, the language used to program LilyPond.
- Extending Guide: an external documentation resource about extending LilyPond in Scheme.
- Development: manuals for the unstable version.
- FDL: these manuals are published under the GNU Free Documentation License.
Manual formats
The LilyPond manuals generally come in three formats: split HTML, big HTML and
PDF. Split HTML is good for reading online. Big HTML (and some of these can be
very big) contains the whole manual in a single page. PDF is available for
downloading and using offline. To get to these 3 formats, follow the links
that read details of and then the manual name.
| Learning | ||
| Glossary | ||
| Essay | ||
| Notation | Reference. | |
| Usage | ||
| Snippets | ||
| FAQ | ||
| Web | ||
| Changes | NEWS. | |
| Extending | Programming. | |
| Internals | ||
| Translated | Translation. | |
| All | All manuals. | |
| FDL | Licence. |
Learning
Learning manual
This book explains how to begin learning LilyPond, as well as explaining some key concepts in easy terms. You should read these chapters in a linear fashion.
There is a paragraph See also at the end of each section, which contains cross-references to other sections: you should not follow these cross-references at first reading. When you have read all of the manual, you may want to read some sections again and follow those cross-references for more information.
Read it
- Learning (split HTML) -
the manual is split between many HTML pages.
(small download for each page) - Learning (big HTML) -
read this manual as one huge HTML page.
(large single download) - learning.pdf -
download as a PDF file.
(large single download, 2.1M)
Glossary
Glossary
This explains musical terms, and includes translations to various languages. If you are not familiar with music notation or music terminology (especially if you are a non-native English speaker), it is highly advisable to consult the glossary.
Read it
- Music glossary (split HTML) -
the manual is split between many HTML pages.
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read this manual as one huge HTML page.
(large single download) - music-glossary.pdf -
download as a PDF file.
(large single download, 684K)
Essay
Essay
This book gives a brief history of music typography, followed by an examination of LilyPond’s engraving techniques. A comparison between LilyPond and other music engraving systems is given.
Note: the detailed typographical examples are easier to analyze in the PDF version due to its higher resolution.
Read it
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the manual is split between many HTML pages.
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(large single download) - essay.pdf -
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(large single download, 1.4M)
Notation
Notation reference
This book explains all the LilyPond commands which produce notation.
Note: the Notation reference assumes that the reader knows basic material covered in the Learning manual and is familiar with the English musical terms presented in the glossary.
Read it
- Notation (split HTML) -
the manual is split between many HTML pages.
(small download for each page) - Notation (big HTML) -
read this manual as one huge HTML page.
(large single download) - notation.pdf -
download as a PDF file.
(large single download, 6.8M)
Usage
Usage manual
This book explains how to execute the programs, how to integrate LilyPond notation with other programs, and suggests “best practices” for efficient use. It is recommended reading before attempting any large projects.
Read it
- Usage (split HTML) -
the manual is split between many HTML pages.
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read this manual as one huge HTML page.
(large single download) - usage.pdf -
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(large single download, 528K)
Snippets
Snippets
This shows a selected set of LilyPond snippets from the LilyPond Snippet Repository (LSR). All the snippets are in the public domain.
Please note that this document is not an exact subset of LSR. LSR is running a stable LilyPond version, so any snippet which demonstrates new features of a development version must be added separately. These are stored in ‘Documentation/snippets/new/’ in the LilyPond source tree.
The list of snippets for each subsection of the Notation are also linked from the See also portion.
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(large single download, 4.3M)
FAQ
Introductory questions
Where are the graphical canvas, menus, and toolbars?
LilyPond requires you to write music as text. Please read about our Text input.
There’s a lot of documentation! Do I need to read it?
You need to read the Learning manual. As for the rest of documentation, you only need to read the sections which discuss the notation that you wish to create.
That’s still a lot of reading! Is it worth it?
Please decide for yourself; the reasons why you might want to use LilyPond are given in the Introduction.
Usage questions
Something isn’t working! How do I fix it?
This is explained in Troubleshooting.
Why do you change the syntax?
This is explained in Why does the syntax change?.
Web
Web
This manual supplies general information about LilyPond. It also contains information about various community forums, bug reporting, and development.
Read it
Latest manual
Web manual in 2.23.10
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the manual is split between many HTML pages.
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(large single download) - web.pdf -
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(large single download, 3.3M)
Changes
Changes
This is a summary of important changes and new features in LilyPond since the previous stable version.
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(large single download, 184K)
Extending
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(large single download) - extending.pdf -
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(large single download, 412K)
Internals
Internals reference
This is a set of heavily cross linked pages which document the nitty-gritty details of each and every LilyPond class, object, and function. It is produced directly from the formatting definitions in the source code.
Almost all formatting functionality that is used internally is available directly to the user. For example, most variables that control thickness values, distances, etc., can be changed in input files. There are a huge number of formatting options, and all of them are described in this document. Each section of the Notation Reference has a See also subsection, which refers to the generated documentation.
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(large single download, 5.2M)
Translated
Translations status
Last updated Fri Aug 27 20:46:02 UTC 2021
| LilyPond Changes | fr |
|---|---|
| Section titles
(878) | Jean-Charles Malahieude
translated partially up to date |
| LilyPond — \TITLE\
(1141) | Jean-Charles Malahieude
translated up to date |
| Essay on automated music engraving | de | es | fr | hu | it |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Section titles
(95) | Till Paala
translated partially up to date | Francisco Vila
translated partially up to date | Jean-Charles Malahieude
translated up to date | Hegyi Tamás
Harmath Dénes translated partially up to date | Tommaso Gordini
Federico Bruni translated partially up to date |
| LilyPond — \TITLE\
(1141) | Till Paala
translated partially up to date | Francisco Vila
translated partially up to date | Jean-Charles Malahieude
translated up to date | Hegyi Tamás
Harmath Dénes translated partially up to date | Tommaso Gordini
Federico Bruni translated partially up to date |
| 1 Music engraving
(5318) | Till Paala
translated partially up to date | Francisco Vila
translated partially up to date | Jean-Charles Malahieude
John Mandereau Gauvain Pocentek translated up to date | Hegyi Tamás
Harmath Dénes translated partially up to date | Tommaso Gordini
Federico Bruni translated partially up to date |
| 2 Literature list
(382) | Till Paala
translated partially up to date | Francisco Vila
translated up to date | Jean-Jacques Gerbaud
Valentin Villenave Jean-Charles Malahieude partially translated (93 %) up to date | Hegyi Tamás
Harmath Dénes translated up to date | Tommaso Gordini
Federico Bruni translated up to date |
| A GNU Free Documentation License
(3723) | Till Paala
partially translated (0 %) up to date | Francisco Vila
partially translated (0 %) up to date | Jean-Charles Malahieude
partially translated (0 %) up to date | Hegyi Tamás
Harmath Dénes partially translated (0 %) up to date | Tommaso Gordini
Federico Bruni partially translated (0 %) up to date |
| Extending LilyPond | de | es | fr |
|---|---|---|---|
| Section titles
(110) | Till Paala
translated partially up to date | Francisco Vila
translated partially up to date | Jean-Charles Malahieude
translated up to date |
| LilyPond — \TITLE\
(1141) | Till Paala
translated partially up to date | Francisco Vila
translated partially up to date | Jean-Charles Malahieude
translated up to date |
| 1 Scheme tutorial
(6332) | Till Paala
partially translated (54 %) partially up to date | Francisco Vila
translated up to date | Jean-Charles Malahieude
translated up to date |
| 2 Interfaces for programmers
(5771) | Till Paala
translated partially up to date | Francisco Vila
translated up to date | Valentin Villenave
Jean-Charles Malahieude Gilles Thibault translated up to date |
| A GNU Free Documentation License
(3723) | Till Paala
partially translated (0 %) up to date | Francisco Vila
partially translated (0 %) up to date | Jean-Charles Malahieude
partially translated (0 %) up to date |
| LilyPond Learning Manual | ca | cs | de | es | fr | hu | it | ja | nl | zh |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Section titles
(127) | Walter Garcia-Fontes
Walter Garcia-Fontes translated partially up to date | Pavel Fric
translated partially up to date | Till Paala
Michael Gerdau translated partially up to date | Francisco Vila
translated partially up to date | John Mandereau
Jean-Charles Malahieude translated up to date | Harmath Dénes
translated partially up to date | Federico Bruni
Luca Rossetto Casel translated partially up to date | Masamichi Hosoda
Yoshiki Sawada translated partially up to date | Jan Nieuwenhuizen
translated partially up to date | Chengrui Li
translated partially up to date |
| LilyPond — \TITLE\
(1141) | Walter Garcia-Fontes
translated partially up to date | Pavel Fric
translated partially up to date | Till Paala
Michael Gerdau translated partially up to date | Francisco Vila
translated partially up to date | John Mandereau
Jean-Charles Malahieude translated up to date | Harmath Dénes
translated partially up to date | Federico Bruni
Luca Rossetto Casel translated partially up to date | Masamichi Hosoda
Yoshiki Sawada translated partially up to date | Jan Nieuwenhuizen
translated partially up to date | Chengrui Li
translated partially up to date |
| 1 Tutorial
(2537) | Walter Garcia-Fontes
translated partially up to date | Pavel Fric
partially translated (51 %) partially up to date | Till Paala
Reinhold Kainhofer Michael Gerdau Hajo Bäß translated partially up to date | Francisco Vila
translated partially up to date | Nicolas Grandclaude
Ludovic Sardain Gauvain Pocentek Jean-Charles Malahieude Valentin Villenave John Mandereau translated up to date | Harmath Dénes
translated partially up to date | Federico Bruni
Luca Rossetto Casel translated partially up to date | Masamichi Hosoda
Yoshiki Sawada Hiroshi Fukuhara translated partially up to date | Jan Nieuwenhuizen
partially translated (51 %) partially up to date | Chengrui Li
translated up to date |
| 2 Common notation
(4529) | Walter Garcia-Fontes
translated partially up to date | Pavel Fric
partially translated (38 %) partially up to date | ???
Michael Gerdau translated partially up to date | Francisco Vila
translated up to date | Nicolas Grandclaude
Ludovic Sardain Gauvain Pocentek J.-Charles Malahieude Valentin Villenave John Mandereau translated up to date | Harmath Dénes
translated partially up to date | Federico Bruni
Luca Rossetto Casel translated up to date | Tomohiro Tatejima
Masamichi Hosoda Yoshiki Sawada Hiroshi Fukuhara translated up to date | Jan Nieuwenhuizen
partially translated (38 %) partially up to date | Chengrui Li
partially translated (0 %) up to date |
| 3 Fundamental concepts
(11605) | Walter Garcia-Fontes
partially translated (96 %) partially up to date | Pavel Fric
partially translated (96 %) partially up to date | Till Paala
Reinhold Kainhofer Michael Gerdau partially translated (96 %) partially up to date | Francisco Vila
translated up to date | Valentin Villenave
Jean-Charles Malahieude John Mandereau translated up to date | Griechisch Erika
Harmath Dénes partially translated (96 %) partially up to date | Federico Bruni
Luca Rossetto Casel translated up to date | Masamichi Hosoda
Tomohiro Tatejima Yoshiki Sawada translated partially up to date | Jan Nieuwenhuizen
partially translated (96 %) partially up to date | Chengrui Li
partially translated (0 %) up to date |
| 4 Tweaking output
(16466) | Walter Garcia-Fontes
translated partially up to date | Pavel Fric
partially translated (51 %) partially up to date | ???
Michael Gerdau translated partially up to date | Francisco Vila
translated partially up to date | Valentin Villenave
Nicolas Klutchnikoff Damien Heurtebise Jean-Charles Malahieude John Mandereau translated up to date | Harmath Dénes
partially translated (0 %) partially up to date | Federico Bruni
Luca Rossetto Casel translated partially up to date | Masamichi Hosoda
Tomohiro Tatejima Yoshiki Sawada Hiroshi Fukuhara translated partially up to date | Jan Nieuwenhuizen
partially translated (95 %) partially up to date | Chengrui Li
partially translated (0 %) up to date |
| A Templates
(1238) | Walter Garcia-Fontes
translated partially up to date | Pavel Fric
partially translated (75 %) partially up to date | Till Paala
Michael Gerdau translated partially up to date | Francisco Vila
translated partially up to date | Jean-Charles Malahieude
translated up to date | Harmath Dénes
partially translated (0 %) partially up to date | Federico Bruni
Luca Rossetto Casel translated up to date | Tomohiro Tatejima
Yoshiki Sawada translated partially up to date | Jan Nieuwenhuizen
partially translated (97 %) partially up to date | Chengrui Li
partially translated (0 %) up to date |
| B GNU Free Documentation License
(3723) | Walter Garcia-Fontes
Walter Garcia-Fontes partially translated (0 %) up to date | Pavel Fric
partially translated (0 %) up to date | Till Paala
Michael Gerdau partially translated (0 %) up to date | Francisco Vila
partially translated (0 %) up to date | John Mandereau
Jean-Charles Malahieude partially translated (0 %) up to date | Harmath Dénes
partially translated (0 %) up to date | Federico Bruni
Luca Rossetto Casel partially translated (0 %) up to date | Masamichi Hosoda
Yoshiki Sawada partially translated (0 %) up to date | Jan Nieuwenhuizen
partially translated (0 %) up to date | Chengrui Li
partially translated (0 %) up to date |
| LilyPond Notation Reference | ca | de | es | fr | it | ja |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Section titles
(364) | Walter Garcia-Fontes
Walter Garcia-Fontes translated partially up to date | Till Paala
translated partially up to date | Francisco Vila
translated partially up to date | John Mandereau
Jean-Charles Malahieude translated up to date | Federico Bruni
translated partially up to date | Yoshiki Sawada
Tomohiro Tatejima translated partially up to date |
| LilyPond — \TITLE\
(1141) | Walter Garcia-Fontes
translated partially up to date | Till Paala
translated partially up to date | Francisco Vila
translated partially up to date | John Mandereau
Jean-Charles Malahieude translated up to date | Federico Bruni
translated partially up to date | Yoshiki Sawada
Tomohiro Tatejima translated partially up to date |
| 1 Musical notation
(91) | Walter Garcia-Fontes
translated partially up to date | Till Paala
translated partially up to date | Francisco Vila
translated partially up to date | John Mandereau
Jean-Charles Malahieude translated up to date | Federico Bruni
translated partially up to date | Yoshiki Sawada
translated partially up to date |
| 1.1 Pitches
(5720) | Walter Garcia-Fontes
translated partially up to date | Till Paala
translated partially up to date | Francisco Vila
translated partially up to date | Frédéric Chiasson
Jean-Charles Malahieude Valentin Villenave Jean-Charles Malahieude translated up to date | Federico Bruni
Luca Rossetto Casel translated partially up to date | Tomohiro Tatejima
Yoshiki Sawada Hiroshi Fukuhara translated partially up to date |
| 1.2 Rhythms
(7387) | Walter Garcia-Fontes
translated partially up to date | Till Paala
translated partially up to date | Francisco Vila
translated partially up to date | Frédéric Chiasson
Jean-Charles Malahieude Valentin Villenave François Martin Xavier Scheuer translated up to date | Federico Bruni
Luca Rossetto Casel translated partially up to date | Tomohiro Tatejima
Yoshiki Sawada Hiroshi Fukuhara translated partially up to date |
| 1.3 Expressive marks
(1949) | Walter Garcia-Fontes
translated partially up to date | Till Paala
translated partially up to date | Francisco Vila
translated partially up to date | Valentin Villenave
Jean-Charles Malahieude Jean-Charles Malahieude John Mandereau translated up to date | Federico Bruni
Luca Rossetto Casel translated partially up to date | Tomohiro Tatejima
Yoshiki Sawada Hiroshi Fukuhara translated partially up to date |
| 1.4 Repeats
(1291) | Walter Garcia-Fontes
translated partially up to date | Till Paala
translated partially up to date | Francisco Vila
translated partially up to date | Valentin Villenave
Jean-Charles Malahieude Jean-Charles Malahieude John Mandereau translated up to date | Federico Bruni
Luca Rossetto Casel translated partially up to date | Tomohiro Tatejima
Yoshiki Sawada translated partially up to date |
| 1.5 Simultaneous notes
(3007) | Walter Garcia-Fontes
translated partially up to date | Till Paala
translated partially up to date | Francisco Vila
translated partially up to date | Frédéric Chiasson
Valentin Villenave Jean-Charles Malahieude Jean-Charles Malahieude John Mandereau translated up to date | Federico Bruni
Luca Rossetto Casel translated partially up to date | Tomohiro Tatejima
Yoshiki Sawada translated partially up to date |
| 1.6 Staff notation
(3358) | Walter Garcia-Fontes
translated partially up to date | Till Paala
translated partially up to date | Francisco Vila
translated partially up to date | Valentin Villenave
Jean-Charles Malahieude John Mandereau translated up to date | Federico Bruni
translated partially up to date | Tomohiro Tatejima
Yoshiki Sawada Hiroshi Fukuhara translated partially up to date |
| 1.7 Editorial annotations
(2110) | Walter Garcia-Fontes
translated partially up to date | Till Paala
translated partially up to date | Francisco Vila
translated partially up to date | Jean-Charles Malahieude
translated partially up to date | Federico Bruni
translated partially up to date | Tomohiro Tatejima
Yoshiki Sawada Hiroshi Fukuhara translated partially up to date |
| 1.8 Text
(4443) | Walter Garcia-Fontes
translated partially up to date | Till Paala
translated partially up to date | Francisco Vila
translated partially up to date | Jean-Charles Malahieude
Valentin Villenave John Mandereau translated up to date | Federico Bruni
translated partially up to date | Tomohiro Tatejima
Masamichi Hosoda Yoshiki Sawada Hiroshi Fukuhara translated partially up to date |
| 2 Specialist notation
(109) | Walter Garcia-Fontes
translated partially up to date | Till Paala
translated partially up to date | Francisco Vila
translated partially up to date | Jean-Charles Malahieude
translated up to date | Federico Bruni
translated partially up to date | Tomohiro Tatejima
Yoshiki Sawada translated partially up to date |
| 2.1 Vocal music
(5260) | Walter Garcia-Fontes
translated partially up to date | Till Paala
translated partially up to date | Francisco Vila
translated partially up to date | Valentin Villenave
Jean-Charles Malahieude Jean-Jacques Gerbaud translated up to date | Federico Bruni
translated partially up to date | Tomohiro Tatejima
Yoshiki Sawada Hiroshi Fukuhara translated partially up to date |
| 2.2 Keyboard and other multi-staff instruments
(907) | Walter Garcia-Fontes
translated partially up to date | Till Paala
translated partially up to date | Francisco Vila
translated partially up to date | Valentin Villenave
Jean-Charles Malahieude Jean-Charles Malahieude John Mandereau translated up to date | Federico Bruni
translated partially up to date | Tomohiro Tatejima
Yoshiki Sawada translated partially up to date |
| 2.3 Unfretted string instruments
(281) | Walter Garcia-Fontes
translated partially up to date | Till Paala
translated partially up to date | Francisco Vila
translated partially up to date | Valentin Villenave
Matthieu Jacquot Jean-Charles Malahieude John Mandereau translated up to date | Federico Bruni
translated partially up to date | Tomohiro Tatejima
Yoshiki Sawada translated partially up to date |
| 2.4 Fretted string instruments
(3381) | Walter Garcia-Fontes
translated partially up to date | Till Paala
translated partially up to date | Francisco Vila
translated partially up to date | Matthieu Jacquot
Jean-Charles Malahieude translated up to date | Federico Bruni
translated partially up to date | Tomohiro Tatejima
Yoshiki Sawada Hiroshi Fukuhara translated partially up to date |
| 2.5 Percussion
(1027) | Walter Garcia-Fontes
translated partially up to date | Till Paala
translated partially up to date | Francisco Vila
translated partially up to date | Valentin Villenave
Jean-Charles Malahieude John Mandereau translated up to date | Federico Bruni
translated partially up to date | Tomohiro Tatejima
Yoshiki Sawada translated partially up to date |
| 2.6 Wind instruments
(353) | Walter Garcia-Fontes
translated partially up to date | Till Paala
translated partially up to date | Francisco Vila
translated partially up to date | Valentin Villenave
Jean-Charles Malahieude Jean-Charles Malahieude John Mandereau translated up to date | Federico Bruni
translated partially up to date | Tomohiro Tatejima
Yoshiki Sawada translated partially up to date |
| 2.7 Chord notation
(2182) | Walter Garcia-Fontes
translated partially up to date | Till Paala
translated partially up to date | Francisco Vila
translated partially up to date | Valentin Villenave
Jean-Charles Malahieude Jean-Charles Malahieude John Mandereau translated up to date | Federico Bruni
translated partially up to date | Tomohiro Tatejima
Yoshiki Sawada Hiroshi Fukuhara translated partially up to date |
| 2.8 Contemporary music
(557) | Walter Garcia-Fontes
translated partially up to date | Till Paala
translated partially up to date | Francisco Vila
translated partially up to date | Jean-Charles Malahieude
translated up to date | Federico Bruni
translated partially up to date | Tomohiro Tatejima
Yoshiki Sawada translated partially up to date |
| 2.9 Ancient notation
(5565) | Walter Garcia-Fontes
translated partially up to date | Till Paala
translated partially up to date | Francisco Vila
translated partially up to date | Jean-Charles Malahieude
translated up to date | Federico Bruni
translated partially up to date | Tomohiro Tatejima
Hiroshi Fukuhara translated partially up to date |
| 2.10 World music
(2009) | Walter Garcia-Fontes
translated partially up to date | Till Paala
translated partially up to date | Francisco Vila
translated partially up to date | Jean-Jacques Gerbaud
Valentin Villenave Jean-Charles Malahieude translated up to date | Federico Bruni
translated partially up to date | Tomohiro Tatejima
Yoshiki Sawada Hiroshi Fukuhara translated partially up to date |
| 3 General input and output
(14352) | Walter Garcia-Fontes
partially translated (98 %) partially up to date | Till Paala
partially translated (87 %) partially up to date | Francisco Vila
partially translated (98 %) partially up to date | Jean-Charles Malahieude
Valentin Villenave translated up to date | Federico Bruni
partially translated (98 %) partially up to date | Tomohiro Tatejima
Yoshiki Sawada Hiroshi Fukuhara translated partially up to date |
| 4 Spacing issues
(11207) | Walter Garcia-Fontes
translated partially up to date | Till Paala
translated partially up to date | Francisco Vila
translated partially up to date | Frédéric Chiasson
Jean-Charles Malahieude translated up to date | Federico Bruni
translated partially up to date | Tomohiro Tatejima
Yoshiki Sawada translated partially up to date |
| 5 Changing defaults
(16755) | Walter Garcia-Fontes
translated partially up to date | Till Paala
partially translated (86 %) partially up to date | Francisco Vila
translated partially up to date | Valentin Villenave
Jean-Charles Malahieude Gilles Thibault translated up to date | Federico Bruni
translated partially up to date | Tomohiro Tatejima
Yoshiki Sawada Hiroshi Fukuhara translated partially up to date |
| A Notation manual tables
(3927) | Walter Garcia-Fontes
translated partially up to date | Till Paala
translated partially up to date | Francisco Vila
translated partially up to date | Frédéric Chiasson
Jean-Charles Malahieude translated up to date | Federico Bruni
translated partially up to date | Tomohiro Tatejima
Hiroshi Fukuhara translated partially up to date |
| B Cheat sheet
(252) | Walter Garcia-Fontes
translated partially up to date | Till Paala
translated partially up to date | Francisco Vila
translated partially up to date | Valentin Villenave
Jean-Charles Malahieude translated up to date | Federico Bruni
translated partially up to date | Yoshiki Sawada
Tomohiro Tatejima translated partially up to date |
| C GNU Free Documentation License
(3723) | Walter Garcia-Fontes
Walter Garcia-Fontes partially translated (0 %) up to date | Till Paala
partially translated (0 %) up to date | Francisco Vila
partially translated (0 %) up to date | John Mandereau
Jean-Charles Malahieude partially translated (0 %) up to date | Federico Bruni
partially translated (0 %) up to date | Yoshiki Sawada
Tomohiro Tatejima partially translated (0 %) up to date |
| LilyPond snippets | de | es | fr | it | ja |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Section titles
(342) | Han-Wen Nienhuys
partially translated (58 %) partially up to date | Han-Wen Nienhuys
partially translated (58 %) partially up to date | Jean-Charles Malahieude
partially translated (58 %) up to date | Federico Bruni
partially translated (58 %) partially up to date | Han-Wen Nienhuys
translated partially up to date |
| LilyPond — \TITLE\
(1141) | Han-Wen Nienhuys
translated partially up to date | Han-Wen Nienhuys
translated partially up to date | Jean-Charles Malahieude
translated up to date | Federico Bruni
translated partially up to date | Han-Wen Nienhuys
translated partially up to date |
| LilyPond Application Usage | ca | de | es | fr | hu | it | ja |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Section titles
(138) | Walter Garcia-Fontes
translated partially up to date | Till Paala
translated partially up to date | Francisco Vila
translated partially up to date | John Mandereau
Jean-Charles Malahieude translated up to date | Harmath Dénes
translated partially up to date | Federico Bruni
Luca Rossetto Casel translated partially up to date | Masamichi Hosoda
Yoshiki Sawada translated partially up to date |
| LilyPond — \TITLE\
(1141) | Walter Garcia-Fontes
translated partially up to date | Till Paala
translated partially up to date | Francisco Vila
translated partially up to date | John Mandereau
Jean-Charles Malahieude translated up to date | Harmath Dénes
translated partially up to date | Federico Bruni
Luca Rossetto Casel translated partially up to date | Masamichi Hosoda
Yoshiki Sawada translated partially up to date |
1 Running lilypond
(7152) | Walter Garcia-Fontes
partially translated (93 %) partially up to date | Reinhold Kainhofer
Till Paala Till Paala partially translated (93 %) partially up to date | Francisco Vila
translated partially up to date | Jean-Charles Malahieude
translated up to date | Harmath Dénes
partially translated (86 %) partially up to date | Federico Bruni
Luca Rossetto Casel translated partially up to date | Masamichi Hosoda
Tomohiro Tatejima Yoshiki Sawada Hiroshi Fukuhara translated partially up to date |
2 Updating files with convert-ly
(2097) | Walter Garcia-Fontes
partially translated (89 %) partially up to date | Till Paala
partially translated (89 %) partially up to date | Francisco Vila
translated up to date | Jean-Charles Malahieude
translated up to date | Harmath Dénes
partially translated (89 %) partially up to date | Federico Bruni
Luca Rossetto Casel translated up to date | Tomohiro Tatejima
Yoshiki Sawada translated up to date |
3 Running lilypond-book
(4477) | Walter Garcia-Fontes
partially translated (0 %) up to date | Reinhold Kainhofer
Till Paala translated partially up to date | Francisco Vila
translated partially up to date | Jean-Charles Malahieude
translated up to date | Harmath Dénes
partially translated (13 %) partially up to date | Federico Bruni
Luca Rossetto Casel translated partially up to date | Tomohiro Tatejima
Yoshiki Sawada translated partially up to date |
| 4 External programs
(3051) | Walter Garcia-Fontes
partially translated (0 %) up to date | Till Paala
Reinhold Kainhofer partially translated (88 %) partially up to date | Francisco Vila
translated partially up to date | Jean-Charles Malahieude
translated up to date | Harmath Dénes
partially translated (0 %) up to date | Federico Bruni
Luca Rossetto Casel translated up to date | Masamichi Hosoda
Tomohiro Tatejima Yoshiki Sawada Hiroshi Fukuhara translated partially up to date |
| 5 Suggestions for writing files
(2798) | Walter Garcia-Fontes
translated partially up to date | Till Paala
translated partially up to date | Francisco Vila
translated partially up to date | Ludovic Sardain
Jean-Charles Malahieude Jean-Yves Baudais Valentin Villenave John Mandereau translated up to date | Harmath Dénes
partially translated (0 %) up to date | Federico Bruni
Luca Rossetto Casel translated up to date | Tomohiro Tatejima
Yoshiki Sawada translated partially up to date |
| A GNU Free Documentation License
(3723) | Walter Garcia-Fontes
partially translated (0 %) up to date | Till Paala
partially translated (0 %) up to date | Francisco Vila
partially translated (0 %) up to date | John Mandereau
Jean-Charles Malahieude partially translated (0 %) up to date | Harmath Dénes
partially translated (0 %) up to date | Federico Bruni
Luca Rossetto Casel partially translated (0 %) up to date | Masamichi Hosoda
Yoshiki Sawada partially translated (0 %) up to date |
| LilyPond – Music notation for everyone | ca | cs | de | es | fr | hu | it | ja | nl | pt | zh |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Section titles
(790) | Walter Garcia-Fontes
translated partially up to date | Pavel Fric
translated partially up to date | Jonas Hahnfeld
Till Paala Michael Gerdau translated partially up to date | Francisco Vila
translated partially up to date | John Mandereau
translated up to date | Harmath Dénes
translated partially up to date | Federico Bruni
Luca Rossetto Casel translated partially up to date | Tomohiro Tatejima
Masamichi Hosoda Yoshiki Sawada Yoshinobu Ishizaki translated partially up to date | Jan Nieuwenhuizen
Tineke de Munnik translated partially up to date | Rafael Fontenelle
translated partially up to date | Ben Luo
Anthony Fok translated partially up to date |
| LilyPond — \TITLE\
(1141) | Walter Garcia-Fontes
translated partially up to date | Pavel Fric
translated partially up to date | Jonas Hahnfeld
Till Paala Michael Gerdau translated partially up to date | Francisco Vila
translated partially up to date | John Mandereau
translated up to date | Harmath Dénes
translated partially up to date | Federico Bruni
Luca Rossetto Casel translated partially up to date | Tomohiro Tatejima
Masamichi Hosoda Yoshiki Sawada Yoshinobu Ishizaki translated partially up to date | Jan Nieuwenhuizen
Tineke de Munnik translated partially up to date | Rafael Fontenelle
translated partially up to date | Ben Luo
Anthony Fok translated partially up to date |
| Introduction
(6069) | Walter Garcia-Fontes
translated partially up to date | Pavel Fric
translated partially up to date | Jonas Hahnfeld
Till Paala Michael Gerdau translated partially up to date | Francisco Vila
translated partially up to date | Gauvain Pocentek
Jean-Charles Malahieude John Mandereau Jean-Charles Malahieude translated up to date | Harmath Dénes
translated partially up to date | Federico Bruni
Luca Rossetto Casel translated partially up to date | Masamichi Hosoda
Tomohiro Tatejima Yoshiki Sawada Yoshinobu Ishizaki translated partially up to date | Jan Nieuwenhuizen
Tineke de Munnik translated partially up to date | Rafael Fontenelle
translated partially up to date | Ben Luo
Anthony Fok translated partially up to date |
| Download
(1113) | Walter Garcia-Fontes
translated partially up to date | Pavel Fric
translated partially up to date | Jonas Hahnfeld
Till Paala Michael Gerdau translated partially up to date | Francisco Vila
translated partially up to date | Jean-Charles Malahieude
John Mandereau Jean-Charles Malahieude translated up to date | Harmath Dénes
translated partially up to date | Federico Bruni
Luca Rossetto Casel translated partially up to date | Masamichi Hosoda
Yoshiki Sawada Hiroshi Fukuhara translated partially up to date | Jan Nieuwenhuizen
Tineke de Munnik translated partially up to date | Rafael Fontenelle
translated partially up to date | Ben Luo
Anthony Fok translated partially up to date |
| Manuals
(1284) | Walter Garcia-Fontes
translated partially up to date | Pavel Fric
translated partially up to date | Jonas Hahnfeld
Till Paala Michael Gerdau translated up to date | Francisco Vila
translated up to date | John Mandereau
Jean-Charles Malahieude translated up to date | Harmath Dénes
translated partially up to date | Federico Bruni
Luca Rossetto Casel translated up to date | Masamichi Hosoda
Yoshiki Sawada translated up to date | Jan Nieuwenhuizen
Tineke de Munnik translated partially up to date | Rafael Fontenelle
translated partially up to date | Ben Luo
Anthony Fok translated partially up to date |
| A GNU Free Documentation License
(3723) | Walter Garcia-Fontes
partially translated (0 %) up to date | Pavel Fric
partially translated (0 %) up to date | Jonas Hahnfeld
Till Paala Michael Gerdau partially translated (0 %) up to date | Francisco Vila
partially translated (0 %) up to date | John Mandereau
Jean-Charles Malahieude partially translated (0 %) up to date | Harmath Dénes
partially translated (0 %) up to date | Federico Bruni
Luca Rossetto Casel partially translated (0 %) up to date | Masamichi Hosoda
Yoshiki Sawada partially translated (0 %) up to date | Jan Nieuwenhuizen
Tineke de Munnik partially translated (0 %) up to date | Rafael Fontenelle
partially translated (0 %) up to date | Ben Luo
Anthony Fok partially translated (0 %) up to date |
| Community
(2153) | Walter Garcia-Fontes
translated partially up to date | Pavel Fric
partially translated (91 %) partially up to date | Jonas Hahnfeld
Till Paala Michael Gerdau translated partially up to date | Francisco Vila
translated partially up to date | Jean-Charles Malahieude
John Mandereau translated partially up to date | Harmath Dénes
partially translated (92 %) partially up to date | Federico Bruni
Luca Rossetto Casel translated partially up to date | Masamichi Hosoda
Yoshiki Sawada translated partially up to date | Jan Nieuwenhuizen
Tineke de Munnik partially translated (0 %) up to date | Rafael Fontenelle
translated partially up to date | Ben Luo
Anthony Fok translated partially up to date |
All
Previous stable versions
- LilyPond 2.20 Documentation
- LilyPond 2.18 Documentation
- LilyPond 2.16 Documentation
- LilyPond 2.14 Documentation
- LilyPond 2.12 Documentation
- LilyPond 2.10 Documentation
- LilyPond 2.8 Documentation
- LilyPond 2.6 Documentation
- LilyPond 2.4 Documentation
- LilyPond 2.2 Documentation
- LilyPond 2.0 Documentation
- LilyPond 1.8 Documentation
- LilyPond 1.6 Documentation
FDL
Documentation license
The documentation for GNU LilyPond is published under the GNU Free Documentation License. An introduction to this license, and our reasons for choosing it, is given in Freedom.
GNU Free Documentation License 1.1
Version 1.3, 3 November 2008
Copyright © 2000, 2001, 2002, 2007, 2008 Free Software Foundation, Inc. https://fsf.org/ Everyone is permitted to copy and distribute verbatim copies of this license document, but changing it is not allowed. |
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PREAMBLE
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APPLICABILITY AND DEFINITIONS
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VERBATIM COPYING
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COPYING IN QUANTITY
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MODIFICATIONS
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If the Modified Version includes new front-matter sections or appendices that qualify as Secondary Sections and contain no material copied from the Document, you may at your option designate some or all of these sections as invariant. To do this, add their titles to the list of Invariant Sections in the Modified Version’s license notice. These titles must be distinct from any other section titles.
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The author(s) and publisher(s) of the Document do not by this License give permission to use their names for publicity for or to assert or imply endorsement of any Modified Version.
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COMBINING DOCUMENTS
You may combine the Document with other documents released under this License, under the terms defined in section 4 above for modified versions, provided that you include in the combination all of the Invariant Sections of all of the original documents, unmodified, and list them all as Invariant Sections of your combined work in its license notice, and that you preserve all their Warranty Disclaimers.
The combined work need only contain one copy of this License, and multiple identical Invariant Sections may be replaced with a single copy. If there are multiple Invariant Sections with the same name but different contents, make the title of each such section unique by adding at the end of it, in parentheses, the name of the original author or publisher of that section if known, or else a unique number. Make the same adjustment to the section titles in the list of Invariant Sections in the license notice of the combined work.
In the combination, you must combine any sections Entitled “History” in the various original documents, forming one section Entitled “History”; likewise combine any sections Entitled “Acknowledgements”, and any sections Entitled “Dedications”. You must delete all sections Entitled “Endorsements.”
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COLLECTIONS OF DOCUMENTS
You may make a collection consisting of the Document and other documents released under this License, and replace the individual copies of this License in the various documents with a single copy that is included in the collection, provided that you follow the rules of this License for verbatim copying of each of the documents in all other respects.
You may extract a single document from such a collection, and distribute it individually under this License, provided you insert a copy of this License into the extracted document, and follow this License in all other respects regarding verbatim copying of that document.
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AGGREGATION WITH INDEPENDENT WORKS
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If the Cover Text requirement of section 3 is applicable to these copies of the Document, then if the Document is less than one half of the entire aggregate, the Document’s Cover Texts may be placed on covers that bracket the Document within the aggregate, or the electronic equivalent of covers if the Document is in electronic form. Otherwise they must appear on printed covers that bracket the whole aggregate.
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TRANSLATION
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If a section in the Document is Entitled “Acknowledgements”, “Dedications”, or “History”, the requirement (section 4) to Preserve its Title (section 1) will typically require changing the actual title.
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TERMINATION
You may not copy, modify, sublicense, or distribute the Document except as expressly provided under this License. Any attempt otherwise to copy, modify, sublicense, or distribute it is void, and will automatically terminate your rights under this License.
However, if you cease all violation of this License, then your license from a particular copyright holder is reinstated (a) provisionally, unless and until the copyright holder explicitly and finally terminates your license, and (b) permanently, if the copyright holder fails to notify you of the violation by some reasonable means prior to 60 days after the cessation.
Moreover, your license from a particular copyright holder is reinstated permanently if the copyright holder notifies you of the violation by some reasonable means, this is the first time you have received notice of violation of this License (for any work) from that copyright holder, and you cure the violation prior to 30 days after your receipt of the notice.
Termination of your rights under this section does not terminate the licenses of parties who have received copies or rights from you under this License. If your rights have been terminated and not permanently reinstated, receipt of a copy of some or all of the same material does not give you any rights to use it.
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FUTURE REVISIONS OF THIS LICENSE
The Free Software Foundation may publish new, revised versions of the GNU Free Documentation License from time to time. Such new versions will be similar in spirit to the present version, but may differ in detail to address new problems or concerns. See https://www.gnu.org/licenses/.
Each version of the License is given a distinguishing version number. If the Document specifies that a particular numbered version of this License “or any later version” applies to it, you have the option of following the terms and conditions either of that specified version or of any later version that has been published (not as a draft) by the Free Software Foundation. If the Document does not specify a version number of this License, you may choose any version ever published (not as a draft) by the Free Software Foundation. If the Document specifies that a proxy can decide which future versions of this License can be used, that proxy’s public statement of acceptance of a version permanently authorizes you to choose that version for the Document.
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RELICENSING
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“CC-BY-SA” means the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 license published by Creative Commons Corporation, a not-for-profit corporation with a principal place of business in San Francisco, California, as well as future copyleft versions of that license published by that same organization.
“Incorporate” means to publish or republish a Document, in whole or in part, as part of another Document.
An MMC is “eligible for relicensing” if it is licensed under this License, and if all works that were first published under this License somewhere other than this MMC, and subsequently incorporated in whole or in part into the MMC, (1) had no cover texts or invariant sections, and (2) were thus incorporated prior to November 1, 2008.
The operator of an MMC Site may republish an MMC contained in the site under CC-BY-SA on the same site at any time before August 1, 2009, provided the MMC is eligible for relicensing.
ADDENDUM: How to use this License for your documents
To use this License in a document you have written, include a copy of the License in the document and put the following copyright and license notices just after the title page:
Copyright (C) year your name. Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.3 or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no Invariant Sections, no Front-Cover Texts, and no Back-Cover Texts. A copy of the license is included in the section entitled ``GNU Free Documentation License''. |
If you have Invariant Sections, Front-Cover Texts and Back-Cover Texts, replace the “with…Texts.” line with this:
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If you have Invariant Sections without Cover Texts, or some other combination of the three, merge those two alternatives to suit the situation.
If your document contains nontrivial examples of program code, we recommend releasing these examples in parallel under your choice of free software license, such as the GNU General Public License, to permit their use in free software.
Community
Interacting with the community
- Contact: get help, discuss, and keep in touch!
- Tiny examples: these are highly recommended when discussing LilyPond.
- Bug reports: something went wrong.
Making LilyPond better
- Help us: your assistance is requested.
- Sponsoring: financial contributions.
- Development: for contributors and testers.
- Google Summer of Code: ideas for Google Summer of Code (GSoC).
- Authors: the people who made LilyPond what it is today.
Miscellaneous
- Publications: what we wrote, and have had written about us.
- News: news from the LilyPond project.
- Attic: announcements and changelogs from past versions, old news, etc.
| Contact | ||
| Tiny examples | ||
| Bug reports | ||
| Help us | ||
| Sponsoring | ||
| Development | ||
| Google Summer of Code | ||
| Authors | ||
| Publications | ||
| News | ||
| Attic |
Contact
User Discussions and Help
User mailing list: lilypond-user@gnu.org
This mailing list is the main place for users to discuss and help each other.
Note: When asking questions, please use Tiny examples!
Other languages
LilyPond Snippet Repository
The LilyPond Snippet Repository is a large collection of user-submitted examples, which can freely be copied and used in your own works. See what other people have written, and add your own!
https://lsr.di.unimi.it
Particularly instructive examples from LSR are included in our official documentation, in Snippets.
Developer Discussions and Translations
Developer mailing list: lilypond-devel@gnu.org
Developer discussions take place on this list. Patches can also be sent here.
Bug mailing list: bug-lilypond@gnu.org
Bug reports and discussions should be sent here. Do not send patches to this list.
Note: Before sending a message to the bug list, please read our guidelines for Bug reports.
Release announcements
Releases mailing list: info-lilypond@gnu.org
This mailing list is a low-volume, read-only list that receives notifications of new releases.
IRC
Some level of support is provided on our IRC channel,
#lilypond@irc.libera.chat
This channel has no public archive, so any question that may be useful for others would better be posted to one of the mailing lists.
Tiny examples
Why create them?
- The simpler the example is, the quicker potential helpers can understand it and help you.
- A tiny example demonstrates that you have put effort towards solving the problem yourself. When people send huge portions of input, it looks like they don’t care if we help them or not.
- Creating a tiny example helps you to understand what is happening. Many false problem reports can be avoided by attempting to create a tiny example; if you cannot replicate a “bug” in a tiny example, then the problem was probably an insufficient understanding of LilyPond, not an actual bug!
How to create them?
-
Include the
\versionnumber. - Make it small! Examples about spacing or page layout might require many bars of music, but most issues can be reproduced using less than a single measure.
-
When trying to create an example, try commenting out (
%or%{ … %}) sections of your file. If you can comment something while still demonstrating the main idea, then remove the commented-material. - Avoid using complicated notes, keys or time signatures, unless the bug is about the behavior of those items.
-
Do not use
\overrideor\setcommands unless the bug is about those specific commands. - Optionally, attach an image showing the desired graphical output.
How tiny should they be?
Is the code below a minimal example?
\version "2.14.1"
\include "english.ly"
\score {
\new Staff {
\key d \major
\numericTimeSignature
\time 2/4
<cs' d'' b''>16 <cs' d'' b''>8.
%% Here: the tie on the D's looks funny
%% Too tall? Left-hand endpoint is not aligned with the B tie?
~
<cs' d'' b''>8 [ <b d'' a''> ]
}
}
Well, it is not very big, but a truly minimal example is here:
\version "2.14.1"
{
% middle tie looks funny here:
<c' d'' b''>8. ~ <c' d'' b''>8
}
Very few tiny examples exceed 10 lines of code - quite often 4 lines are enough to demonstrate the problem!
Bug reports
If you have input that results in a crash or wrong output, then that is a bug.
Step 1: Known bugs
We may already know about this bug. Check here:
https://gitlab.com/lilypond/lilypond/-/issues
Note: Please DO NOT add bug reports directly to the bug tracker. Once an issue has been added to the tracker, feel free to add more information to that report.
Step 2: Creating a bug report
If you have discovered a bug which is not listed, please help us by creating a bug report.
Note: We only accept reports in the form of Tiny examples. We have very limited resources, so any non-minimal example will be rejected. Almost every bug can be demonstrated in four notes or less!
Here is an example of a good bug report:
% Accidentals should be printed for only
% the first note in a tie, but this version
% prints flats on both notes.
\version "2.10.1"
\relative c'' {
bes1 ~
bes1
}
Step 3: Sending a bug report
Once you have verified that the issue is not already known and created a bug report, please send it to us!
Unfortunately there is no longer an interface for posting to the bug-lilypond list without subscribing; see
https://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/bug-lilypond
for more information.
Step 4: Wait for a response
Once your bug report has been sent to the list, our Bug Squad will examine it; they may ask you for more information. You will be notified when the report will be added to the bug tracker. Please allow up to 4 days, as we have a limited number of volunteers for this task.
Once a bug has been added to the tracker, you can comment it to add more information about it. In order to be automatically notified about any activity on the tracker issue, you may subscribe by clicking the envelope symbol next to the issue title.
Optional help: show the desired behavior
Once an issue has been added to the tracker, it can be very helpful if we can see the desired output. Feel free to add input code and/or images (possibly created with other tools) which demonstrate what you think it should look like!
Help us
We need you!
Thank you for your interest in helping us — we would love to see you get involved! Your contribution will help a large group of users make beautifully typeset music.
Even working on small tasks can have a big impact: taking care of them allows experienced developers work on advanced tasks, instead of spending time on those simple tasks.
For a multi-faceted project like LilyPond, sometimes it’s tough to know where to begin. In addition to the avenues proposed below, you can send an e-mail to the lilypond-devel@gnu.org mailing list, and we’ll help you to get started.
Simple tasks
No programming skills required!
-
Mailing list support: answer questions from fellow users.
(This may entail helping them navigate the online documentation;
in such cases it may sometimes be appropriate to point them
to version-agnostic URL paths such as
/latest/or/stable/, which are automatically redirected.) - Bug reporting: help users create proper Bug reports, and/or join the Bug Squad to organize Issues.
- Documentation: small changes can be proposed by following the guidelines for Documentation suggestions.
- LilyPond Snippet Repository (LSR): create and fix snippets following the guidelines in Adding and editing snippets.
- Discussions, reviews, and testing: the developers often ask for feedback about new documentation, potential syntax changes, and testing new features. Please contribute to these discussions!
Advanced tasks
These jobs generally require that you have the source code and can compile LilyPond.
Note: We suggest that contributors using Windows or MacOS X do not attempt to set up their own development environment; instead, use Lilydev as discussed in Quick start.
Contributors using Linux or FreeBSD may also use Lilydev, but if they prefer their own development environment, they should read Working with source code, and Compiling.
Begin by reading Summary for experienced developers.
- Documentation: for large changes, see Documentation work.
- Website: the website is built from the normal documentation source. See the info about documentation, and also Website work.
- Translations: see Translating the documentation, and Translating the website.
- Bugfixes or new features: read Programming work.
Sponsoring
Bounties
In the past,
- some users have paid for new features
- some developers have added new features for hire
The LilyPond project does not organize such efforts; we neither endorse nor discourage such agreements. Any contracts between private individuals is the business of those individuals, not ours.
Guidelines
Any user wanting to offer money in exchange for work should bear in mind the following points:
- LilyPond developers may advertise their services on the lilypond email lists from time to time.
- Any agreements between private individuals should include the normal precautions when conducting business: who pays, how much do they pay, with what method of payment, and upon what set of conditions. We suggest that any ambiguity or uncertainty in these questions should be resolved before any work begins.
Development
Development for LilyPond 2.23.10
Note: These are unstable development versions. If you have the slightest doubt about how to use or install LilyPond, we urge you to use the stable Download, and read the stable Manuals.
Release numbers
There are two sets of releases for LilyPond: stable releases, and unstable development releases. Stable versions have an even-numbered ‘minor’ version number (e.g., 2.14, 2.16, 2.18). Development versions have an odd-numbered ‘minor’ version number (e.g., 2.15, 2.17, 2.19).
Download
Instructions for git and compiling are in the Contributor’s Guide.
Documentation writers and testers will generally want to download the latest binary:
GNU/Linux x86_64: LilyPond 2.23.10
macOS x86_64: LilyPond 2.23.10
Contributor’s Guide
LilyPond development is a fairly complicated matter. In order to help new contributors, and to keep the whole system (mostly) stable, we have written a manual for development tasks.
- Contributor’s Guide (split HTML) -
the manual is split between many HTML pages.
(small download for each page) - Contributor’s Guide (big HTML) -
read this manual as one huge HTML page.
(large single download) - contributor.pdf -
download as a PDF file.
(large single download, 1012K)
Regression tests
- Regression tests: This release’s regtests. (pdf version)
- MusicXML tests: This release’s musicXML tests. (pdf version)
- abc2ly tests: This release’s abc2ly tests. (pdf version)
- lilypond-book tests: This release’s lilypond-book tests. (pdf version)
All versions
Manuals
Note: These manuals are for LilyPond 2.23.10; the latest manuals can be found at https://lilypond.org
| Introduction | ||
|---|---|---|
| Learning (split HTML) | Learning (big HTML) | learning.pdf |
| Glossary (split HTML) | Glossary (big HTML) | music-glossary.pdf |
| Essay (split HTML) | Essay (big HTML) | essay.pdf |
| Regular | ||
|---|---|---|
| Notation (split HTML) | Notation (big HTML) | notation.pdf |
| Usage (split HTML) | Usage (big HTML) | usage.pdf |
| Snippets (split HTML) | Snippets (big HTML) | snippets.pdf |
Google Summer of Code
What is Google Summer of Code?
GSoC is a global program that offers students stipends to write code for free software and open source projects during the summer. For three months students work to complete a given task as part of the project’s community and under the guidance of experienced mentors. The program is an excellent opportunity for students to gain experience with real-world software development and make a contribution that benefits everyone. It brings new contributors to LilyPond and enables students who are already involved to become more involved. LilyPond participates in GSoC as part of the GNU project.
We have had GSoC participants in 2012, 2015, 2016 and 2017. This site is current for the 2018 program.
Project Ideas List
Below is a list of GSoC project ideas (last update: May 2017), but if you have other ideas for a project you may complete within the three months of the program you’re welcome to make a suggestion on our developer mailing list (see Contact). There are a number of areas where LilyPond could be improved, and our development team is always willing to help those who would like to tackle a project similar to those listed below. As mentor availability varies from project to project and from year to year it is wise to get in touch with us as early as possible.
Per 2018 we have installed the new role of “Community Mentor”. We aim at assigning one Community Mentor to each active project who is not responsible for discussing the implementation or reviewing the code. Instead they will on the one hand discuss the design of the planned features from the (power) user perspective, and they will look after the communication between student and mentor, and between the two and the community.
A full list of all the current open issues can be found here.
Adopt the SMuFL music font encoding standard
For several years now a new standard for music fonts has been around: SMuFL, which is also discussed as becoming part of a future W3C standard for music encoding. As a FLOSS tool LilyPond should adhere to such an open standard instead of using an isolated solution like it does today. Adopting SMuFL will help integrating LilyPond with the world of music notation software and eventually give LilyPond users access to a wider selection of notation fonts.
Making LilyPond compliant to SMuFL includes remapping of the glyphs that are built from METAFONT sources, adjusting the glyphs’ metrics to SMuFL’s specifications, and finally updating the way LilyPond looks up and positions the glyphs. As an optional part of this project LilyPond’s font loading mechanism could be modified to use notation fonts installed as system fonts instead of inside the LilyPond installation.
Difficulty: Easy/medium
Requirements: C++ and willingness to get familiar with LilyPond internals.
Recommended: Interest and experience in working with font files. A little bit of METAFONT.
Mentors: Werner Lemberg, Abraham Lee
Adding variants of font glyphs
- Adding ‘on’ and ‘between’ staff-line variants.
- Shorter and narrower variants of some glyphs for example, accidentals. Another, more specific example could be an ancient notation breve notehead coming in two variants one with a small or big ‘hole’ within it.
Difficulty: easy
Requirements: MetaFont, C++, good eye for details
Recommended knowledge: basic LilyPond knowledge
Mentor: Werner Lemberg
Improve/Extend Export to MusicXML
There is experimental support for exporting scores to MusicXML. So far there is limited coverage that should be extended, and the export should become more robust with regard to unconventionally organized input files. Several strategies can be thought of in that regard.
Significant progress in coverage has been made in a GSoC Project hosted by Frescobaldi in 2017, but there is still much to be done that could make a nice GSoC project.
Working in this project will mainly be done in the python-ly repository.
Difficulty: easy to hard (depending on the targeted improvements)
Requirements: Python, MusicXML
Mentor: Peter Bjuhr
Fix Beaming Patterns/Beam Subdivisions and Tuplets
Subdivision is an important way to improve the readability of beamed music. However, despite several attempts at fixing it LilyPond still does not always produce correct results. In order to properly fix this issue it seems necessary to rewrite the responsible code from the ground up. Much work has already been done assessing the issue (see this discussion and this work-in-progress document).
In the course of this assessment it has been found that LilyPond’s conception of tuplets is somewhat flawed as well (see this discussion), and that this has to be fixed as well.
Difficulty: medium
Requirements: C++
Recommended knowledge: Good musical and mathematical understanding of timing issues
Mentors: Urs Liska, Carl Sorensen
Frescobaldi Extensions
Starting with the current release 3.1 Frescobaldi has an extension API that allows the easy integration of arbitrary functionality in the editing environment. These could range from, say, document statistics and accounting functionality to fancy features like a built-in video chat client or a stock market ticker.
We would welcome project suggestions about arbitrary Frescobaldi extensions of appropriate complexity that add substantial functionality for working with LilyPond scores which might not be suitable to be included into Frescobaldi itself.
As suggestions and examples may serve: a project management extension that can manage repetoire of arbitrary complexity, handle the generation of template files and the compilation process. Or an extension to manage the openLilyLib infrastructure.
Difficulty: easy/medium
Requirements: Python, (PyQt)
Optional: GUILE Scheme (if functionality involves LilyPond internals)
Mentor: Urs Liska
Support for Style Sheets
LilyPond’s engraving output can be tweaked to the least detail, and one important addition in recent years was the ability to use alternative notation fonts. It is possible to create reusable modules for “house styles”, but this project aims at bringing this to a new level by creating a convenient extension package with support for creating, applying, and sharing modular style sheets. We are looking for a hierarchical structure that allows to mix and match style elements for “house” (e.g., “my-personal-style”, “client-a”, “client-b”, etc.), score type, paper size etc.
Work can be built upon the existing notation-fonts openLilyLib package. We would like to see a further improvement of the loading mechanism for notation fonts (for example a better separation of loading notation and text fonts) as part of the project, and optionally (this would involve working on Lilypond’s C++ code) support for notation fonts that are installed system-wide.
Difficulty: medium
Requirements: Scheme, aesthetic competence
Recommended: sense of building hierarchical frameworks
Optional: C++ (for font loading internals)
Mentor: Abraham Lee
Community Mentor: Kieren MacMillan
Contemporary Notation
LilyPond is very good at creating non-standard notation. Having to code every graphical element instead of simply drawing it may seem cumbersome but is in fact a strong asset. New notational functionality can be provided with consistent appearance, automatic layout and a natural syntactic interface.
Within the openLilyLib library system the student will create a fundamental infrastructure and building blocks to make creating contemporary notation easier. Additionally (at least) one concrete package is developed to cover specific contemporary notation, such as for example the style of a given composer, extended playing techniques for a specific instrument or a certain category of effects.
Difficulty: medium
Requirements: Scheme (interaction with LilyPond internals), contemporary notation techniques
Recommended: sense of building hierarchical frameworks
Mentors: NN, Urs Liska
Implement a System to Handle Scores System by System
One strategy that may improve the issue of LilyPond’s compilation time is to handle scores in a system-by-system manner through partial compilation. This project explores one approach to achieve this and may lay the ground for future development towards a “LilyPond server”. It is very ambitions because it involves working with LilyPond’s internals and optionally a reference user interface in Frescobaldi.
The idea behind this project is the implementation of a music viewer that doesn’t display pages but sees a scores as a continuous sequence of systems that are stitched together. LilyPond can produce such a sequence of files, and it can be made aware of the moments of each line break. That way only systems have to be recompiled that are affected by a modification, thus saving significant waiting times. Optionally there could be new engraving modes in LilyPond that don’t try to optimize the line breaking, saving even more time, at least while in content editing mode.
The project is fairly complex and has many more aspects than could be listed on this page. So if you are interested in this please get in touch with us as early as possible to evaluate options and discuss the topics before you write an application.
Difficulty: hard
Requirements: LilyPond/Scheme, Python/PyQt
Optional: C++ if it’s necessary to modify LilyPond itself
Mentors: NN (, Urs Liska)
Community Mentor: Kieren MacMillan
Information for Applicants/Participants
In order to have a satisfying experience with GSoC applicants are strongly advised to thoroughly read the following recommendations. Some of these are relevant for the application process, others for the time within the project.
- Read all applicable information on the program’s website, particularly the students’ manual. Make sure you fulfil all of Google’s prerequisites and are willing to join the program as a full-time commitment over the coding period of three months.
- Please get in touch with us as soon as possible if you are interested in applying with a project. Mentor availability may change without notice, project proposals may need fine-tuning, and many other reasons might require us to reject or ignore an application that hasn’t been discussed before.
- We do not know in advance how many “slots” we will have available for projects, so please be aware that you may find yourself in competition with other applicants or not. Interested or even enthusiastic response from our mentors is no guarantee of eventually being accepted, and not being accepted does not necessarily indicate a negative evaluation of your application. If we have to decide between different applicants there may be various aspects to consider.
- Integration in the LilyPond community is a fundamental part of GSoC, and we expect our students to make substantial efforts to become community members. Within the bonding period we expect you to write a blog post about your project (either on Scores of Beauty or on any other blog) and to be active on our mailing lists, introducing yourself but also communicating about unrelated tasks. This goes beyond the mere setting up of a working environment and familiarizing yourself with the relevant code, but we think it is crucial for the GSoC project to be mutually satisfying.
- If you are accepted to the program you will have one mentor explicitly assigned to your project. With this mentor you will have to agree upon a communication strategy, be it emails, chatrooms, issue trackers or voice/video chats. Regular communication is absolutely crucial for the success of a GSoC project so you are stricly required to keep talking to your mentor. But keep in mind that your mentor has explicitly taken over the responsibility for your project, and while unlike you he isn’t paid for this activity you are still entitled to get regular attention from him.
- In order to get support from your mentor you have to give him a chance to follow your progress and efforts. Therefore it is important to regularly commit your changes to the versioning repository you are working on. Don’t hesitate making unfinished code available because you are afraid of criticism, and don’t suppress questions because you think they might be considered stupid. But ideally your code should at any time be accompanied by compatible testing code. Your mentor may not be able to properly assess your code by only reading it without the opportunity to apply it in a real example.
There is a list of inactive projects in the Attic. We list projects there that are still considered valuable but for which there are currently no mentors available.
Authors
Current Development Team
- Jean Abou Samra: jean@abou-samra.fr, Factotum
- Colin Campbell: cpkc.music@shaw.ca, Patch Meister
- Dan Eble: nine.fierce.ballads@gmail.com, Core developer
- Jonas Hahnfeld: hahnjo@hahnjo.de https://www.hahnjo.de/ Core developer, release unbreaker, GitLab manager
- Phil Holmes: mail@philholmes.net http://www.philholmes.net Build unentangler, Bug squad member
- David Kastrup: dak@gnu.org, hard core developer, user and programming interfaces, bug squashing and swamp drainage.
- Werner Lemberg: wl@gnu.org, Fonts, bug squasher
- Han-Wen Nienhuys: hanwen@xs4all.nl, https://www.xs4all.nl/~hanwen/, Main author
- Francisco Vila: Translation Meister
Previous Development Team
- Mats Bengtsson: mats.bengtsson@ee.kth.se, https://www.kth.se/profile/matben/, Support guru
- Bertrand Bordage: bordage.bertrand@gmail.com, Core developer, font designer
- Trevor Daniels: t.daniels@treda.co.uk, Assistant documentation editor
- Colin Hall: Bug Meister
- Ian Hulin: Core developer
- Reinhold Kainhofer: reinhold@kainhofer.com, https://reinhold.kainhofer.com, Core developer, Music2xml wrangler
- Pedro Kroeger: Build Meister
- Jonathan Kulp: Assistant documentation editor
- James Lowe: Documentation, Patch Meister
- Joe Neeman: Core developer
- Jan Nieuwenhuizen: janneke@gnu.org, https://JoyofSource.com, https://AvatarAcademy.nl, Main author
- John Mandereau: john.mandereau@free.fr, Translation Meister
- Patrick McCarty: SVG guru, bug squad member, bug squasher, text handling
- Graham Percival: https://percival-music.ca, Bug Meister, Grand Documentation Project leader
- Mark Polesky: Documentation, Code cleanup
- Neil Puttock: Core developer
- Jürgen Reuter: reuter_j@web.de, https://www.juergen-reuter.de, Ancient notation
- Mike Solomon: mike@mikesolomon.org, Core developer, Frog Meister
- Erik Sandberg: Bug Meister
- Nicolas Sceaux: Core developer, Schemer extraordinaire
- Carl Sorensen: c_sorensen@byu.edu, Core developer
- Valentin Villenave: Core developer
- Janek Warchoł: janek.lilypond@gmail.com, Core developer
Current Contributors
Programming
Erlend E. Aasland, Kevin Barry, Tim Burgess, Thibaut Cuvelier, Jefferson Felix, David Stephen Grant, Masamichi Hosoda, Martin Joerg, Michael Käppler, Thomas Morley, Lukas-Fabian Moser, Martin Neubauer, Knut Petersen, Valentin Petzel, Pete Siddall, Alen Šiljak, Timofey
Font
Johannes Feulner, Owen Lamb
Documentation
Michael Käppler, Thomas Morley, John Wheeler
Translation
Federico Bruni, Dénes Harmath, Guyutongxue, Chengrui Li, Jean-Charles Malahieude
Previous Contributors
Programming
Erlend Aasland, Maximilian Albert, Aleksandr Andreev, Guido Amoruso, Don Armstrong, Guido Aulisi, Joe Austin, Sven Axelsson, Kevin Barry, Robin Bannister, Kristof Bastiaensen, Étienne Beaulé, Davide Bonetti, Frédéric Bron, Federico Bruni, Nathan Chou, Juliusz Chroboczek, Peter Chubb, Angelo Contardi, Vicente Solsona Della, Hajo Dezelski, Michael Welsh Duggan, Hassan Elfatihi, David Feuer, Bertalan Fodor, Richard Gay, Mathieu Giraud, Frederic Gohier, Lisa Opus Goldstein, Adam Good, John Gourlay, David Stephen Grant, Torsten Hämmerle, Yuval Harel, Andrew Hawryluk, Karlin High, Christian Hitz, Karin Hoethker, Rutger Hofmann, Marc Hohl, Masamichi Hosoda, Bernard Hurley, Yoshinobu Ishizaki, Chris Jackson, Felix Janda, David Jedlinsky, Heikki Junes, Michael Käppler, Thomas Klausner, Marek Klein, Mark Knoop, Michael Krause, Tobias Kretschmar, Jean-Baptiste Lamy, John Lemcke, Patrice Levesque, Vincent Le Ligeour, Jonatan Liljedahl, Urs Liska, Peter Lutek, Kieren MacMillan, Andrew Main, John Mandereau, Hendrik Maryns, Malte Meyn, Thomas Morgan, Thomas Morley, Paul Morris, Lukas-Fabian Moser, Alexander Myltsev, David Nalesnik, Matthias Neeracher, Martin Neubauer, Joram Noeck, Keith OHara, Justin Ohmie, Tatsuya Ono, Antonio Ospite, Benkő Pál, Benjamin Peterson, Knut Petersen, Matthew Peveler, Guy Gascoigne-Piggford, Anders Pilegaard, Henning Hraban Ramm, Nathan Reed, Julien Rioux, Johannes Rohrer, Ben Rudiak-Gould, Stan Sanderson, Andreas Scherer, Johannes Schindelin, Patrick Schmidt, Devon Schudy, Boris Shingarov, Kim Shrier, Edward Sanford Sutton, Adam Spiers, Tim Starling, David Svoboda, Simon Tatham, Heikki Taurainen, Piers Titus van der Torren, Owen Tuz, Sebastiano Vigna, Jan-Peter Voigt, Arno Waschk, Bernhard M. Wiedemann, John Williams, Andrew Wilson, Jaap de Wolff, Milan Zamazal, Rune Zedeler, Boris-Chengbiao Zhou, Rodolfo Zitellini
Font
Jay Anderson, Tom Cato Amundsen, Torsten Hämmerle, Marc Hohl, Masamichi Hosoda, Chris Jackson, Alexander Kobel, Daniel Benjamin Miller, Abraham Lee, Keith OHara, Carsten Steger, Arno Waschk, Rune Zedeler
Documentation
Erlend Aasland, Simon Albrecht, Trevor Bača, Kevin Barry, Bernhard Bloechl, Alard de Boer, Frédéric Bron, Federico Bruni, Torsten Hämmerle, Jay Hamilton, Joseph Harfouch, Andrew Hawryluk, Karlin High, Cameron Horsburgh, Geoff Horton, Masamichi Hosoda, Heikki Junes, Michael Käppler, Kurtis Kroon, Davide Liessi, Urs Liska, Dave Luttinen, Kieren MacMillan, Jean-Charles Malahieude, Malte Meyn, Christian Mondrup, Mike Moral, Thomas Morley, Paul Morris, Eyolf Østrem, Ralph Palmer, Pierre Perol-Schneider, François Pinard, Noam Postavsky, David Pounder, Michael Rasmussen, Till Rettig, Pavel Roskin, Patrick Schmidt, Andrej Shadura, Alberto Simoes, Fr. Samuel Springuel, Guy Stalnaker, Greg Swinford, Martin Tarenskeen, Arnold Theresius, Anh Hai Trinh, Eduardo Vieira, Stefan Weil, Rune Zedeler, Rodolfo Zitellini
Bug squad
Simon Albrecht, James E. Bailey, Federico Bruni, Eluze, Phil Holmes, Derek Klinge, Marek Klein, Urs Liska, Kieren MacMillan, Ralph Palmer, Dmytro O. Redchuk
Support
Simon Albrecht, Eluze, Anthony Fok, Christian Hitz, Marc Hohl, Phil Holmes, Chris Jackson, Heikki Junes, Marek Klein, Urs Liska, Alex Loomis, Kieren MacMillan, Tim McNamara, Thomas Morley, Paul Morris, David Nalesnik, Ralph Palmer, Pierre Perol-Schneider, Neil Puttock, David Svoboda, Tao
Translation
Caio Barros, Alard de Boer, Federico Bruni, Luca Rossetto Casel, Felipe Castro, Abel Cheung, Frédéric Chiasson, Simon Dahlbacka, Orm Finnendahl, Rafael Fontenelle, Pavel Fric, Hiroshi Fukuhara, Walter Garcia-Fontes, David González, Tommaso Gordini, Nicolas Grandclaude, Erika Griechisch, Dénes Harmath, Damien Heurtebise, Masamichi Hosoda, Bjoern Jacke, Matthieu Jacquot, Neil Jerram, Heikki Junes, Nicolas Klutchnikoff, Jean-Charles Malahieude, Adrian Mariano, Christian Mondrup, Tineke de Munnik, Steven Michael Murphy, Till Paala, François Pinard, Gauvain Pocentek, Till Rettig, Ludovic Sardain, Yoshiki Sawada, Thomas Scharkowski, Clytie Siddall, August S. Sigov, Roland Stigge, Tomohiro Tatejima, Paco Tomillo, Risto Vääräniemi, Andrea Valle, Ralf Wildenhues, Olcay Yıldırım
Publications
What we wrote about LilyPond
- Server Acim. GNU/LilyPond (Turkish Language). 2013. (PDF 2100k).
- Graham Percival. Sustainability in F/OSS: developers as a non-renewable resource. In Rencontres Mondiales du Logiciel Libre 2010 (RMLL2010), 2010. (PDF 333k).
- Han Wen Nienhuys and Jan Nieuwenhuizen. LilyPond, a system for automated music engraving. In Colloquium on Musical Informatics (XIV CIM 2003), May 2003. (PDF 95k).
- Han Wen Nienhuys. LilyPond, Automated music formatting and the Art of Shipping. In Forum Internacional Software Livre 2006 (FISL7.0), 2006. (PDF 1095k).
- Margarethe Maierhofer Lischka & Florian Hollerweger. Lilypond: music notation for everyone!. In Linux Audio Conference 2013 (LAC2013), 2013. (PDF 890k).
- Reinhold Kainhofer. OrchestralLily: A Package for Professional Music Publishing with LilyPond and LATEX. In The Linux Audio Conference 2010 (LAC2010), 2010. (PDF 767k).
- Erik Sandberg. Separating input language and formatter in GNU LilyPond. Master’s thesis, Uppsala University, Department of Information Technology, March 2006. (PDF 750k).
- Francisco Vila. Tipografía musical para la educación y análisis de la dinámica del software libre (Spanish language). PhD thesis, Universidad de Extremadura, 2015. (PDF 20M).
What people did with LilyPond
- Kevin C. Baird. Real-time generation of music notation via audience interaction using python and GNU LilyPond. In New Interfaces for Music Expression, May 2005.
- Alexandre Tachard Passos, Marcos Sampaio, Pedro Kröger, and Givaldo de Cidra. Functional Harmonic Analysis and Computational Musicology in Rameau. In Proceedings of the 12th Brazilian Symposium on Computer Music, pages 207–210, 2009.
- Graham Percival, Tosten Anders, and George Tzanetakis. Generating Targeted Rhythmic Exercises for Music Students with Constraint Satisfaction Programming. In International Computer Music Conference, 2008.
- Alberto Simões, Anália Lourenço, and José João Almeida. (J. Neves et al., editor). Using Text Mining Techniques for Classical Music Scores Analysis. In New Trends in Artificial Intelligence, 2007.
If you are aware of any other academic papers which could be listed here, please let us know by writing a message to the bug-lilypond mailing list. If you’re not subscribed yet you can do so on the list’s info page.
News
LilyPond 2.23.10 released June 26, 2022
We are happy to announce the release of LilyPond 2.23.10. This is termed a development release, but these are usually reliable. However, if you require stability, we recommend using version 2.22.2, the current stable release.
LilyPond 2.22.2 released! February 22, 2022
We are proud to announce the release of GNU LilyPond 2.22.2 on 2-22-22. LilyPond is a music engraving program devoted to producing the highest-quality sheet music possible. It brings the aesthetics of traditionally engraved music to computer printouts.
This version includes improvements and fixes since the release of the previous stable release in April 2021.
Attic
Announcements
Announcements and news by version: v2.22, v2.20, v2.18, v2.16, v2.14, v2.12, v2.10, v2.8, v2.6, v2.4, v2.2, v2.0, v1.2, v1.0, v0.1
Descriptive list of changes by version: v2.22, v2.20, v2.18, v2.16, v2.14, v2.12, v2.10, v2.8, v2.6, v2.4, v2.2, v2.0, v1.8, v1.6, v1.4, v1.2
Thanks
Thanks to developers, contributors, bug hunters and suggestions for v2.22, v2.20, v2.18, v2.16, v2.14, v2.12, v2.10, v2.8, v2.6, v2.4, v2.2, v2.0, v1.8
Changelogs
Developers’ changelogs by version: v2.10, v2.3, v2.1, v1.5 (1), v1.5 (2), v1.4, v1.3, v1.2, v1.1, v1.0, v0.1, v0.0
Inactive Google Summer of Code project suggestions
The following list describes GSoC projects that had been proposed in recent years and which are still considered valuable but for which we currently don’t have mentors available.
Automated testing and documentation for openLilyLib
openLilyLib is an extension framework for LilyPond code providing a “snippets” repository and a suite of integrated packages such as for example page layout tools or scholarly annotations. It is very powerful and promising, but to really get off the ground two features are missing: automated testing and documentation generation.
Automated testing is necessary to ensure modifications to functionality don’t break other functions within the library. There is already some Automated Testing of the “snippets” repository with Github’s Travis server, but this has to be reconsidered and extended to cover the standalone packages too.
In order to be usable for a wider range of LilyPond users on a “consumer level” openLilyLib needs proper documentation. This documentation has to be generated from the sources, so a system is needed that requires package authors to document the input files and provide additional usage examples, from which documentation is generated. Ideally but not necessarily this is implemented as a Git hook, i.e., automatically upon each update to the repository. We don’t prescribe the tools and approaches to be used, but the most widely used language in the LilyPond domain is Python, so there would be some bias towards that. Alternatively a Scheme solution could be fine so generating the documentation would actually be triggered by “compiling” a certain LilyPond input file. In general it is advisable to make use of proven concepts and tools from other languages.
The eventual output of the documentation should be a static HTML site that can be viewed locally and/or uploaded to a website. But it would be beneficial if the tool would first generate an intermediate representation (e.g., a JSON file with additional media files) from which a Single Page Application could retrieve content for display on openLilyLib’s website. Development of such a SPA can be part of the GSoC project, but is optional.
Difficulty: medium
Requirements: Python or Scheme, static website generator(s) or (Node.js based) dynamic web application technology. Continuous Integration (can be learned during the bonding period)
MusicXML
Improving MusicXML import and export functions:
File interchange between LilyPond and other applications using MusicXML
is still a difficult matter. To import MusicXML it has to be converted
manually by the musicxml2ly script. Export to MusicXML is
only available as a rudimentary feature inside Frescobaldi. In order to
provide natural interchange between LilyPond and MusicXML based
applications there’s the need of actual import functionality and a
dedicated export backend.
Importing XML shall provide file, line and column to add origin attributes to generated objects. That way point and click can be made available in Frescobaldi or other supported IDEs.
Exporting XML shall be realized with an exporter class like the MIDI export. This may be based on the work already done in GSoC 2015 by David Garfinkle. It should be checked if it is possible to use another XML library than the one provided by guile-2 in order to have this feature available in current LilyPond (which is based on guile-1.8).
Difficulty: medium
Requirements: MusicXML, Python, Scheme, basic LilyPond knowledge
Recommended: Familiarity with other scorewriters (for cross-testing)
Improve slurs and ties
The engraving quality of slurs and ties is often unsatisfactory. Ties ‘broken’ by clef or staff changes are not handled well. The project could include collecting and sorting examples of bad output, deciding on the intended output and writing code to improve them.
Difficulty: hard
Requirements: C++, experience with writing heuristics
Recommended knowledge: LilyPond knowledge, aesthetic sense
Grace notes
Fix problems with synchronization of grace notes. Grace notes can interfere with LilyPond’s timing and cause odd effects, especially when multiple staffs are used where some have grace notes and others don’t. This is one of the longest-standing and one of the more embarrassing bugs in LilyPond.
Difficulty: medium
Requirements: C++, MIDI
Recommended: familiarity with LilyPond internals
Improve default beam positioning
For regular, cross-staff, broken and kneed beams. Beaming should depend on context and neighbor notes (see section 2.2 of this book). If possible also reduce beaming-computation time.
Difficulty: medium
Requirements: C++, experience with writing heuristics
Recommended knowledge: aesthetic sense
Help improve compilation behavior
Automatic code analysis tools, like valgrind memory leak detection or callgrind code profilers, provide valuable information about possible flaws in our C++ code. Cleaning up warnings would allow us to automate the rejection of any patch which introduced extra warnings.
Difficulty: medium
Requirements: C++