LilyPond

From ArchWiki

LilyPond is a free score writing application. Its input is a plain text file in the LilyPond music writing format, and its output is in either PostScript or PDF.

Installation

Install the lilypond package.

Front-ends

  • Denemo — Supports keyboard, MIDI and acoustic input, written in C.
http://denemo.org/ || denemoAUR
  • Frescobaldi — Provides music view with two-way point & click, MIDI capturing and playback, written in Python with PyQt.
https://www.frescobaldi.org/index.html || frescobaldi

Usage

Create a test file like: 

test.ly
{
 c' e' g' e'
}

To compile it, use: 

$ lilypond test.ly

It will create test.pdf and test.ps files that contain your score.

LilyPond provides musicxml2ly(1) to convert MusicXML to the LilyPond format.

For more information, see info lilypond, lilypond(1) and the documentation.

Text editor support

LilyPond comes with modes for Emacs and Vim, see the documentation.

For Vim see the filetype plugin /usr/share/vim/vimfiles/ftplugin/lilypond.vim for the available key mappings.

Emacs lilypond-mode

lilypond package installs some Emacs files including /usr/share/emacs/site-lisp/lilypond-mode.el.

To use lilypond-mode, firstly M-x load-library <RET> lilypond-mode <RET> then again M-x lilypond-mode <RET>.

See also