GNU LilyPond is a free software program for engraving sheet music for all common operating systems; it is written in C++ and assembled by a Scheme library (GNU Guile) which also allows user customization and extension^[1]. It uses a simple text notation for music, which is then compiled into PDF (via PostScript), SVG or other formats. LilyPond can also automatically generate MIDI files from music specified in the LilyPond format. A software release is the distribution, whether public or private, of an initial or new and upgraded version of a computer software product. ... May 21 is the 141st day of the year (142nd in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 2007 (MMVII) is now the current year, a common year starting on Monday of the Gregorian calendar and the AD/CE era. ... A software release is the distribution, whether public or private, of an initial or new and upgraded version of a computer software product. ... is the 207th day of the year (208th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 2007 (MMVII) is now the current year, a common year starting on Monday of the Gregorian calendar and the AD/CE era. ... // An operating system (OS) is a set of computer programs that manage the hardware and software resources of a computer. ... A cross-platform (or platform independent) programming language, software application or hardware device works on more than one system platform (e. ... Computer software can be organized into categories based on common function, type, or field of use. ... A software license is a legal agreement which may take the form of a proprietary or gratuitous license as well as a memorandum of contract between a producer and a user of computer software. ... The GNU logo The GNU General Public License (GNU GPL or simply GPL) is a widely-used free software license, originally written by Richard Stallman for the GNU project. ... A website (alternatively, Web site or web site) is a collection of Web pages, images, videos and other digital assets that is hosted on one or several Web server(s), usually accessible via the Internet, cell phone or a LAN. A Web page is a document, typically written in HTML... Clockwise from top: The logo of the GNU Project (the GNU head), the Linux kernel mascot Tux the Penguin, and the FreeBSD daemon Free software is a term coined by Richard Stallman and the Free Software Foundation[1] to refer to software that can be used, studied, and modified without... Music engraving is the art of drawing music notation at high quality. ... Sheet music is written representation of music. ... C++ (pronounced see plus plus, IPA: ) is a general-purpose, programming language with high-level and low-level capabilities. ... Scheme is a multi-paradigm programming language. ... The GNU Guile logo GNU Guile (first released in 1993[1]) is an interpreter/virtual machine for the Scheme programming language and modularized extensions thereof (such as POSIX system call extensions or APL array functionality, packaged as a object[2] library (libguile) so that it can be embedded in other... PDF is an abbreviation with several meanings: Portable Document Format Post-doctoral fellowship Probability density function There also is an electronic design automation company named PDF Solutions. ... PostScript (PS) is a page description language and programming language used primarily in the electronic and desktop publishing areas. ... Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) is a XML markup language for describing two-dimensional vector graphics, both static and animated, and either declarative or scripted. ... MIDI (Musical Instrument Digital Interface) is an industry-standard electronic communications protocol that enables electronic musical instruments, computers and other equipment to communicate, control and synchronize with each other in real time. ...

Unlike some commercial proprietary programs such as Finale and Sibelius, LilyPond does not contain its own graphical user interface for the creation of scores. It does, however, have the same aim of producing output comparable to professionally-engraved scores. Some graphical music notation programs such as Rosegarden, NoteEdit and Canorus can export files directly to LilyPond format. Proprietary software is software with restrictions on using, copying and modifying as enforced by the proprietor. ... Finale is the flagship program of a series of scorewriters created by MakeMusic for Microsoft Windows and Mac OS X. Several less expensive versions of Finale, with subsets of the main programs features, are made. ... Sibelius is a scorewriter program, created by the company Sibelius Software. ... A graphical user interface (GUI) is a type of user interface which allows people to interact with a computer and computer-controlled devices which employ graphical icons, visual indicators or special graphical elements called widgets, along with text labels or text navigation to represent the information and actions available to... Music notation is a system of writing for music. ... Rosegarden is a free software digital audio workstation program developed for GNU/Linux with ALSA and KDE. It acts as an audio and MIDI sequencer, scorewriter and musical composition and editing tool. ... NoteEdit is a free music score editor for Linux. ... Canorus is a free software music scorewriter and runs on GNU/Linux, Microsoft Windows and Mac OS X. Canorus is a relatively new project and could be called the sequel of NoteEdit, which is expected to cease development when Canorus becomes established. ...

One of LilyPond's major goals is to produce scores that are engraved following the traditional layout rules of the era when scores were engraved by hand. It is often considered^{[Who says this?]} to produce output of better quality than the leading commercial proprietary packages, although they have improved markedly in recent years.^{[citation needed]}

The Mutopia project, which distributes free content sheet music, uses LilyPond to typeset its music, as does Musipedia, a collaborative music encyclopedia. WikiTeX, a MediaWiki interface, supports editing LilyPond notation directly in wiki articles. The Mutopia project is a volunteer-run effort to create a library of public domain sheet music, in a way similar to Project Gutenbergs library of public domain books. ... Free content is any kind of functional work, artwork, or other creative content upon which no legal restriction has been placed that significantly interferes with peoples freedom to use, understand, redistribute, improve, and share the content. ... Musipedia is a search engine for identifying pieces of music. ... MediaWiki is a web-based wiki software application used by all projects of the Wikimedia Foundation, all wikis hosted by Wikia, and many other wikis, including some of the largest and most popular ones. ...

First measures of Adeste Fideles, generated by LilyPond.

Screenshot of Lilypond-generated score for Adeste Fideles. ... Screenshot of Lilypond-generated score for Adeste Fideles. ... In musical terminology, a bar or measure is a segment of time defined as a given number of beats of a given duration. ... Sex and the City episode, see Oh Come All Ye Faithful (SATC episode). ...

Example of LilyPond input file

Text after a percent sign (%) is a comment. Double percent signs are used here for readability. Look up Comment on Wiktionary, the free dictionary In computer programming, comments are parts of the source code which, together with its layout, are used to explain the code. ...

In LilyPond, notes are entered in note, pitch and length format; pitch is represented with series of single quotes or commas, each representing an octave up or down from the base. For example, a'4 is an A, one octave up from the base, of quarter note length. As a curious syntactical rule, all other modifiers - even ones containing parentheses, which by usual writing rules should go before the note - are added after the note, so d8[ c] is an eighth-note pair with a beam as signified by the brackets.

LilyPond has two modes of entering the note pitches: Absolute and relative. In absolute mode, note pitches are always given, for each note, relative to the base; in relative mode, when the melody stays within limits, notes with unspecified pitch are assumed to be "near" the last note, and pitch markers are used only when the interval from the preceding note is more than a fourth. This example uses the relative mode.

The only character encoding that LilyPond understands is UTF-8. This allows for the combination of Danish, Hebrew, Korean, etc. in the same file. The first line in the file tells emacs that this file should always be read and written as UTF-8. If one uses other editors than emacs, it is necessary to make sure that they use UTF-8 too; otherwise anything but ASCII will break. A character encoding or character set (sometimes referred to as code page) consists of a code that pairs a sequence of characters from a given set with something else, such as a sequence of natural numbers, octets or electrical pulses, in order to facilitate the storage of text in computers... UTF-8 (8-bit UCS/Unicode Transformation Format) is a variable-length character encoding for Unicode. ...

 #!lilypond firebreathers.ly -*- coding: utf-8; -*- %% Theme to "Fire Breathers", a homebrew NES game perpetually %% under development. Composed by Urpo Lankinen. %% Note: The composer has made this source code available %% to Wikipedia under the GFDL license. Other versions outside %% Wikipedia are typically under CC BY-SA license. %% This file uses Finnish note names (for example, where %% Americans use "F#" and "Bb", Finns use "Fis" and "B"). %% Dutch note names are used by default. include "suomi.ly" %% Optional language upgrade helper. version "2.6.0" %% The header block defines the titles and texts. header { title = "Theme to ``Fire Breathers!''" instrument = "For the 2A03 or SID" composer = "Urpo Lankinen" enteredby = "Urpo Lankinen" updatedby = "Jan Nieuwenhuizen" date = "June 2005" } Melody = relative c'' { clef treble time 3/4 key a minor %% The piece starts with a quarter-note partial bar, "partial 4" %% tells so to LilyPond. partial 4 a4 | e'4.( d8[ c]) r8 | d4.( c8[ h]) r8 | a2. | e2 a4 | e'4.( d8[ c]) r8 | d4.( e8[ f]) r8 | e2. | r2 e4 | f4.( e8[ d]) r8 | d4.( c8[ h]) r8 | a2. | e2 a4 | e'4.( d8[ c]) r8 | d4.( c8[ h]) r8 | a2. ~ a2 r4 | bar "|." } %% This is the second voice. SecondVoice = relative c { clef bass time 3/4 key a minor partial 4 r4 | e2. | d2. | a2. | e2 a4 | e'2. | d2 f4 | e2. | r2. | f2. | d2. | a2. | e2 a4 | e'2. | d2 h4 | a2. ~ a2 r4 | bar "|." } %% Melodies, lyrics and chords can be assigned to a variable and then %% be *reused* elsewhere. Here are three different accompaniment %% patterns, which are used throughout the accompaniment melody. AccompA = relative c { a4 e'8 a, e' a, | } AccompB = relative c { g4 d'8 g, d' g, | } AccompC = relative c { e,4 h'8 e, h' e, | } Accompaniment = { clef bass time 3/4 key a minor partial 4 r4 | AccompA AccompB AccompA AccompA AccompA AccompB AccompA AccompA AccompC AccompC AccompA AccompA AccompA AccompB AccompA | a2 r4 | bar "|." } %% The top level music definition. << new Staff Melody new Staff Accompaniment new Staff SecondVoice >> 

Corresponding output

Image File history File links Download high resolution version (859x1111, 36 KB)GNU Lilypond output example. ...

See also

Free software Portal

• LilyPond GUIs : Denemo, NoteEdit, Rosegarden
• Mutopia project, a project to publish sheet music for copyright-expired works
• *.kar files with notes and lyrics.
• GUIDO music notation

Image File history File links Portal. ... GUI can refer to the following: GUI is short for graphical user interface, a term used to describe a type of interface in computing. ... Denemo is a free software graphical interface for music notation, mainly to GNU LilyPond, a program for engraving musical scores. ... NoteEdit is a free music score editor for Linux. ... Rosegarden is a free software digital audio workstation program developed for GNU/Linux with ALSA and KDE. It acts as an audio and MIDI sequencer, scorewriter and musical composition and editing tool. ... The Mutopia project is a volunteer-run effort to create a library of public domain sheet music, in a way similar to Project Gutenbergs library of public domain books. ... A karaoke machine Karaoke 空 kara, empty or void, and オーケストラ ōkesutora, orchestra) pronounced ;   is a form of entertainment in which an amateur singer or singers sing along with recorded music on microphone. ... GUIDO Music Notation is named after Guido of Arezzo, a renowned music theorist of his time and important contributor to todays conventional musical notation. ...

External links

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Music markup

• Official LilyPond website
• "Lilypond, a system for automated music engraving" -(by Han-Wen Nienhuys, Jan Nieuwenhuizen; PDF)
• LilyPond Forum - hosted by Nabble archiving LilyPond mailing lists into a searchable forum.
• The LilyPond Wiki
• Lilypond-based Musical Scores Archive
• Denemo, a GUI for LilyPond.
• LilyPondTool, a plug-in for jEdit with sophisticated LilyPond support.
• Musipedia, a collaborative music encyclopedia that uses LilyPond

Image File history File links Metawiki. ... PDF is an abbreviation with several meanings: Portable Document Format Post-doctoral fellowship Probability density function There also is an electronic design automation company named PDF Solutions. ... jEdit is a text editor for programmers available under the GNU General Public License. ...

References

1. ^ "LilyPond is linked to GUILE, GNU's Scheme library for extension programming. The Scheme library provides the glue that holds together the low-level routines and separate modules which are written in C++."[1]

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