No, LilyPond is a fundamentally different software design than MuseScore. There's no reason you couldn't use MuseScore as the front-end to LilyPond's engraving engine (indeed, there used to be a way to export to LilyPond, but no longer), but that's a matter of convincing the developers to do so. Like Pierre said, the only similarity is the music font and even then it's not really even the same. LilyPond is still the only music software I'm aware of that utilizes separate optically-sized fonts depending on the real staff-size vs everything else that just has one and scales it to the right size. It's a beautiful thing.OCTO wrote:I think there is Musescore as the alternative. Now, I am not entirely sure how Lilypond relates to Musescore. Is it the main engine for Musescore?John Ruggero wrote:Is a GUI inherently impossible with LilyPond?
As confident as I am in Pierre's coding abilities (and believe me, I really am), I wouldn't recommend using this score as your first tutorial--more like a deep dive. Save it for later after you've had some time to figure out the syntax, but not now. He's doing some slightly advanced coding that is absolutely *awesome*, but it is not representative of _most_ typical LilyPond input files. Typical of contemporary music, which we all know is full of non-traditional notation, but not typical of most everything else. Most other scores' input files are VASTLY simpler than this one.OCTO wrote: Pierre, could you be able to share the text file of the code (as an .txt attachment)?
Great question, but I'm afraid that depends entirely upon how much time you are willing to spend learning and whether or not you have had any programming experience before.OCTO wrote: Also, how long would take someone with 0 knowledge to learn it so that this example can be engraved?
Here's one way that LilyPond is fundamentally different *by design*. In LilyPond, you don't "extract" parts like with virtually all other GUI-based programs. Instead, you do the reverse where you create the individual parts and store them in variables. Once that's done, you can re-use them wherever and however many times you desire. For example, say I wanted to create a part for trumpet, I'd do something like this (variable names are arbitrary):OCTO wrote: Also 2, is there tool for extracing part?
Code: Select all
trumpetNotes = { ... music here ... }
Code: Select all
% conductor's score
\score {
<<
... (other instruments here) ...
\new Staff { \trumpetNotes }
... (other instruments here) ...
>>
\layout {
... conductor score related page layout choices ...
}
}
% part's score
\score {
\new Staff { \transpose c f \trumpetNotes }
\layout {
... part score related page layout choices ...
}
}
Now, coming from a purely graphical way of inputting music to a text-based way can seem like you've traveled to a distant planet, but I have found that I can input music just as fast (if not faster) than the graphical way, my errors are more obvious, the connections between notation elements are BLATANTLY obvious so that if you need to move an articulation or re-connect a slur, etc., you know exactly where it was and where to move it. Another thing I love about using text input is that the files are virtually bullet-proof. You can open them in so many programs (yes, even on your smartphone) to make edits.
Alright, I've probably talked your ears off, but here's what I'd do. Follow Pierre's advice. Go through the online "Learning" documentation for a quick-start to understanding the syntax. Play around with the examples. If you are hesitant to (or just plain can't) install LilyPond on your computer, you can use an online editor called LilyBin http://lilybin.com/ which allows you to use the full LilyPond binary from the comfort of your web-browser. There's almost no excuse to NOT at least try it out.
Oh, and I'll put my 2 cents in for Frescobaldi. It is absolutely fantastic as an environment for creating LilyPond files, including command completion, tabbed interface for having multiple files open, lots of tools to help with file setup, quick inserts, and more! It's my editor of choice, hands down. I've heard good things about Denemo, but it just wasn't for me. I just found that it got in the way and I could more quickly get exactly what I wanted with the pure text input.