Musical Practice and Performance Stack Exchange
Musical Practice and Performance Stack Exchange

Questions tagged [lilypond]

For questions about usage of LilyPond, the free music engraving program. Code formatting on this site is not intended for LilyPond; workarounds can be found on meta. Questions may also necessitate the notation and/or engraving tags.

LilyPond is a free music engraving program, part of the GNU Project. Examples of scores written in LilyPond can be found here.

Please see this answer for formatting information.

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Is Lilypond actively developed? Will the format become obsolete?

Developmental state of LilyPond The official homepage has a notice that reads "Since no developer currently is listed for commercial development, your best bet is asking on the developer list". And it has been three years since the last stable…
Violapterin
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Odd symbol in Béla Bartók's Mikrokosmos Book 1

Today I came across an odd symbol in Béla Bartók's Microkosmos. The symbol occurs in Book 1, Score 21, Measure 8, at the end of a phrasing slur. It looks like a vertical bar that crosses only the first 2 topmost lines of the staff and it's…
Harald Christiansen
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How can I force LilyPond to repeat a chord symbol (relates to alternate endings)?

In chordmode, LilyPond chooses not to display chord symbols when they are the same as the preceding symbol, which is usually the right behavior. However, this behavior gets weird in the context of alternate endings of repeats. Here's a simple…
David Tresner-Kirsch
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Rendering lilypond score into html page

What would be the best way of rendering specific parts of a lilypond score, into an HTML page? I did that using lilypond-book by previously embedding tag into my html file, and it works, however that way I am embedding the whole…
branquito
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LilyPond - how to write a basic makefile

During the last years I tought myself to write scores using LilyPond and furthermore to make file handling easier by using Bash scripts. Recently I started a project a little bigger than only one or two pages and once again I came across the article…
nath
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Effective way to notate triplets

I was directed by America Luke to this forum site. I hope this is the correct place. I have a score with a lot of triplets. It's awkward to write always \times 2/3 {c16 d e} \times 2/3 {d e f}. Since the \times causes not only the duration scaling…
harper
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In Lilypond, silence parts of midi output

I need to engrave a choir piece, where some voices have unpitched parts, like whispered, spoken or screamed words. I want to engrave this using cross-headed notes, like in the following piece of music: \version "2.18.2" myMusic = { \relative c'…
cauchy42
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Lilypond to MusicXML to Sibelius

Is there any reliable program to convert a fully-fledge piece in Lilypond format to MusicXML, such that Sibelius can read the original Lilypond notation? Basically, I need to edit a score which is written in Lilypond, but cannot import it in…
nightcod3r
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Separate the top matter from the staves in lilypond

How can I add extra vertical space between the top matter, i.e. the stuff in the header like title, composer..., and the first staff of the music? I'd like to leave enough room for additional, hand-written annotations, but the music is packed right…
Dave
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Lilypond is not aligning lyrics correctly

I was writing sheet music consisting of melody, chords and lyrics. To my surprise, the lyrics weren't aligned correctly under the notes. The file looked like correct Lilypond source code: global = { \time 3/4 \partial 4 } theChords =…
Glorfindel
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Arbitrary length full-measure rests in Lilypond

In Lilypond one can make long full-measure rests with: \compressFullBarRests R1*12 which outputs: Is there an engraver I can turn off, or some other way to remove the number from above the rest (for a multi-measure rest of arbitrary…
Sam Whited
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Top-aligning scores inside Lilypond \markup blocks

I'm currently trying to typeset a hymn. Below the actual score I want two things: Some additional verses The voicing for "Amen." I'd like to lay these out adjacent to each other to save space, like so: However, when I put the \score block with…
Micah
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How can I notate this slur with LilyPond?

I have a slur that starts on as multi-voice and ends on a single voice as measure 3–4 of the following: Here's what I've got so far (right hand only): \relative c' { << { c4 c c c8 c c4 bes8 aes4. aes8 aes } \\ { g8 aes f g4 aes f8 aes8 g f…
Sean Allred
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Multiple staccato dots on minim with tremolo repeat in Lilypond

I'm writing a piano reduction of Gustav Mahler's 4th Symphony (to help study the score and practice music notation, but mainly just for kicks 'n' grins) using GNU LilyPond. (Yes, I know, I'm totally a Mahler Fanboy. So sue me.) ;-) I'm trying to…
pr1268
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How to increase LilyPond horizontal spacing?

I'm trying to create some very simple music note worksheets with LilyPond. I'm afraid I'm still not familiar with the language itself, but here is what I'm looking for: \version "2.20.0" \relative c' { c d e f g a b c } This generates: I'd…
pominom
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