On Apr 9, 2009, at 1:38 AM, Wei-Wei Guo wrote:
I don't know there are many different systems. I'm working on a
songbook
for our family church, but I have little knowledge of music. So I
started
learning music script about a month ago. Since it's difficult for
me to
remember and understand those music symbols, I want to record those
symbols and make learning notes in my reading notices system.
That's why
I keep on asking about methods of inputing music symbols in several
mailing list threads. Sorry for making those noises.
Well, you have to ask questions to learn and I have found this
mailing list has been very patient with my stumbling along and asking
questions with obvious answers.
Learning both music notation and LilyPond simultaneously is a
daunting challenge. My advice would be to first learn the basics of
music notation: what the staves mean, time signatures, etc. Without
that knowledge it is very difficult to decide what to do with
LilyPond. Interesting but probably excessive information about music
notation systems:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Music_notation
European classical music notation, which is probably the most widely
used method other than learning by ear:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sheet_music
Now I kind of know how to input those symbols with \markup. But I
feel it
is somehow inconvenience. I asked whether Lilypond has any
application on
music textbook because I want to get some clues to some easier way of
inputing symbols. It's seem not. Then I feel a little pity and
asked the
question in previous mail.
LilyPond is designed for having complete control over the printed
music, which means that the entry of the data is a bit cumbersome at
times. There are, for some operating systems, some GUI style
frontends than can be used but there aren't any for my OS so I can't
really talk about those. I would imagine that those are designed to
simplify the input. There are text editors that have syntax modules
for LilyPond which colors the text and makes it easier to lay things
out and to find mistakes in the code (Emacs and, I think, jEdit are
two examples).
There are basically two types of entry in LilyPond code. One is the
content (notes, rests, chords) and the other is the formatting (how
the content is arranged and printed). Learning to use LilyPond means
learning the coding language, which is a steep learning curve.
However, that means that within about a week or two of diligent study
you can be producing useful sheet music.
Sorry Tim, I don't understand what you said. Could you point me to
a link
explaining those systems?
Well, there are multiple systems of music just in European world;
they look mostly similar on the paper but use different terminology.
The first link given above covers some of this and other non-European
systems as well:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Music_notation
Other than for basic intellectual curiosity, I'd recommend just
picking the one that is predominant in the area where you live and
sticking with that. The default in LilyPond is the Dutch system,
IIRC (one of the main differences is that natural notes are input as
c4, d4, e4 (for quarter notes), flat notes are input as ces4, des4,
ees4 and sharp notes are input as cis4, dis4, eis4. If, for example,
you live in the US you might use the English terminology (c4, cf4,
cs4 respectively for natural, flat and sharp).
The best place to start is the learning tutorial (lilypond-
learning.pdf) which was included with the download package. Then
lilypond.pdf is the reference guide and lilypond-snippets.pdf offers
specific coding to achieve specific printed output.
Since I use LilyPond to write jazz lead sheets, which are really
pretty rudimentary, my expertise at using LilyPond is somewhat
limited. I can get a lead sheet written up in LilyPond in under an
hour these days, and then can use the transposition function to make
charts for the horn players in just a few seconds. I can make lead
sheets with lyrics for the singers in a few minutes (thanks to being
able to find the lyrics to almost any standard online). W00t!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lead_sheet
I hope some of this helps!
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