Description
Notes dragged into place with a mouse always come out with slightly off spacing, and open the file in another program and it falls apart. LilyPond takes the opposite route: you write the melody as plain text and it handles the layout.
The page it produces is tuned to the look of traditionally hand-engraved scores. Stem lengths, slur curves and bar spacing are worked out by the program, so you stop nudging things by hand. The source is text, so it sits happily in Git and a changed note shows up as a one-line diff.
Version 2.26 ships with the small LilyPad editor: write, click once, get a PDF and a MIDI file. For a choir score running dozens of pages, you save the evenings you would have spent re-aligning staves.
Text-based scores: Describe notes, chords, lyrics and multiple voices in LY files, one source for everything.
Automatic layout: Stems, slurs, spacing and line breaks are computed for you, with a look close to hand engraving.
Many output formats: One compile gives PDF, PNG, SVG and MIDI.
LilyPad editor: The Windows build includes a simple editor, so no extra text tool is needed.
Free and open source: GPL licensed, easy to drop into version control and build pipelines.
The page it produces is tuned to the look of traditionally hand-engraved scores. Stem lengths, slur curves and bar spacing are worked out by the program, so you stop nudging things by hand. The source is text, so it sits happily in Git and a changed note shows up as a one-line diff.
Version 2.26 ships with the small LilyPad editor: write, click once, get a PDF and a MIDI file. For a choir score running dozens of pages, you save the evenings you would have spent re-aligning staves.
Features
Text-based scores: Describe notes, chords, lyrics and multiple voices in LY files, one source for everything.
Automatic layout: Stems, slurs, spacing and line breaks are computed for you, with a look close to hand engraving.
Many output formats: One compile gives PDF, PNG, SVG and MIDI.
LilyPad editor: The Windows build includes a simple editor, so no extra text tool is needed.
Free and open source: GPL licensed, easy to drop into version control and build pipelines.
