Learn LilyPond: Free Music Notation

LilyPond is a free alternative to Finale, Sibelius, and Dorico. And it’s easy to learn.

If you’re reading this, you are probably looking to learn more about writing and publishing your own music using LilyPond.

• Are you a student who can’t really afford the licenses for Finale, Sibelius, or Dorico?
• Maybe you’re a seasoned composer with a library full of Finale scores, concerned about how to best safeguard your work moving forward as you transition away from proprietary formats
• Or perhaps you’re a professional working within a tight budget, needing to distribute music to your ensemble for an upcoming performance
• You might simply be someone who prefers to use free (libre) software whenever possible

I’m currently creating a series of tutorial videos which will take a comprehensive, in-depth look at engraving music using LilyPond. The first set of videos is aimed at beginners and follows a step-by-step approach. My goal is to help everyone become a power user. In addition, there are also more advanced videos showing how to polish up and finalize scores as well.

If you would like to see more videos on LilyPond, please click here to subscribe so you don’t miss any new tutorials.

New videos include a complete, step by step tutorial on MIDI input, MIDI playback, and MIDI export.

Here’s the link to the newest MIDI videos: –>http://bit.ly/2d2sxoj

If you are looking for my new solarized Frescobaldi color scheme, here’s that link: –> Frescobaldi Solarized

What is LilyPond?

LilyPond is a free, open-source, and cross-platform music notation program. Those of you coming from graphical editors like Sibelius or Finale will notice right away that LilyPond is a different kind of program. Instead of dragging notes or articulations from a toolbar and placing them on the page, you will be creating your scores by typing simple plain text. This text is then compiled (or interpreted) by the program, which then produces beautifully engraved sheet music. It is also very easy to insert score excerpts or full pages of your score into LaTeX documents, scientific papers, musicology/research papers, and even HTML for web pages.

In some ways, LilyPond can feel more like a programming language than a graphical score editor. However, don’t let the idea of a learning curve discourage you. It’s really not as steep as you may think. The syntax is very user-friendly and easy to pick up. There are things that LilyPond is capable of that are not possible in Dorico, Finale, or Sibelius. It’s also much better and much easier to use than the old SCORE program that many publishers used years ago (and a few still use today).

Why LilyPond?

When it comes to music typesetting, LilyPond delivers a level of quality that many consider unmatched by any other program, including the long-time favorite and once de facto standard, SCORE.

With music notation software, the format in which you save your scores is more important than you might think. Recently, MakeMusic announced that they are stopping development on Finale. This has left many composers, arrangers, and musicians worried about the future of their Finale files. This situation highlights an unfortunate but critical issue in the world of digital music creation: vendor lock-in and proprietary file formats.

Proprietary file formats – like those used by Sibelius, Finale and Dorico – are owned and controlled by the companies that develop the software. This means that if/when the company stops supporting the software, you could be left with music files that become very difficult or impossible to open in the future. Years worth of your music and hard work could become inaccessible, or you may be forced to continue using outdated software on a separate, dedicated computer just to access your own scores. The same situation that’s happening with Finale could one day happen to your scores in Dorico as well.

LilyPond uses plain text files to create music scores. These files are not tied to any specific software, so in that sense they are future-proof. As long as you have the text file, you can always view, edit, and print your scores. LilyPond is maintained by a community of developers who are committed to keeping it updated and available, plus it’s open-source.

An advantage of using plain text files is that they are human-readable and editable. You can open and modify your scores in any text editor, from your computer, your phone, or from a cloud service like DropBox or Google Drive.

Learning LilyPond

With my tutorial videos, I’ll be starting at the very beginning:

1. You will learn the structure of a LilyPond input file and basic note entry
2. We’ll look at more advanced concepts like creating individual instrument parts
3. Then formatting and layout – and the power to tweak anything on the page
4. Finally you’ll learn how to add the finishing touches to your scores so they look perfect

The first playlist is aimed at beginners: it has 28 videos and provides over 2.5 hours of learning material.
Watch the tutorials here: http://bit.ly/LearnLilyPond.
To browse a full list of all my LilyPond videos by topic, click here.

 

Coming up next I’ll be showing how to format your score, tweak objects, align dynamics, create instrument parts, and graphic notation. Don’t forget to subscribe so you don’t miss any new tutorials. New intermediate and advanced videos should be coming every week. I had some personal health issues and external factors that temporarily slowed down my video schedule, but everything should be returning to normal now.

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