Re: SHEET MUSIC

[David Raleigh Arnold]

On Sat, 08 Jun 2002 16:37:09 Mats Bengtsson wrote:
> > HI,
> > If I hooked up a music keyboard to my computer, would lilypond be
> able to 
> > write the notes I play on sheetmusic for me to print out?  If so,
> how does 
> > that work?
> 
> Well, if you have some kind of sequencer program you
> can use the keyboard to generate a MIDI file. Lilypond
> comes with a utility called midi2ly which then can
> produce a Lilypond input file. However, you'll probably
> not want to use this route since you have to play extremely
> rhythmical to get the desired note durations and you still
> have to edit the .ly files to add slurs, dynamics and all
> other information that's printed in a score but not 
> included in the MIDI file.

I found that lilypond did slurs surprisingly well and
dynamics somewhat in 1.4.13, but
the dynamics were not very satisfactory.  I suspect that
the cause of that is two voices on one staff, but playing
with the defaults might help too.

Q. Is it possible to override the default velocity values
in the .ly file?  I think many compositions might profit
from a rehash in the working directory.  Can that be done?

Midi doesn't handle unisons very well.  If midiInstrment were
voice instead of staff context, it might be better, and
it would be possible to get harmonics, for example.  Until
the happy day that that is fixed, the hack is to 
copy your working directory's contents and make a midi
producing version of your file with each voice on a
separate staff.  You might even prefer to work that
way.  Your midi version of your .ly file
can also have different dynamics for each voice, which
might look rather strange in your printed version.
Of course it is extremely advisable
that each piece have its own directory anyway, so you
would copy ~/lily/yourpiece/* to ~/lily/yourpiece-midi/

I hope that access to the drum patches will soon be less arcane.

All that remains is a way of including the lyrics, to make a
.kar file, and a way of writing to the header fields of
the midi file for copyright notice, etc., and lilypond
will be a formidable midi sequencer.

> >From what I have seen on the mailing list, the people
> who have tried midi2ly have soon abandoned that 
> strategy and come to the conclusion that it's faster
> to use the ordinary computer keyboard to write the 
> Lilypond file directly.

I think many will change their minds when they start
using an exterior file to produce the notes.  Then
every .ly file becomes a template and the default .ly
file merely a receptacle.
> 
> You could also try the graphical score editor NoteEdit
> which includes a sequencer the apparantly is more clever
> than midi2ly. NoteEdit can export several different
> file formats, including Lilypond files.
> 
It is a good thing.  Denemo, too.

------------------------------------------------------------
Information is not knowledge.           Belief is not truth.
Indoctrination is not teaching.   Tradition is not evidence.
         David Raleigh Arnold   address@hidden