Re: LilyPond, Finale and Sibelius (was Review of Valentin's Opera)

[Kieren MacMillan]

Hi all,

> > In my experience, LilyPond *is* capable of producing scores of the
> > highest caliber.  However, I often spend so much time tweaking the
> > score to get it to look perfect that it really becomes a labor of  
> > love.

I used Finale for over a decade, eventually becoming the computer  
music lab tutor/assistant at Shepherd School of Music (while doing my  
Master of Music there) -- I was as nimble with Finale as anyone I  
knew (know). I estimate that, for me, note entry is ca. 3x faster in  
Fin/Sib than Lily, but tweaking-to-publishable is ca. 10x faster in  
Lily than Fin/Sib (partly because there's so much less tweaking to do).

> > I think until LilyPond is able to achieve that perfect type of
> > score with minimal effort, employers at firms that produce music
> > scores will rely on software that is more intuitive and gives  
> > quicker results -
> > they have to pay someone for their time to notate this stuff.

I think it takes *far less* time to make good looking scores with  
Lilypond than with Finale -- in fact, I have an open invitation to  
all of my composition buddies, that in a head-to-head engraving  
session of any "real music", I can beat them any time.  =)

Of course, many of the scores I see from "firms that produce music  
scores that rely on software" would never get published if I were the  
head of that company -- I guess I just have higher aesthetic  
standards than many of the editors out there. [Anyone who has read  
the published songbook(s) of Jason Robert Brown's "The Last Five  
Years" will know that there is one song where the syncopated left- 
hand rhythm is so poorly spaced that it looks, on first *and* second  
sight, to be non-syncopated! Totally unacceptable from a "commercial  
publisher"...]

> > I am curious who out there is in a professional music-related  
> > position
> > that relies on Lilypond when Finale or Sibelius is also an option
> > provided by the employer.  I'm one.  Just curious who else.

+1
Kieren.