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

[Jan Nieuwenhuizen]

Op donderdag 02-04-2009 om 21:53 uur [tijdzone -0600], schreef Andrew
Hawryluk:

Hi Andrew,

The full report is at
> http://www.musicbyandrew.ca/finale-lilypond-4.html, but here's my
> conclusion:
> "At least for me, MIDI entry is much faster than typing the pitches
> and durations myself.
 
That's a real interesting report!.  You note that entering chords in 
lilypond is real slow as compared to using MIDI entry.  

While that's no surprise, I wonder if there's anything  that we can or
should do about it.  Typing <> is just real awkward...

In certain cases, such as the Handel piece, it may be advantageous to 
enter all chords seperate as voices, and combine them later?  Ie, type

    \relative c''{
      \time 3/4
      \context Voice <<
        { b4( b4. c8 d4 d2) }
        { g,4 g4. g8 a4 a2 }
        { d,4 d4. e8 d4 d2 }
      >>
    }

Wouldn't that be much faster?  It shouldn't even be necessary to enter
the note durations in every voice.

Also, the plain lilypond timing you did on the wtc prelude 3

   Counting only the note entry time, by computer keyboard it took me 
   2:51

struck me as a bit much, so I did my own timing.  We're talking about
8 measures with 6 eight notes, plus 7 measures with 2 notes and 5
loose ones.  Also I count 9 commas and apostrophes, which makes for

    8*6 + 7*2 + 5 + 9 = 76

pitches to enter.  Double that for typing spaces (hmm, come to think
of it, even spaces are not necessary in this case) makes for 152
keystrokes.  Taking 2:51 for that, is 171 seconds, which means you
took 1.1 seconds per keystroke, or 55 keystrokes per minute).

For a regular touch typing course, you need more than 150 keystrokes
per minute to graduate, ie, 0.4 seconds per character: about three
times faster.  So I'm sure there's much room for you to improve ;-)

You noted that what you measure is your own skill rather than the
program's speed, but the 152 keystrokes of the wtc piece took me 46
seconds (198 keystrokes per minute).

That is without the search and replace needed to add "is" after
each note, adding that took me 15 seconds ( M-% \(.\) SPACE RET
\1is SPACE RET !), making a total time of 1:01.

Greetings,
Jan.


-- 
Jan Nieuwenhuizen <address@hidden> | GNU LilyPond - The music typesetter
http://www.xs4all.nl/~jantien       | http://www.lilypond.org