Re: Too complicated and time consuming ...

[address@hidden]

----- Original Message -----
From: "Urs Liska" <address@hidden>
To: address@hidden
Sent: Wednesday, May 9, 2012 8:12:07 AM
Subject: Re: Too complicated and time consuming ...

Am 08.05.2012 16:27, schrieb joannesmith:
> Hello to all.
> We are in the process of making our own hymn books (we use shape notes). We
> have about 450 hymns that are in paper format right now (copied, pasted,
> written on, sloppy, taped, marked, etc.) and I have the job of making them
> all look nice. A friend suggested lilypond. I appreciate all that lilypond
> can do, but I find that it is taking a painful amount of time!!!! The hymns
> are not all the same ... and some are really complicated [for me anyway].
> The easy ones only take me about 20 minutes or so, however the hard ones can
> take more than 3 hours and some I have just given up on for now. Multiply
> that by about 450 songs and it is really intimidating to me.
>
> So my question ... maybe there is another program that will better suite my
> needs?? Or maybe there is someone here that is really good at entering a
> variety of hymns into lilypond and would be willing to help me every now and
> then??? But I feel I am too needy ... I might need more help than what
> someone is willing to give freely and I certainly do not have money to pay
> anyone!!!
>
> Of course I am hoping for a somewhat easier program ... clicking and
> dragging sounds very appealing to me right now! Does any such program exist?
>
> Thank you for your time.
I really can understand your situation. It hasn't been too long that I 
felt similarly - although I must admit (and this may be a big 
'although') that I was fascinated from the beginning, not only of 
LilyPond's quality but also by the implications of the text based approach.

If I were you I would seriously consider giving LilyPond a try.
I know the learning curve is quite steep for a considerable amount of 
time. But if you are looking at 450 pieces this is a long way on which 
you should be able to get quite comfortable with LilyPond along the way.

Especially notable (IMHO) is LilyPond's power when you are talking about 
repetitive things like 450 comparable scores.
Of course you will get your first scores faster with a graphical 
program. But with LilyPond you can for example set up a framework where 
you will only have to enter the plain music for each new hymn. If this 
framework is well thought out (OK, this isn't really trivial and may 
seem impossible for you at the moment), then you have a) a consistent 
layout throughout all your scores and b) can change any aspect of your 
layout or style at any moment practically without any hassle and have 
this reflected in all your scores (for example, besides general style 
decisions you can switch between completely different layouts or part 
collections (individual parts, conductor's vs. pocket score etc.) simply 
through commenting out single lines of code).

The LilyPond community won't do the work for you and can't relieve you 
from learning. But if you are willing to learn and ask the right 
questions you will surely experience good will and considerable 
expertise on this list (I can really tell you that :-) )

HTH
Urs

I'd like to echo what Urs said about this.  I would, however, describe the 
learning curve as 'long' rather than 'steep.'  Having said that, I would 
suggest that having a project like yours is a good way to get comfortable with 
LilyPond.  With such a large number of hymns to set you'll have an opportunity 
to 'practice' the rudiments of LilyPond and it will become quite easy in a 
fairly short time.  Ultimately you will likely find that entering music as a 
stream of text is actually much quicker dragging/clicking.  I was a fairly 
proficient Finale user and have completely abandoned commercial music printing 
software.  I have also never really been too interested in the graphical front 
ends for LilyPond as the plain text entry is so fast.

-David

As Urs said, you will figure out how to "recycle" blocks of code for scores 
reducing your workload considerably.