Re: how to enter notes quickly (midi keyboard available)

[Andrew Hawryluk]

On Fri, May 25, 2012 at 11:28 AM, Klaus Föhl <address@hidden> wrote:

Hello,

I like the lilypond notation using \relative being concise and readable.
Entering on a computer keyboard is fairly quick, but still it feels
that playing a melody line would be so much quicker. In particular
if one does not have a typing c4 d e f g1 style but c4 d4. e8 f8. g16 c,1

What "better" methods exist?

"Better" will depend on your preference, but LilyPondTool offers midi input without any additional dependencies:
http://lilypondtool.organum.hu/fileadmin/lilypondtool/docs/ch06s01.html

I have written a MIDI input plugin for jEdit that does no more than listen for MIDI pitches and type them as relative pitches in your preferred language, interpreted according to the tonality you set:
http://musicbyandrew.ca/MidiInput.jar
The durations and all other text are entered on the computer keyboard, which is not entirely convenient, but I find it helpful when there is a high ratio of pitches to duration changes (e.g. many Bach keyboard works):

http://musicbyandrew.ca/finale-lilypond-4.html
It is also helpful when there are large skips and I don't want to mentally compute the relative octave indications.

I've gone back to plain old typing because my MIDI keyboard is not currently close to the computer, I'm not writing Bach, and the development version (2.15) supports 'q' as a way of repeating an entire previous chord, e.g. <c e g>16 q q q.

Maybe someday the computer will be able to see or hear the music in my head and type it out ... no, scratch that. Mind-reading computers doesn't sounds like a good idea at all: we're trying to keep the humans in charge of this place, after all!

Andrew