Re: Appreciation / Financial support

[Nils]

On Fri, 01 Jun 2012 19:02:02 +0200
David Kastrup <address@hidden> wrote:

> Kieren MacMillan <address@hidden> writes:
> 
> > Hi David,
> >
> >> Who is going to learn reading notes, let alone writing them?  Of course
> >> LilyPond is only for geeks, because it is just geeks who bother with
> >> writing music rather than listening to it.
> >
> > In other words, composers who use Lilypond are a [very, very small]
> > subset of a [very small] subset of all people.
> 
> It is rather the rule than the exception that whenever somebody feels
> the need to "rephrase" what I have been writing, it ends up being
> utterly different.  It would appear that I have problems expressing
> myself clearly.
> 
> People creating typeset music are certainly a much smaller number than
> those consuming music in any form.  This much smaller number will
> contain a higher ratio of people willing to write down basic LilyPond
> notation than the general populace, or rather than the ratio of people
> among the general populace willing to write input for any batch
> processing system (say, LaTeX).
> 
> A full-blood composer will not let himself be turned away by the
> necessity to deal with whatever it takes to create scores according to
> his vision, like a full-blood painter will not let himself be
> discouraged by the necessity to deal with brushes and paints.
> 
> -- 
> David Kastrup

Technically there is a distinction between composer and typesetter, like there 
is when writing a book:
Authors may write in Microsoft Word and Comic Sans, they can give it to their 
publisher who then can use whatever they need, with a pro-grade typographer 
person, to create the real deal. The content stays, the format gets better.

Similar situation with music notation. Instead of MS Word and Comic Sans you 
can use MuseScore here and then later give it to a "pro" who creates it from 
scratch, only keeping the content. And this is the critical point.
Lilypond must be the number one tool of choice in this _step_. Everything else 
before and after here are just personal-union (composer and publisher is the 
same person) or a bonus.

Therefore you all read the wrong statistics. The maximum group of people are 
the notation typesetters. Some work freelance, some work at publishers like 
Bärenreiter. But not musicians, composers or even (ridicoulus!) people who 
listen to music.

Nils