Re: Guide to Writing Orchestral Scores with Lilypond?????

[Antonio Gervasoni]

Wow! I didn't expect all this enthusiasm and eagerness to collaborate.......
at least no so fast!

Ben wrote:

> That's very kind of you to offer your own personal documentation on how
> you grasped LilyPond 
> and its power.  I'm sure that if you put together a PDF guide and uploaded
> it somewhere 
> (Dropbox, your site, etc) and posted the link here in the mailing list,
> many would be 
> grateful and appreciative. 

I always thought it was the least I could do, since I have been able to
create this score only because others decided to do the same thing!

Urs wrote:

>> This is a _very_ good idea, and I would be pleased to get you 'into 
>> my boat'.

Count me in!!! Please!!! I took a look at your site and the first thing that
came to my mind was "why haven't I seen this website before???" I agree with
everything you say in the introduction. I experienced the same things.

>> I'll probably change to some kind of PDF delivery because it was 
>> unnecessarily complicated to get it on web pages).

I agree! Too much time would be wasted in the layout of the webpage when you
just have to write a document in LibreOffice, create a PDF file out of it
and upload it somewhere. 

>> During the development of a musical edition some others and me created
>> the base 
>> for a kind of LilyPond toolkit library. When the edition is finished 
>> we'll change that to be an open source project hosted on Github. This 
>> will consist of sets of functionality, templates and examples which 
>> of course have to be well documented.
>> The 'includable' library can and is intended to be 
>> accompanied by more or less standalone essays (like how to set up 
>> projects to be variable, how to deal with complicated transpositions, 
>> how to change the overall visual appearance of scores etc.)

Amazing! Again, count me in!

Wim wrote:

> Not replacing the learning manual 
> but as an addition with e.g. an orchestral example build in stages 
> (with all the intermediate files available for who is interested to 
> follow the process in detail.

Precisely! The Learning Manual is already a great source of information but
it needs to be complemented with 'productivity tools' and '(best) practice
strategies', as Urs pointed out.

> The only drawback I can think of now (for 
> this "Guide") would be that it might be better to start with a smaller 
> example first (e.g. a guide to write a SATB piece or smaller lead 
> sheet). To get the process right before drowning in a large example.

I think that might be a much bigger project than the one I had in mind! My
intention was just to document my process of creating an orchestral score. I
agree that a guide that starts from more simple examples and builds itself
up to the most complex ones would be an awesome document but then we would
need a lot of people contributing to this effort, documenting their
experiences writing different types of scores. It could be done though, and
I'm definitely in if it gets to that point but for now I'm just thinking
about orchestral scores.

> I've written documentation texts for years, so I think I can 
> probably fit in. But most of all I can't guarantee the speed.

Awesome! I have absolutely no knowledge on that and also one of the things I
have been worried about, when thinking about documenting my process, is that
my use of the English language is far from being the one needed to write
such a document (being that my native language is Spanish)

> And most important: Am I welcome on this adventure?

>From my part, by all means! Up till know I was just thinking about writing
the document myself and uploading all the files. Now, looking at the
possibility of a collaborative effort I am absolutely thrilled!

At this point I think it might be good to give everyone reading this thread
an idea of what I meant with my first post. I just put in my Dropbox the
full score I've been working on for the past months. It is not complete yet!
I still have to typeset the parts of the second violins, violas, cellos and
double basses but you can get an idea of what I was referring to when I said
it is a very complex score. Here's the link:
https://dl.dropbox.com/u/4857747/Icarus%20Jan-08-2013.pdf

Finally, I have only used Lilypond for over a year and I am not a programmer
nor do I have any knowledge of Scheme. I majored from a computing science
career called Systems Engineering, but that was a long time ago. I then
majored in Music Composition at the National Conservatory Music (in Peru, my
country) and have dedicated myself to composition ever since. Therefore, I
can only offer what I have learned in the very brief time I've been using
Lilypond as well as the experience and knowledge acquired in the practice of
my profession. I hope this suffices!

Regards,

Antonio




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