LilyPond - ArchWiki

# LilyPond

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LilyPond is a free score writing application. Its input is a plain text file in the LilyPond music writing format, and its output is in either PostScript or PDF.

## Installation

Install the lilypond package.

### Front-ends

- Denemo — Supports keyboard, MIDI and acoustic input, written in C.

  http://denemo.org/ || denemoAUR

- Frescobaldi — Provides music view with two-way point & click, MIDI capturing and playback, written in Python with PyQt.

  https://www.frescobaldi.org/index.html || frescobaldi

## Usage

Create a test file like:

    test.ly

    {
     c' e' g' e'
    }

To compile it, use:

    $ lilypond test.ly

It will create `test.pdf` and `test.ps` files that contain your score.

LilyPond provides musicxml2ly(1) to convert MusicXML to the LilyPond format.

For more information, see `info lilypond`, lilypond(1) and the documentation.

## Text editor support

LilyPond comes with modes for Emacs and Vim, see the documentation.

For Vim see the filetype plugin `/usr/share/vim/vimfiles/ftplugin/lilypond.vim` for the available key mappings.

### Emacs `lilypond-mode`

lilypond package installs some Emacs files including `/usr/share/emacs/site-lisp/lilypond-mode.el`.

To use `lilypond-mode`, firstly M-x load-library <RET> lilypond-mode <RET> then again M-x lilypond-mode <RET>.

## See also

- Wikipedia:LilyPond
- List of applications/Multimedia#Scorewriters

Category:

- Music