Hello Werner,
Am 23/12/2006 um 07:46 schrieb Werner LEMBERG:
I am a professional musician and an experienced music teacher. I
would even be willing to write a first chapter of a User's Guide for
the Very Beginner.
Please go on! Either send patches or, in case you aren't satisfied
with chapter 2, rewrite it.
Fine! I have now written the following, and am posting it here for
general criticism.
Manuel
LilyPond's
Beginners Guide
for the
Very Beginner
Chapter One.
Open a new LilyPond window and write this inside:
{ c' d' e' f' g' a' b' c' ' }
Save the file and then select "Typeset file" from the "Compile" menu.
A small window will open, where you can follow the proceedings, and
then a ".pdf" document will appear, with this result:
(insert graphic here)
It is a little C-major scale. Let us consider it:
The so-called "curly braces"
{
and
}
are essential. You must always write your music inside such brackets.
Also, LilyPond is "case sensitive", which means that in our litte
example, "c" (that's lower case) is right, but "C" (that's upper
case) would be wrong.
Then, LilyPond has certain pre-set values, called "defaults", which
will apply whenever you do not ask for something different. In our
present example, for instance: the treble clef, 4/4 time signature,
fourth notes.
You can, of course, change these and all other defaults, indeed you
can engrave old plainchat, contemporary notation, orchestral scores,
do MIDI files, and more. But all that lies further down the road. For
the moment, we will teach you how to engrave a simple melody.
First, we'll give you a very useful tool to input your notes, called
the "relative mode".
In our example, we have written each note with an octave
denomination: one apostrophe:
'
for the so-called "first octave", which is the octave inmediately
above and including the central c, and two apostrophes:
''
for the "second octave", the one inmediately above the first octave.
But now, using the "relative mode", you will save yourself a lot of
work. Erase what you wrote before in the LilyPond window and write
this instead:
\relative
{ c d e f g a b c }
Save the document again, close the .pdf and select "Typeset file"
from the "Compile" menu. The result will be the same C-major scale.
(insert graphic here)
But now, with the
\relative
command, the first note is automatically engraved as close as
possible to the central c and every further note will be engraved as
close as possible to the previous note. "As close as possible" means
calculating the smallest interval. Thus if you modify your input to
this:
\relative
{ e g c b g f d c }
(Don't forget to always save the file and close the previous .pdf
before compiling)
You will get this result:
(insert graphic here)
You can analize the excercise and see that a third has been preferred
to a sixth, a quarter to a fifth, etc. Now in this mode, when you add
an apostrophe, it makes the note appear one octave higher as it would
have appeared without the apostrophe. Two apostrophes make for two
octaves, and so forth.
To make a note one octave lower as it would otherwise appear, add a
coma:
c,
or two or more for more octaves:
c,,,
See it here:
\relative
{ c' g e' d c c, d c }
(insert graphic here)
Good. Now let's see how to select the following:
Clefs
Time signatures
Keys major and minor
Rhythmic values
Sharps and flats
Double bars and repeat bars.
These are simple things to do. Write this example:
\relative
{
\clef treble
\key c \major
\time 4/4
c d e f g a b c }
(insert graphic here)
The result is again our first example of a C-major scale, but this
time you see the way some defaults are set. Change them easily, like
this:
\relative
{
\clef alto
\key cis \minor
\time 2/2
c d e f g a b c }
This should look thus:
(insert graphic here)
Don't worry just yet about the naturals. We'll come to it in a moment.
You change the clef changing the denomination "treble" for
alto
tenor
bass
or other, no less impotant clefs, like:
french (G clef on the first line)
soprano (C clef on the first line)
mezzosoprano (C clef on the second line)
baritone (C clef on the fifth line)
varbaritone (F clef on the third line)
subbass (F clef on the fifth line)
percussion (percussion clef)
tab (tablature clef)
To set the key, proceed in this way:
\key (name of the tonica) \(major or minor)
like for instance:
\key g \minor
And similarly for the time signature, like this:
\time x/y
For instance:
\time 6/8
Now for the rythmic values.
You specify these values with a number after the name of the note:
"c1" will make a whole note; "d8" an eighth note, etc.
Add full stops for dotted or double doted notes:
g4.
for a dotted fourth note,
a8..
for a double dotted eighth note, and so on.
Insert rests with the letter "r" and specify their duration with
numbers:
r4.
will be a dotted fourth rest.
But know that once you specify a rythmic value, it will be repeated
for the following notes until you specify a new value. This applies
for rests as well. Lets see this with an example:
\relative
{c4 r8 e g4 c r8 g c r c,4 r}
(insert graphic here)
Analyse this and see how the ryhthmic values are automatically repeated.
You can amuse yourself writing all possible and also impossible
examples of simple melodies, and see what happens. Don't worry,
whatever you type, you can't break it...
Working fine? Then let's go for sharps and flats. Just name the notes:
cis
dis
eis
fis
gis
ais
bis
for sharps, and
ces
ees
fes
ges
aes
bes
for flats.
(Please note that this is not neccesarily the way you are used to
name the notes)
"cisis" and "ceses" will give you double alterations. Get it?
BUT whether you choose one of the other key, you must always input
the exact name of a note, i. e., even if you specifiy a D-Major key
you still have to write down "fis" to get an F-sharp: if you write
"f", it will appear with a natural sign. This is not a disadvantage,
as you will surely notice after a time.
Insert double bars and repeats like this:
\relative
{
\clef treble
\key c \major
\time 2/4
c d
\bar "|:"
e f
\bar ":|:"
g a
\bar ":|"
b c
\bar "||"
}
(insert graphic here)
The exercises you have done so far should enable you to write any
simple melody. As you are surely aware, we have not said anything yet
about tuplets, lyrics, polyphony and many other things. If you wonder
wether you can do this or that with LilyPond, the answer is very
probably "YES!"
Look for it in the other tutorials or in the next chapters, as soon
as they are written. Any unsolved questions can be directed to the
mailing list, including an example of your problem. Take great care
where you put your { and } around your music, and
have fun!
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