Valentin Villenave wrote: > To me, note entry is much, much, much faster with LilyPond than with > Fin/Sib. (even using a MIDI keyboard -- which, by the way, is one of > the less enjoyable experiences I know of).
I concur here. I am much faster with Lily than I suspect I ever could be with a graphical interface. It's so much more intuitive to me, and actually feels more musical - I have to think about the relationships between notes in a much more musical way, especially when dealing with multiple voices. > The only advantage I could ever find in using such programs is that, > while LilyPond's workflow is very horizontal (i.e. you enter one voice > at a time), graphical programs allow you to have a global, vertical > view of your score. As an engraver (rather than a composer), I greatly prefer the line-by-line approach the vast majority of the time - I prefer that the other parts take care of themselves, retaining modifications I've made, while I work on tweaking a specific area. Other than initial line+page breaks and final evaluation, I find that I keep my PDF reader zoomed in most of the time. If I need to jump between voices, the point+click hyperlinks in the PDF are a tremendous help. > - if you're still composing and need to constantly have an overview > of your score instead of entering pre-existing material... well, you > may as well use this free-hardware tool called "pencil and paper"? :-) The following observation isn't true 100% of the time (i.e. don't flame me if you believe you don't fit into my perception), but in my observation most of the best composers still compose the old-fashioned way. In the little composing I've done (music theory exercises when I was still in school, etc.) I found that the GUI interface acted as a crutch, preventing me from really thinking about the relationships between notes. The GUI was certainly faster - and I appreciated utilizing it for the exercises where I really didn't care about the quality of the resulting music (especially for one theory professor that I didn't respect much) - but I started thinking about the way the music looked on the page rather than how it sounded. The way that music is entered for LilyPond causes me to think in a more musical way - there have been times when I've been stumped as to how to tell Lily to engrave something, only to realize that even if I did get it exactly as the composer wanted, the music would be confusing to read. LilyPond makes it much easier for me to work in my dual editor+engraver role. I've been using LilyPond exclusively for my fledgling music publishing business. Virtually without exception, every composer has been blown away by the quality of the engraving when presented with the proofs of their music about to be published. I deserve some of the credit for this - I spend a lot of time tweaking output, especially ties (mainly in chords) - but LilyPond gives me an excellent starting point, a very intuitive interface, and the ability to modify absolutely anything if I want to take the time. I'm convinced that no commercial product can come close. -Chris -- Chris Snyder Adoro Music Publishing 1-616-828-4436 x800 http://www.adoromusicpub.com _______________________________________________ lilypond-user mailing list lilypond-user@gnu.org http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/lilypond-user
