I will agree with many of the preceding posts that entry of notes, slurs, etc, is faster for me in Lily than in Finale. However, with every new piece I have to devise a new hack to accomplish a certain advanced thing - even as simple a thing as a slanted hairpin or a cross-staff slur, which I simply must have every now and then. I can spend huge amounts of time developing the hack and then significantly more time adjusting it just right in the actual score. I don't compose nearly the quantity I used to because LilyPond really puts me through the ringer with certain notational difficulties. But OF COURSE it's worth it, because no other software produces as professional a result.
That said, I keep waiting for the day when I've developed all the hacks I'll ever need and can remember them long enough that I don't ever have to snoop them out again. Or when all this stuff will be built into the software. Whew! But Chris's comment is a real clincher for me: > 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. >From a compositional point of view, Finale encourages the worst kind of laziness. LilyPond, by the manner in which it encourages a focus on the notational details, makes me think more critically toward my musical material. LilyPond also encourages a kind of healthy perfectionism, because control over any element of the score *is* possible. Finale keeps resetting to certain bad defaults, and eventually the typesetter caves and goes with it. But with Lily I can't be lazy about it. And that has translated itself into my composition work. It's been a heaven send that way. -- Neil Thornock, D.M. Assistant Professor of Music Composition/Theory Brigham Young University http://neilthornock.net _______________________________________________ lilypond-user mailing list lilypond-user@gnu.org http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/lilypond-user
