David Kastrup <dak <at> gnu.org> writes: > It's been some time since I last tried, but the basic answer I arrived > at for myself was "don't bother". The tools are not good enough right > now to save time.
I have to agree with David here. When I first started looking at LilyPond, one of my first questions was about MIDI input. But then I realized: - I would have used MIDI for step input (hold a note, press a key for the rhythmic value). So, which is faster? Reaching for another keyboard to hold down, say, F and type 2, or just to type "f2" on one keyboard? Seemed to me that it would be faster to stick with one keyboard (the computer keyboard). - Being dependent on a MIDI keyboard for input would mean that I would find it harder to enter music when I didn't have the MIDI keyboard. For instance, last spring, I needed to hack up a very quick Amazing Grace setting for flute and bassoon. So I jotted a few notes on paper, then went to a cafe typed into LilyPond for, oh, 15-20 minutes or so (including slurs and other expressive marks) and I could e-mail the score, using only my laptop, no extra hardware. - With a MIDI keyboard, I would be back to the Finale hell of correcting enharmonic misspellings. Typing LilyPond code directly, I just write the enharmonic that I want. If I need D-double-flat, I just write dff (using English note names -- deses in Dutch). With MIDI, it would transcribe C natural first, and then I would have to fix it. That's not exactly a timesaver. (This touches on one of the big reasons why I like LilyPond much better. The wysiwyg Finale approach is to make a lot of layout mistakes by default and allow the user to correct them. The LilyPond approach is to make fewer layout mistakes to begin with.) In short, I was asking about MIDI note input because that's what I was used to in Finale. It didn't take too long to figure out that it was faster and easier to just type the code. hjh _______________________________________________ lilypond-user mailing list lilypond-user@gnu.org https://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/lilypond-user
