LilyPond
LilyPond is an open source music engraving program that produces publication-quality sheet music. It is cross-platform and used by musicians, music students, composers, and engravers to create professional music scores.
open-source
music-engraving
sheet-music
music-notation
music-scores
LilyPond: Open Source Music Engraving Program
A cross-platform software for creating publication-quality sheet music, used by musicians, students, composers, and engravers.
What is LilyPond?
LilyPond is an open source computer program for music engraving. It is used to produce high-quality sheet music in a visual style that resembles engraving. LilyPond takes a text input file containing the music notation along with embedded formatting commands and produces a professional music score as output.
Some key features of LilyPond include:
- Free and open source software licensed under GNU GPL
- Available for Linux, MacOS, and Windows
- Text-based music notation input allows great control over the engraved output
- Produces elegant, classical music engraving style scores as both PDF and PNG
- Extensive documentation and active community support available
- Supports advanced music notation like mixed meters, microtones, contemporary scoring practices
- Integrated with other UNIX-style software for building full publishing workflows
With its steep learning curve, LilyPond appeals more to expert musicians and engravers. But it is capable of engraving everything from simple songs to full orchestral symphonic movements while giving the user fine-tuned control over the visual results. Musicians use LilyPond to produce sheet music for publication, performance, archival and educational purposes.
LilyPond Features
Features
- Music engraving
- Produces publication-quality sheet music
- Open source and cross-platform
- Supports many music notation constructs
- Text-based input format
- Extensive documentation
Pricing
- Open Source
Pros
Free and open source
High quality output
Powerful engraving capabilities
Cross-platform
Large user community
Cons
Steep learning curve
Text-based input can be difficult
Limited GUI/WYSIWYG options
Less intuitive than other notation software
Official Links
The Best LilyPond Alternatives
Top Audio & Music and Music Notation and other similar apps like LilyPond
Here are some alternatives to LilyPond:
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