January 28, 2022

Using Vim to write scores in LilyPond

About LilyPond

LilyPond is a language for producing elegant musical scores, structurally similar to LaTeX with which it can integrate to generate documents containing text and music (for the integration between LilyPond and LaTeX you can read to this article of mine.)

Also in LilyPond, as in LaTeX, you can write the content with various editors.

Very useful, especially to learn the syntax, is the editor called Frescobaldi.

For those who have already learned the syntax, it may be useful to use the infinite potential of Emacs and Vim,

January 15, 2022

Variables in LaTeX documents exported from Emacs Org Mode

The usual introduction to Emacs, Org Mode and LaTeX

This is the usual introduction to Emacs, Org Mode and LaTeX: if you already know everything you can skip it.

Org Mode under GNU Emacs is a very powerful tool for organizing ideas.

An excellent features of this tool is its ability to directly export documents from Org Mode to LaTeX, the absolute excellence for pagination, as well as to other languages such as Markdown and HTML.

December 30, 2021

LilyPond, ties and voices (advanced)

The object of this article

The object of the article is the same as my this previous article but now I have composed, using the LilyPond language, a short score for piano with a little bit more complex voices and ties combinations.

I have also created a colour image highlighting the points of interest.

The following terms from the LilyPond lexicon must, of course, be regarded:

oneVoice: a single voice line
voiceOne: the upper melody line of a polyphonic composition
voiceTwo: the lower melody line of a polyphonic composition

And now let’s have a look at the LilyPond code

Here’s the complete LilyPond code in which you will find each line commented and, in particular, the crossing points shown in the score below.:

December 1, 2021

LilyPond, ties and voices

LilyPond: ties and voices

In the default LilyPond configuration, it is not possible to tie a note in a single-voice with the same note but belonging to a contextual multi-voices environment.

I recently had to resolve an author’s passage involving just such a problem and asked for help to the amazing LilyPond community.

So I learned a new “trick” that I would like to share with everyone: you can change the context in which ties operate.

October 23, 2021

LilyPond: anacrusis, tuplets, multiple voices

A very short introduction

LilyPond is an incredible and powerful language for writing music scores.

Every musician should learn it. But writing code is more suitable for programmers than for musicians and many attempts have to be made to write complete scores.

In this post I show you some coding snippets regarding anacrusis, tuplets and multiple voices (If you’re reading this article you know what they are).

Here is the basic patterns for each of them in LilyPond language:

October 9, 2021

Vim: some modalities to open single or multiple documents

Synthesis table

Some Vim commands we’ll talk about:

I write	To get
`vim document_name`	To run Vim and open a document
`gvim document_name`	To run Graphical Vim and open a document
`vim file-1 file-2 file-n`	To run Vim and open multiple documents
`vim -p file-1 file-2 file-n`	To run Vim and open multiple documents in tabs
`vim -o file-1 file-2 file-n`	To run Vim and open multiple documents in separate windows with horizontal rows
`vim -O file-1 file-2 file-n`	To run Vim and open multiple documents in separate windows with vertical rows
`sp doc_name`	To split a new file while Vim is running
`vs doc_name`	To vertical split a new file while Vim is running
`tabe doc_name`	To open a new file in a dedicated tab while Vim is running

Vim offers a lot of options to open or create single or multiple files from the command line or while the application is running.