Abstract: Visual Studio Code is an excellent integrated environment for writing programming codes, but can it also be used as an editor for the LilyPond language dedicated to writing music?

• 1. Previous articles on editors for LilyPond.
• 2. Original Visual Studio Code or Code - OSS?
• 3. Installation of the VSLilyPond extension.
• 4. Using VSCode with the VSLilyPond plugin as an IDE for LilyPond.
• 5. Concluding remarks on VSCode as an IDE For LilyPond.

1. Previous articles on editors for LilyPond.

On the subject of writing musical scores using LilyPond, a markup language equivalent to LaTeX for lyrics, I recall my previous articles devoted to Emacs and Vim, respectively:

About LilyPond and MuseScore.

LilyPond and MuseScore are the two most interesting open source projects dedicated to music notation.

LilyPond is a markup language, compatible with LaTeX (I refer you to this my article on LaTeX and LilyPond for writing text and music), that allows you to write musical scores of high graphical quality using text characters.

This feature makes it, among other things, also usable by AI systems, such as ChatGPT, to write autogenerated scores.

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, instead, to use the endless potential of Emacs and Vim,

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,

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.:

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.

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:

LaTeX and LilyPond

LaTeX is a "state-of-the art" pagination system for text, maths and more.

LilyPond is the same for musical scores.

LaTeX and LilyPond together are a true excellence to mix music notation and text within same documents.

But it is not so easy to generate documents by using that combination of markup languages.

This post is intended as a simple introduction to start using LaTeX and LilyPond in documents containing text and music notation.