Questions tagged [lilypond]
For questions about usage of LilyPond, the free music engraving program. Code formatting on this site is not intended for LilyPond; workarounds can be found on meta. Questions may also necessitate the notation and/or engraving tags.
713 questions
4
votes
1
answer
88
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Increment variable in Lilypond function
My Lilypond score consist of repeat snippets a few bars each. I need to show the snippet number as markup. The score is being updated regularly by inserting new snippets, hence the snippet number ...
0
votes
1
answer
33
views
Making a \book block only if condition is met in lilypond
For a musical piece I want to write in Lilypond, my goal is to write each instrument part in a separate file. However, I want to have a score-block in each file to output each part individually (...
- 147
4
votes
1
answer
68
views
Kerning problems regarding stencil combinations in LilyPond
When combining two stencils / shapes in lilypond, is it possible to set the padding between the two shapes based on the actual content of them instead of their bounding boxes? I would like the ideal ...
1
vote
2
answers
79
views
LilyPond: Beam subdivisions lost when using compound time signatures and tuplets
I'm running into this issue, hopefully user error, with both the stable (2.24.4) and development (2.25.21) branches of LilyPond. In the first measure of music, I need the beam to be subdivided every ...
- 1,887
3
votes
2
answers
191
views
Lilypond: How to modify stencil by automatically getting the current stencil and do something based on it?
In a score I am working on recently, I need to add brackets to certain notation elements such as rests, accidentals and stems. To achieve this purpose I found a quite useful snippet on LSR. This ...
4
votes
1
answer
149
views
Lilypond Orchestral score: how to show duplicated tempo marking for violins?
It is customary to add tempo marking (like \tempo "Andante" 4 = 80) on multiple parts in an orchestral score, e.g., this. For example above the first part (say, flutes) and then repeated ...
- 143
2
votes
1
answer
28
views
Lilypond: Guitar stringNumber colliding with glissando
I'd like to tweak (raise) the fingeringNumber '2' in measure 1 just a bit to avoid collision with the glissando. I know how to lower the glissando endpoint, but that's not what I'm after.
Can somebody ...
- 267
2
votes
2
answers
82
views
How to force multiple midi parts to play in chorus for same notes?
I have written down the saxophone parts for an upcoming concert for practice in lilypond. The output should be pdf as well as midi. Everything works fine, except for one part, where one of the ...
- 147
1
vote
0
answers
65
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LilyPond Not Playing Back Accidentals? [closed]
I'm trying to play back a midi file, but the playback doesn't have any sharps or flats. How can I fix this?
I added the key signature to the midi block and the staves, but there was no difference. Is ...
- 185
0
votes
0
answers
29
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Lilypond - Error in timing [duplicate]
I have a piece containing 4 voices: trebleOne, trebleTwo, and bassOne and bassTwo, with the following MWE codes (thanks to this post, the grace note issue was solved, but the timing issue remains):
\...
- 63
1
vote
1
answer
59
views
How should I handle a part with instrument changes in LilyPond?
I have a piece with six parts — recorders AATTBGb, except that the second alto part doubles soprano. At several points, the Alto Recorder 2 player switches to Soprano Recorder and back. The Alto parts ...
- 527
2
votes
1
answer
42
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Forcing volta brackets to be closed (v2.24.3)
This is actually a repeat of a 20 year old question that I never found an answer to:
I'm trying to get something like this:
|--------------||--------------||--------------
|: Notes1 | ...
6
votes
1
answer
289
views
Trill with “no turn” in Lilypond
I'm looking for the best way to add a “no turn” annotation to a trill. It should be displayed above or below the trill extender line, right-aligned to the end of the extender line.
- 527
5
votes
1
answer
60
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LilyPond: stretch space between piano staves to make room for kneed beam
Consider the following LilyPond fragment:
\version "2.24.3"
\language "italiano"
global = {
\key reb \major
\time 9/8
}
cu = { \change Staff = "right" }
cd = { \...
- 1,169
2
votes
1
answer
58
views
To prepend / precede a text property with a hash mark, or not to prepend / precede a text property with a hash mark. That is the question
Continuing my LilyPond studying, I was learning about changing (pre-staff) instrument names when I found this (old) email which uses the following syntax:
\set Staff.instrumentName = #"Violin 1&...
- 183
6
votes
1
answer
516
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Why name the staves in LilyPond's "published" "Solo piano" template?
As part of learning Lilypond, I am trying to understand LilyPond's "published" "Solo piano" template. Lines 20-21 are:
\new Staff = "upper" \upper
\new Staff = "...
- 183
4
votes
1
answer
92
views
Tweaking space between systems with lilypond-book
I'm including a short except in a LaTeX document using lilypond-book, but you can see how bad the vertical spacing is. How do I fix this?
As a background, lilypond-book is a preprocessor for latex, ...
- 1,079
1
vote
1
answer
105
views
Notating a barre with vertical bracket in lilypond
In certain books I found this version of notation for barre chords. It seems there are no built in ways to do it in lilypond.
Size of the bracket is important because it signifies how many strings the ...
- 11
1
vote
1
answer
95
views
Lilypond: What's the right way to represent a song with verses, a chorus, melismata, and ties?
Short question: What's the best way to represent a simple verse-chorus song with some obnoxious syllable-extension lines?
Long explanation:
I'm trying to use Lilypond to engrave an existing song with ...
5
votes
1
answer
122
views
Lilypond: "Wrong type to apply: #<Score>"
I don't know what's going wrong with this snippet:
\version "2.24"
multiDynScoresDoc = #(define-void-function
(filename title staves)
(string? string? list?)
(toplevel-book-handler #{
...
- 53
4
votes
1
answer
120
views
How to replace the thumb fingering glyph
I am writing out music for the double bass, and we generally use a different glyph for a thumb fingering than what is available in lilypond. I recognize the one that's used as the default but it's ...
- 185
-1
votes
1
answer
104
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LilyPond: How to have automatic accidentals (flat-sharp-natural) without placing “!’ or “?” every time
Since the upgrade of the program, we need to always add “!’ or “?” when the accidental change in the song. We didn’t do that before, only occasionally, because back then the program would add ...
- 209
4
votes
1
answer
313
views
LilyPond: how do I visualize Bezier control points?
More often than not, the LilyPond score's final touch requires meticulous slur adjustment. It would be nice to see the control points while modifying the shape. I noticed a special engraver to ...
- 1,169
4
votes
1
answer
93
views
Control visibility of bowings in lilypond
I made my own edition of a piece and I would like to generate 2 PDFs from it, one including my \upbow and \downbow markings, and one with no bowing indications. I have read this section:
https://...
- 185
3
votes
1
answer
71
views
LilyPond: can sustain pedal automatically avoid fingering?
Here is the original engraving I am trying to reproduce
Here is my LilyPond code
\version "2.24.3"
\language "italiano"
cu = { \change Staff = "right" }
cd = { \change ...
- 1,169
1
vote
1
answer
96
views
Lilypond - Lyrics In Context With Multiple Verses
In the manual, at https://lilypond.org/doc/v2.23/Documentation/notation/techniques-specific-to-lyrics#working-with-lyrics-and-variables, it describes
For different or more complex orderings, the best ...
2
votes
1
answer
82
views
Is it possible to reference and transpose each staff separately for midi output only in lilypond?
I wanted to create a setup, where I can generate a full score as well as each part and separate registers using lilypond. For the most part, my setup works fine, however I have some issues transposing ...
- 147
2
votes
1
answer
108
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Erhu glissando symbols in LilyPond
I have some problems with LilyPond.
In Chinese music, the symbols below are often used for glissandos:
In normal staff notation, these should look like the picture below:
Is it possible to use ...
- 21
4
votes
1
answer
83
views
Transposing French horn parts (BC + TC) in lilypond
I'm looking at a German 1876 horn part that's written "in Es" like this:
If I were to transpose that into concert-pitch, I think:
horn bass clef transposes up (c sounds like ees), and
horn ...
- 1,079
3
votes
1
answer
52
views
LilyPond: how to correctly stack rests and tuplet brackets for different voices?
Here is the original fragment I am trying to engrave:
Here is my naive approach:
\version "2.24.3"
\language "italiano"
\new Staff <<
\relative do' {
\key reb \...
- 1,169
4
votes
1
answer
175
views
Lilypond scaling a score with many parts to avoid over-full pages
I'm trying to typeset a larger piece than I normally do. It has 44 instruments, which I've condensed into 35 staves using a lot of \partCombine.
I've tried to put this onto A3 paper:
$(set-default-...
- 1,079
2
votes
1
answer
86
views
LilyPond: Clair de Lune challenge
Clair de Lune is strange. Its poetry extends impressionism not only to the audial sensation but also to the visual perception of engraving. Wait... didn't impressionism start from the visual? Well, ...
- 1,169
5
votes
1
answer
44
views
How to get bar numbers to render below lyrics in Lilypond?
I'm using LilyPond and trying to get bar numbers to render on every measure, but when I have lyrics above the staff (which is pretty common in this style of music, which usually uses one staff line ...
- 153
3
votes
2
answers
202
views
LilyPond: tuplet bars don't seem to match time used
Please take a look at these three snippets, from a piece in 4/4 time.
LilyPond 2.24.3 via Frescobaldi in MacOS.
e8 (b e4~ \tuplet 5/8{ e32 d cis d e} d8\noBeam) r8
\acciaccatura{fis8} fis'2~ fis16 ...
- 15k
1
vote
1
answer
90
views
How do I change all fonts to sans-serif in Lilypond?
I'm sure this information is available somewhere, but all I can find is how to change the font for specific parts, not the entire document. Can you help me?
- 11
1
vote
1
answer
98
views
Why are lyrics clumped at the bottom of the score?
I'm using the following bit of code to add lyrics to only the last 2 notes of a song. This section of code is used for all of the instruments in my score.
d4-> 4-> 4-> r4
<<
{\...
- 85
3
votes
0
answers
79
views
Place "Opus" instead of Instrument Name?
I'm trying to place the opus to the left of a Staff (which is normally the place of the instrument name), like this:
Is there a proper way to place opus in replacement of instrumentName? Something ...
- 39
0
votes
1
answer
39
views
Deleteing blank staffs in Lilypond score
I'm writing a score with Lilypond to simplify a complex score.
It is composed of a singe melodic line but has some mixed choir parts.
I wrote the lilypond code, but it shows a blank line #5-8 checked ...
- 103
2
votes
1
answer
48
views
LilyPond – mark chords style
How can I get LilyPond to have colored chords frames in a handwritten style?
I think this is a known style but I have not found any more info about it. Very cool, very jazzy!
- 71
5
votes
1
answer
193
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Beam structures in nested triplets
I'm trying to create a beat of nested tuplets to look like this:
My attempt to reproduce that looks like this:
\version "2.24.3" ...
- 1,079
3
votes
1
answer
71
views
How do I center-align certain elements in an instrument name and right-align others?
In a score, I would like to have my instrument names center aligned and the part numbers right-aligned, so that they are flush against the bracket. How would I do this? (Preferably without using the \...
- 85
4
votes
1
answer
71
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Lilypond: manually specify fret numbers in a TabStaff?
I'm writing down a score for a transcription of a guitar piece, and figured I could also include tabs for it. Unfortunately, lilypond seems to generate the fingerings on its own and they're very ...
2
votes
1
answer
69
views
Automatic fingering under notes
I have the notes colored based on their string, and now I'm trying to get only the fretLabels from the TabStaff under each note, instead of having the whole tablature.
But so far I could only find ...
- 21
3
votes
1
answer
81
views
FiguredBass with parentheses
I've been struggling with doing some \markups inside \figuremode because I would like to define some commands or functions to include all the boilerplate code inside.
For example, trying to put ...
- 33
5
votes
1
answer
128
views
LilyPond - how to force C#m7(b5) instead of C#ø
I want my score to show C#m7(b5) instead of C#ø.
As per Lilypond- Half diminished Seventh symbol, I've created the following exception:
chExceptions = {
<c ees ges b>1-\markup {"m7(" ...
- 151
2
votes
2
answers
149
views
Lilypond - Combining expressions without duplicated noteheads
I'm setting a piece and want to have the parts all printed out separately but also a main score with all the parts for the conductor.
Here is my try for the combined score:
\version "2.24.3"
...
- 121
5
votes
1
answer
186
views
LilyPond - Put ALL noteheads to the left of stems, regardless of stem direction
I handwrote this score a while ago I'm trying to transcribe.
You can see that all the noteheads are to the left of the stems, regardless of which way the stem is pointing. Lots of old handwritten ...
- 183
1
vote
2
answers
94
views
I need write a lead sheet with repeats, different lyrics for each repeat, the chorus and chords
I have this snipped code that resembles the work that I need to make:
\version "2.22.0"
musicA = \relative c' {
\repeat volta 2 {
a1
b2 c2
d4 e f g
}
\alternative {
{...
- 11
6
votes
1
answer
86
views
Fitting music in a single, long system for scrolling in Lilypond
Suppose I have a piece of music in Lilypond (three staves per system) and I want to lay it out so that all the piece fits into a single, continuous system of arbitrary length, with no breaks.
How ...
- 63
5
votes
1
answer
155
views
How to show the string tunings on a tab in Lilypond?
I am setting a guitar piece in Lilypond. The piece requires to use a pitch shifter in certain places. Using \set Staff.stringTunings anywhere in the notes leads to a correct tab for pitch-shifted ...
- 51