LilyPond — Usage

Appendices

1. Running lilypond

This chapter details the technicalities of running LilyPond.

1.1 Normal usage

Most users run LilyPond through a GUI; if you have not done so already, please read the Tutorial. If you use an alternate editor to write lilypond files, see the documentation for that program.

1.2 Command-line usage

This section contains extra information about using LilyPond on the command-line. This may be desirable to pass extra options to the program. In addition, there are certain extra ‘helper’ programs (such as midi2ly) which are only available on the command-line.

By ‘command-line’, we mean the command line in the operating system. Windows users might be more familiar with the terms ‘DOS shell’ or ‘command shell’. MacOS X users might be more familiar with the terms ‘terminal’ or ‘console’. Some additional setup is required for MacOS X users; please see MacOS X.

Describing how to use this part of an operating system is outside the scope of this manual; please consult other documentation on this topic if you are unfamiliar with the command-line.

Invoking lilypond

The lilypond executable may be called as follows from the command line.

lilypond [option]… file…

When invoked with a filename that has no extension, the ‘.ly’ extension is tried first. To read input from stdin, use a dash (-) for file.

When ‘filename.ly’ is processed it will produce ‘filename.ps’ and ‘filename.pdf’ as output. Several files can be specified; they will each be processed independently. ¹

If ‘filename.ly’ contains more than one \book block, then the rest of the scores will be output in numbered files, starting with ‘filename-1.pdf’. In addition, the value of output-suffix will be inserted between the basename and the number. An input file containing

#(define output-suffix "violin")
\score { … }
#(define output-suffix "cello")
\score { … }

will output base‘-violin.pdf’ and base‘-cello-1.pdf’.

Using LilyPond with standard shell features

Since LilyPond is a command line application, features of the ‘shell’ used for calling LilyPond can also be put to good use.

For example:

lilypond *.ly

will process all LilyPond files in the current directory.

Redirecting the console output (e.g. to a file) may also be useful:

lilypond file.ly 1> stdout.txt

lilypond file.ly 2> stderr.txt

lilypond file.ly &> all.txt

Redirects ‘normal’ output, ‘errors’ only or ‘everything’, respectively, to a text file. Consult the documentation for your particular shell, Command (Windows), Terminal or Console applications (MacOS X) to see if output redirection is supported or if the syntax is different.

The following example searches and processes all input files in the current directory and all directories below it recursively. The output files will be located in the same directory that the command was run in, rather than in the same directories as the original input files.

find . -name '*.ly' -exec lilypond '{}' \;

This should also work for MacOS X users.

A Windows user would run;

forfiles /s /M *.ly /c "cmd /c lilypond @file"

entering these commands in a command prompt usually found under Start > Accessories > Command Prompt or for version 8 users, by typing in the search window ‘command prompt’.

Alternatively, an explicit path to the top-level of your folder containing all the sub-folders that have input files in them can be stated using the /p option;

forfiles /s /p C:\Documents\MyScores /M *.ly /c "cmd /c lilypond @file"

If there are spaces in the path to the top-level folder, then the whole path needs to be inside double quotes;

forfiles /s /p "C:\Documents\My Scores" /M *.ly /c "cmd /c lilypond @file"

Basic command line options for LilyPond

The following options are supported:

-b, --bigpdfs

PDF files generated will be much larger than normal (due to little or no font optimization). However, if two or more PDF files are included within pdftex, xetex or luatex documents they can then be processed further via ghostscript (merging duplicated font data) resulting in significantly smaller PDF files.

lilypond -b myfile

Then run ghostscript;

gs -q -sDEVICE=pdfwrite -dPDFDontUseFontObjectNum -o gsout.pdf myfile.pdf

Note: For Ghostscript versions 9.17 and above, the -dPDFDontUseFontObjectNum option is required to remove any duplicate font data.

pdfsizeopt.py can then be used to further optimize the size of file;

pdfsizeopt.py --use-multivalent=no gsout.pdf final.pdf

-d, --define-default=var=val

See Advanced command line options for LilyPond.

-e, --evaluate=expr

Evaluate the Scheme expr before parsing any ‘.ly’ files. Multiple ‘-e’ options may be given, they will be evaluated sequentially.

The expression will be evaluated in the guile-user module, so if you want to use definitions in expr, use

lilypond -e '(define-public a 42)'

on the command-line, and include

#(use-modules (guile-user))

at the top of the .ly file.

Note: Windows users must use double quotes instead of single quotes.

-f, --format=format

which formats should be written. Choices for format are ps, pdf, and png.

Example: lilypond -fpng filename.ly

For svg and eps formats use the -dbackend option. See Advanced command line options for LilyPond.

-h, --help

Show a summary of usage.

-H, --header=FIELD

Dump a header field to file ‘BASENAME.FIELD’.

-i, --init=file

Set init file to file (default: ‘init.ly’).

-I, --include=directory

Add directory to the search path for input files.

Multiple -I options may be given. The search will start in the first defined directory, and if the file to be included is not found the search will continue in subsequent directories.

-j, --jail=user,group,jail,dir

Run lilypond in a chroot jail.

The ‘--jail’ option provides a more flexible alternative to ‘-dsafe’, when LilyPond formatting is being provided via a web server, or whenever LilyPond executes commands sent by external sources (see Advanced command line options for LilyPond).

It works by changing the root of lilypond to jail just before starting the actual compilation process. The user and group are then changed to match those provided, and the current directory is changed to dir. This setup guarantees that it is not possible (at least in theory) to escape from the jail. Note that for ‘--jail’ to work, lilypond must be run as root, which is usually accomplished in a safe way using sudo.

Setting up a jail can be a relatively complex matter, as we must be sure that LilyPond is able to find whatever it needs to compile the source inside the jail itself. A typical chroot jail will comprise the following steps:

Setting up a separate filesystem

A separate filesystem should be created for LilyPond, so that it can be mounted with safe options such as noexec, nodev, and nosuid. In this way, it is impossible to run executables or to write directly to a device from LilyPond. If you do not want to create a separate partition, just create a file of reasonable size and use it to mount a loop device. A separate filesystem also guarantees that LilyPond cannot write more space than it is allowed.

Setting up a separate user

A separate user and group (say, lily/lily) with low privileges should be used to run LilyPond inside the jail. There should be a single directory writable by this user, which should be passed in dir.

Preparing the jail

LilyPond needs to read a number of files while running. All these files are to be copied into the jail, under the same path they appear in the real root filesystem. The entire content of the LilyPond installation (e.g., ‘/usr/share/lilypond’) should be copied.

If problems arise, the simplest way to trace them down is to run LilyPond using strace, which will allow you to determine which files are missing.

Running LilyPond

In a jail mounted with noexec it is impossible to execute any external program. Therefore LilyPond must be run with a backend that does not require any such program. As we have already mentioned, it must be run with superuser privileges (which, of course, it will lose immediately), possibly using sudo. It is also good practice to limit the number of seconds of CPU time LilyPond can use (e.g., using ulimit -t), and, if your operating system supports it, the amount of memory that can be allocated. Also see LilyPond in chroot jail.

-l, --loglevel=LEVEL

Set the verbosity of the console output to LEVEL. Possible values are:

NONE

No output at all, not even error messages.

ERROR

Only error messages, no warnings or progress messages.

WARN

Warnings and error messages, no progress.

BASIC_PROGRESS

Basic progress messages (success), warnings and errors.

PROGRESS

All progress messages, warnings and errors.

INFO (default)

Progress messages, warnings, errors and further execution information.

DEBUG

All possible messages, including verbose debug output.

-o, --output=FILE or FOLDER

Set the default output file to FILE or, if a folder with that name exists, direct the output to FOLDER, taking the file name from the input file. The appropriate suffix will be added (e.g. .pdf for pdf) in both cases.

--ps

Generate PostScript.

--png

Generate pictures of each page, in PNG format. This implies ‘--ps’. The resolution in DPI of the image may be set with

-dresolution=110

--pdf

Generate PDF. This implies ‘--ps’.

-v, --version

Show version information.

-V, --verbose

Be verbose: show full paths of all files read, and give timing information.

-w, --warranty

Show the warranty with which GNU LilyPond comes. (It comes with NO WARRANTY!)

Advanced command line options for LilyPond

-d[option-name]=[value],

–define-default=[option-name]=[value] This sets the equivalent internal Scheme function to value. For example;

-dbackend=svg

If a value is not supplied, then the default value is used. The prefix no- may be added to option-name to switch ‘off’ an option. For example;

-dpoint-and-click=#f

is the same as

-dno-point-and-click

The following are supported along with their respective default values:

Note to Windows users: By default lilypond.exe outputs all progress information to the command window, lilypond-windows.exe does not and returns a prompt, with no progress information, immediately at the command line. The ‘-dgui’ option can be used in this case to redirect output to a log file.

This option is supported by all backends; pdf, png, ps, eps and svg, but not scm. It generates an output file, in the form myFile.preview.extension, containing the titles and the first system of music. If \book or \bookpart blocks are used, the titles of \book, \bookpart or \score will appear in the output, including the first system of every \score block if the \paper variable print-all-headers is set to #t.

To suppress the usual output, use the ‘-dprint-pages’ or ‘-dno-print-pages’ options according to your requirements.

When LilyPond formatting is available through a web server, either the ‘--safe’ or the ‘--jail’ option MUST be passed. The ‘--safe’ option will prevent inline Scheme code from wreaking havoc, e.g,

#(s ystem "rm -rf /")  % too dangerous to write correctly
{
  c4^$(ly:gulp-file "/etc/passwd") % malicious but not destructive
}

The ‘-dsafe’ option works by evaluating in-line Scheme expressions in a special safe module. This is derived from GUILE ‘safe-r5rs’ module, but also adds a number of functions of the LilyPond API which are listed in ‘scm/safe-lily.scm’.

In addition, safe mode disallows \include directives and disables the use of backslashes in TeX strings. It is also not possible to import LilyPond variables into Scheme while in safe mode.

‘-dsafe’ does not detect resource overuse, so it is still possible to make the program hang indefinitely, for example by feeding cyclic data structures into the backend. Therefore, if using LilyPond on a publicly accessible webserver, the process should be limited in both CPU and memory usage.

Safe mode will prevent many useful LilyPond snippets from being compiled.

The ‘--jail’ is an even more secure alternative, but requires more work to set up. See Basic command line options for LilyPond.

Environment variables

lilypond recognizes the following environment variables:

LILYPOND_DATADIR

This specifies a directory where locale messages and data files will be looked up by default. The directory should contain subdirectories called ‘ly/’, ‘ps/’, ‘tex/’, etc.

LANG

This selects the language for the warning messages.

LILYPOND_LOGLEVEL

The default loglevel. If LilyPond is called without an explicit loglevel (i.e. no ‘--loglevel’ command line option), this value is used.

LILYPOND_GC_YIELD

A variable, as a percentage, that tunes memory management behavior. A higher values means the program uses more memory, a smaller value means more CPU time is used. The default value is 70.

LilyPond in chroot jail

Setting up the server to run LilyPond in a chroot jail is a complicated task. The steps are listed below. Examples in the steps are from Ubuntu GNU/Linux, and may require the use of sudo as appropriate.

• Install the necessary packages: LilyPond, GhostScript, and ImageMagick.
• Create a new user by the name of lily:

  adduser lily
  

  This will create a new group for the lily user as well, and a home folder, /home/lily

• In the home folder of the lily user create a file to use as a separate filesystem:

  dd if=/dev/zero of=/home/lily/loopfile bs=1k count= 200000
  

  This example creates a 200MB file for use as the jail filesystem.

• Create a loop device, make a file system and mount it, then create a folder that can be written by the lily user:

  mkdir /mnt/lilyloop
  losetup /dev/loop0 /home/lily/loopfile
  mkfs -t ext3 /dev/loop0 200000
  mount -t ext3 /dev/loop0 /mnt/lilyloop
  mkdir /mnt/lilyloop/lilyhome
  chown lily /mnt/lilyloop/lilyhome
  

• In the configuration of the servers, the JAIL will be /mnt/lilyloop and the DIR will be /lilyhome.
• Create a big directory tree in the jail by copying the necessary files, as shown in the sample script below.

  You can use sed to create the necessary copy commands for a given executable:

  for i in "/usr/local/lilypond/usr/bin/lilypond" "/bin/sh" "/usr/bin/;  \
    do ldd $i | sed 's/.*=> \/\(.*\/\)\([^(]*\).*/mkdir -p \1 \&\&  \
      cp -L \/\1\2 \1\2/' | sed 's/\t\/\(.*\/\)\(.*\) (.*)$/mkdir -p  \
        \1 \&\& cp -L \/\1\2 \1\2/' | sed '/.*=>.*/d'; done
  

Example script for 32-bit Ubuntu 8.04

#!/bin/sh
## defaults set here

username=lily
home=/home
loopdevice=/dev/loop0
jaildir=/mnt/lilyloop
# the prefix (without the leading slash!)
lilyprefix=usr/local
# the directory where lilypond is installed on the system
lilydir=/$lilyprefix/lilypond/

userhome=$home/$username
loopfile=$userhome/loopfile
adduser $username
dd if=/dev/zero of=$loopfile bs=1k count=200000
mkdir $jaildir
losetup $loopdevice $loopfile
mkfs -t ext3 $loopdevice 200000
mount -t ext3 $loopdevice $jaildir
mkdir $jaildir/lilyhome
chown $username $jaildir/lilyhome
cd $jaildir

mkdir -p bin usr/bin usr/share usr/lib usr/share/fonts $lilyprefix tmp
chmod a+w tmp

cp -r -L $lilydir $lilyprefix
cp -L /bin/sh /bin/rm bin
cp -L /usr/bin/convert /usr/bin/gs usr/bin
cp -L /usr/share/fonts/truetype usr/share/fonts

# Now the library copying magic
for i in "$lilydir/usr/bin/lilypond" "$lilydir/usr/bin/guile" "/bin/sh"  \
  "/bin/rm" "/usr/bin/gs" "/usr/bin/convert"; do ldd $i | sed 's/.*=>  \
    \/\(.*\/\)\([^(]*\).*/mkdir -p \1 \&\& cp -L \/\1\2 \1\2/' | sed  \
      's/\t\/\(.*\/\)\(.*\) (.*)$/mkdir -p \1 \&\& cp -L \/\1\2 \1\2/'  \
        | sed '/.*=>.*/d'; done | sh -s

# The shared files for ghostscript...
      cp -L -r /usr/share/ghostscript usr/share
# The shared files for ImageMagick
      cp -L -r /usr/lib/ImageMagick* usr/lib

### Now, assuming that you have test.ly in /mnt/lilyloop/lilyhome,
### you should be able to run:
### Note that /$lilyprefix/bin/lilypond is a script, which sets the
### LD_LIBRARY_PATH - this is crucial
      /$lilyprefix/bin/lilypond -jlily,lily,/mnt/lilyloop,/lilyhome test.ly

1.3 Error messages

Different error messages can appear while compiling a file:

Warning

Something looks suspect. If you are requesting something out of the ordinary then you will understand the message, and can ignore it. However, warnings usually indicate that something is wrong with the input file.

Error

Something is definitely wrong. The current processing step (parsing, interpreting, or formatting) will be finished, but the next step will be skipped.

Fatal error

Something is definitely wrong, and LilyPond cannot continue. This happens rarely. The most usual cause is misinstalled fonts.

Scheme error

Errors that occur while executing Scheme code are caught by the Scheme interpreter. If running with the verbose option (‘-V’ or ‘--verbose’) then a call trace of the offending function call is printed.

Programming error

There was some internal inconsistency. These error messages are intended to help the programmers and debuggers. Usually, they can be ignored. Sometimes, they come in such big quantities that they obscure other output.

Aborted (core dumped)

This signals a serious programming error that caused the program to crash. Such errors are considered critical. If you stumble on one, send a bug-report.

If warnings and errors can be linked to some part of the input file, then error messages have the following form

filename:lineno:columnno: message
offending input line

A line-break is inserted in the offending line to indicate the column where the error was found. For example,

test.ly:2:19: error: not a duration: 5
  { c'4 e'
           5 g' }

These locations are LilyPond’s best guess about where the warning or error occurred, but (by their very nature) warnings and errors occur when something unexpected happens. If you can’t see an error in the indicated line of your input file, try checking one or two lines above the indicated position.

Please note that diagnostics can be triggered at any point during the many stages of processing. For example if there are parts of the input that are processed multiple times (i.e. in midi and layout output), or if the same music variable is used in multiple contexts the same message may appear several times. Diagnostics produced at a ‘late’ stage (i.e bar checks) might also be issued multiple times.

More information about errors is given in Common errors.

1.4 Common errors

The error conditions described below occur often, yet the cause is not obvious or easily found. Once seen and understood, they are easily handled.

Music runs off the page

Music running off the page over the right margin or appearing unduly compressed is almost always due to entering an incorrect duration on a note, causing the final note in a measure to extend over the bar line. It is not invalid if the final note in a measure does not end on the automatically entered bar line, as the note is simply assumed to carry over into the next measure. But if a long sequence of such carry-over measures occurs the music can appear compressed or may flow off the page because automatic line breaks can be inserted only at the end of complete measures, i.e., where all notes end before or at the end of the measure.

The incorrect duration can be found easily if bar checks are used, see Bar and bar number checks.

If you actually intend to have a series of such carry-over measures you will need to insert an invisible bar line where you want the line to break. For details, see Bar lines.

An extra staff appears

If contexts are not created explicitly with \new or \context, they will be silently created as soon as a command is encountered which cannot be applied to an existing context. In simple scores the automatic creation of contexts is useful, and most of the examples in the LilyPond manuals take advantage of this simplification. But occasionally the silent creation of contexts can give rise to unexpected new staves or scores. For example, it might be expected that the following code would cause all note heads within the following staff to be colored red, but in fact it results in two staves with the note heads remaining the default black in the lower staff.

\override Staff.NoteHead.color = #red
\new Staff { a' }

This is because a Staff context does not exist when the override is processed, so one is implicitly created and the override is applied to it, but then the \new Staff command creates another, separate, staff into which the notes are placed. The correct code to color all note heads red is

\new Staff {
  \override Staff.NoteHead.color = #red
  a'
}

Error message Unbound variable %

This error message will appear at the bottom of the console output or log file together with a “GUILE signalled an error …” message every time a Scheme routine is called which (invalidly) contains a LilyPond rather than a Scheme comment.

LilyPond comments begin with a percent sign, (%), and must not be used within Scheme routines. Scheme comments begin with a semi-colon, (;).

Error message FT_Get_Glyph_Name

This error messages appears in the console output or log file if an input file contains a non-ASCII character and was not saved in UTF-8 encoding. For details, see Text encoding.

Warning staff affinities should only decrease

This warning can appear if there are no staves in the printed output, for example if there are just a ChordName context and a Lyrics context as in a lead sheet. The warning messages can be avoided by making one of the contexts behave as a staff by inserting

\override VerticalAxisGroup.staff-affinity = ##f

at its start. For details, see “Spacing of non-staff lines” in Flexible vertical spacing within systems.

Error message unexpected \new

A \score block must contain a single music expression. If instead it contains several \new Staff, \new StaffGroup or similar contexts introduced with \new without them being enclosed in either curly brackets, { … }, or double angle brackets, << … >>, like this:

\score {
  % Invalid! Generates error: syntax error, unexpected \new
  \new Staff { … }
  \new Staff { … }
}

the error message will be produced.

To avoid the error, enclose all the \new statements in curly or double angle brackets.

Using curly brackets will introduce the \new statements sequentially:

\score {
  {
    \new Staff { a' a' a' a' }
    \new Staff { g' g' g' g' }
  }
}

but more likely you should be using double angle brackets so the new staves are introduced in parallel, i.e. simultaneously:

\score {
  <<
    \new Staff { a' a' a' a' }
    \new Staff { g' g' g' g' }
  >>
}

Warning this voice needs a \voiceXx or \shiftXx setting

If notes from two different voices with stems in the same direction occur at the same musical moment, but the voices have no voice-specific shifts specified, the warning message ‘warning: this voice needs a \voiceXx or \shiftXx setting’ will appear when compiling the LilyPond file. This warning will appear even when the notes have no visible stems, e.g. whole notes, if the stems for shorter notes at the same pitch would be in the same direction.

Remember that the stem direction depends on the position of the note on the staff unless the stem direction is specified, for example by using \voiceOne, etc. In this case the warning will appear only when the stems happen to be in the same direction, i.e. when the notes are in the same half of the staff.

By placing the notes in voices with stem directions and shifts specified, for example by using \voiceOne, etc., these warnings may be avoided.

Notes in higher numbered voices, \voiceThree etc., are automatically shifted to avoid clashing note columns. This causes a visible shift for notes with stems, but whole notes are not visibly shifted unless an actual clash of the note heads occurs, or when the voices cross over from their natural order (when \voiceThree is higher than \voiceOne, etc.)

See also

Explicitly instantiating voices, Real music example, Single-staff polyphony, Collision resolution.

2. Updating files with convert-ly

As LilyPond is improved, the syntax (input language) of some commands and functions can change. This can result in unexpected errors, warnings or even wrong output when input files, previously created for older versions of LilyPond are then used with later versions.

To help with this the convert-ly command can be used to upgrade these older input files to use the newer syntax.

2.1 Why does the syntax change?

Often, syntax changes are made to make the input simpler to both read and write, but occasionally the changes are made to accommodate new features or enhancements to existing functions.

To illustrate this here is a real example:

All \paper and \layout property names were supposed to be written in the form first-second-third. However, in LilyPond version 2.11.60, it was noticed that the printallheaders property did not follow this convention. Should this property be left alone (confusing new users with an inconsistent format)? Or should it be changed (annoying old users with existing LilyPond input files)?

The decision was made to change the name of the property to print-all-headers, and by using the convert-ly command the old users had a way to automatically update their existing input files.

However, the convert-ly command cannot always be used to manage all syntax changes. In versions of LilyPond before 2.4.2, accents and non-English characters were entered using standard LaTeX notation. For example the French word for ‘Christmas’ was entered as No\"el. But in LilyPond 2.6 onwards, the special ë must be entered directly as a UTF-8 character. The convert-ly command cannot change LaTeX special characters into UTF-8 characters, so older LilyPond input files have to edited manually.

The conversion rules of the convert-ly command work using text pattern-matching and replacement (rather than ‘understanding’ the context of what it is changing within a given input file). This has several consequences:

• The reliability of the conversion depends on the quality of each applied rule set and on the complexity of the respective change. Sometimes conversions may require additional, manual fixes, so the original input files should be kept for comparison just in case.
• Only conversions to newer syntax changes are possible: there are no rule sets to go back to older versions of LilyPond. So the input file should only be upgraded when older versions of LilyPond are no longer being maintained. Again, the original input files should be kept just in case; perhaps using version control systems (i.e. Git) to help with maintaining multiple versions of your input files.
• LilyPond is quite robust when processing ‘creatively’ placed or omitted whitespace, but the rules used by convert-ly often make some stylistic assumptions. Therefore following the input style as used in the LilyPond manuals is advised for painless upgrades, particularly as the examples in the manuals themselves are all upgraded using the convert-ly command.

2.2 Invoking convert-ly

The convert-ly command uses the \version number in the input file to detect older versions. In most cases, to upgrade your input file it is sufficient just to run;

convert-ly -e myfile.ly

in the directory containing the input file. This will upgrade ‘myfile.ly’ in-place and preserve the original file by renaming it ‘myfile.ly~’. The \version number in the upgraded input file, along with any required syntax updates, is also changed.

When run, the convert-ly command will output the version numbers of which conversions have been made to. If no version numbers are listed in the output for the file, it is already up to date and using the latest LilyPond syntax.

To convert all input files in a single directory use;

convert-ly -e *.ly

Linux and MacOS X users can both use the appropriate terminal application, but MacOS X users can also execute this command directly under the menu entry Compile > Update syntax.

A Windows user would run the command;

convert-ly.py -e *.ly

entering these commands in a command prompt usually found under Start > Accessories > Command Prompt or for version 8 users, by typing in the search window ‘command prompt’.

To convert all input files that reside in different sets of subdirectories;

find . -name '*.ly' -exec convert-ly -e '{}' \;

This example searches and converts all input files in the current directory and all directories below it recursively. The converted files will be located in the same directory along with their renamed originals. This should also work for MacOS X users, although only via the terminal app.

Windows user would use;

forfiles /s /M *.ly /c "cmd /c convert-ly.py -e @file"

Alternatively, an explicit path to the top-level of your folder containing all the sub-folders that have input files in them can be stated using the /p option;

forfiles /s /p C:\Documents\MyScores /M *.ly /c "cmd /c convert-ly.py -e @file"

If there are spaces in the path to the top-level folder, then the whole path needs to be inside double quotes;

forfiles /s /p "C:\Documents\My Scores" /M *.ly /c "cmd /c convert-ly.py -e @file"

2.3 Command line options for convert-ly

The program is invoked as follows:

convert-ly [option]… filename…

The following options can be given:

-d, --diff-version-update

increase the \version string only if the file has actually been changed. In that case, the version header will correspond to the version after the last actual change. An unstable version number will be rounded up to the next stable version number unless that would exceed the target version number. Without this option, the version will instead reflect the last attempted conversion.

-e, --edit

Apply the conversions direct to the input file, modifying it in-place. The original file is renamed as ‘myfile.ly~’. This backup file may be a hidden file on some operating systems. Alternatively, if you want to specify a different name for the upgraded file without using the -e options default ~ appended to the old input file, the output can be redirected instead;

convert-ly myfile.ly > mynewfile.ly

Windows user would use;

convert-ly.py myfile.ly > mynewfile.ly

-b, --backup-numbered

When used with the ‘-e’ option, number the backup files so that no previous version is overwritten. The backup files may be hidden on some operating systems.

-f, --from=from-patchlevel

Set the version to convert from. If this is not set, convert-ly will guess this, on the basis of \version strings in the file. E.g. ‘--from=2.10.25’

-h, --help

Print usage help.

-l loglevel, --loglevel=loglevel

Set the output verbosity to loglevel. Possible values, in upper case, are PROGRESS (the default), NONE, WARNING, ERROR and DEBUG.

-n, --no-version

Normally, convert-ly adds a \version indicator to the output. Specifying this option suppresses this.

-s, --show-rules

Show all known conversions and exit.

-t, --to=to-patchlevel

Explicitly set which \version to convert to, otherwise the default is the most current value. It must be higher than the starting version.

convert-ly --to=2.14.1 myfile.ly

To upgrade LilyPond fragments in texinfo files, use

convert-ly --from=… --to=… --no-version *.itely

To see the changes in the LilyPond syntax between two versions, use

convert-ly --from=… --to=… -s

2.4 Problems running convert-ly

When running convert-ly in a Command Prompt window under Windows on a file which has spaces in the filename or in the path to it, it is necessary to surround the entire input file name with three (!) sets of double quotes:

convert-ly """D:/My Scores/Ode.ly""" > "D:/My Scores/new Ode.ly"

If the simple convert-ly -e *.ly command fails because the expanded command line becomes too long, the convert-ly command may be placed in a loop instead. This example for UNIX will upgrade all ‘.ly’ files in the current directory

for f in *.ly; do convert-ly -e $f; done;

In the Windows Command Prompt window the corresponding command is

for %x in (*.ly) do convert-ly -e """%x"""

Not all language changes are handled. Only one output option can be specified. Automatically updating scheme and LilyPond scheme interfaces is quite unlikely; be prepared to tweak scheme code manually.

2.5 Manual conversions

In theory, a program like convert-ly could handle any syntax change. After all, a computer program interprets the old version and the new version, so another computer program can translate one file into another².

However, the LilyPond project has limited resources: not all conversions are performed automatically. Below is a list of known problems.

1.6->2.0:
 Doesn't always convert figured bass correctly, specifically things like {<
>}.  Mats' comment on working around this:
   To be able to run convert-ly
   on it, I first replaced all occurrences of '{<' to some dummy like '{#'
   and similarly I replaced '>}' with '&}'.  After the conversion, I could
   then change back from '{ #' to '{ <' and from '& }' to '> }'.
 Doesn't convert all text markup correctly.  In the old markup syntax,
 it was possible to group a number of markup commands together within
parentheses, e.g.
   -#'((bold italic) "string")
   This will incorrectly be converted into
   -\markup{{\bold italic} "string"}
   instead of the correct
   -\markup{\bold \italic "string"}
2.0->2.2:
 Doesn't handle \partcombine
 Doesn't do \addlyrics => \lyricsto, this breaks some scores with multiple
stanzas.
2.0->2.4:
 \magnify isn't changed to \fontsize.
    - \magnify #m => \fontsize #f, where f = 6ln(m)/ln(2)
 remove-tag isn't changed.
    - \applyMusic #(remove-tag '. . .) => \keepWithTag #'. . .
 first-page-number isn't changed.
    - first-page-number no => print-first-page-number = ##f
 Line breaks in header strings aren't converted.
    - \\\\  as line break in \header strings => \markup \center-align <
      "First Line" "Second Line" >
 Crescendo and decrescendo terminators aren't converted.
    - \rced => \!
    - \rc => \!
2.2->2.4:
 \turnOff (used in \set Staff.VoltaBracket = \turnOff) is not properly
converted.
2.4.2->2.5.9
 \markup{ \center-align <{ ... }> } should be converted to:
 \markup{ \center-align {\line { ... }} }
 but now, \line is missing.
2.4->2.6
 Special LaTeX characters such as $~$ in text are not converted to UTF8.
2.8
 \score{} must now begin with a music expression.  Anything else
 (particularly \header{}) must come after the music.

2.6 Writing code to support multiple versions

In some cases, especially when writing library code it is desirable to support multiple LilyPond versions across breaking syntax changes. To do this alternative portions of code can be wrapped into conditional expressions depending on the currently executed LilyPond version. The Scheme function ly:version? expects a comparison operator op and a reference version ver passed as a list of integers with up to three elements. Missing elements are ignored so '(2 20) is equivalent to any version of the 2.20 line of versions. Constructs like the following are possible:

#(cond
  ((ly:version? > '(2 20))
   (ly:message "This is code to run for LilyPond after 2.20"))
  ((ly:version? = '(2 19 57))
   (ly:message "This will only be executed with LilyPond 2.19.57"))
  (else (ly:message "This will be executed in any other version")))

Usually this will be integrated in library functions to allow alternative syntax to be used, but it is also possible to use the comparison directly within the music like in the following example:

{
  c' d' e' f'
  #(if (ly:version? = '(2 21))
       #{ \override NoteHead.color = #red #}
       #{ \override NoteHead.color = #blue #})
  g' a' b' c''
}

Note: This function has been introduced in LilyPond 2.19.57, so it is not possible to compare with versions earlier than that.

3. Running lilypond-book

If you want to add pictures of music to a document, you can simply do it the way you would do with other types of pictures. The pictures are created separately, yielding PostScript output or PNG images, and those are included into a LaTeX or HTML document.

lilypond-book provides a way to automate this process: This program extracts snippets of music from your document, runs lilypond on them, and outputs the document with pictures substituted for the music. The line width and font size definitions for the music are adjusted to match the layout of your document.

This is a separate program from lilypond itself, and is run on the command line; for more information, see Command-line usage. If you have trouble running lilypond-book on Windows or Mac OS X using the command line, then see either Windows or MacOS X.

This procedure may be applied to LaTeX, HTML, Texinfo or DocBook documents.

3.1 An example of a musicological document

Some texts contain music examples. These texts are musicological treatises, songbooks, or manuals like this. Such texts can be made by hand, simply by importing a PostScript figure into the word processor. However, there is an automated procedure to reduce the amount of work involved in HTML, LaTeX, Texinfo and DocBook documents.

A script called lilypond-book will extract the music fragments, format them, and put back the resulting notation. Here we show a small example for use with LaTeX. The example also contains explanatory text, so we will not comment on it further.

Input

\documentclass[a4paper]{article}

\begin{document}

Documents for \verb+lilypond-book+ may freely mix music and text.
For example,

\begin{lilypond}
\relative {
  c'2 e2 \tuplet 3/2 { f8 a b } a2 e4
}
\end{lilypond}

Options are put in brackets.

\begin{lilypond}[fragment,quote,staffsize=26,verbatim]
  c'4 f16
\end{lilypond}

Larger examples can be put into a separate file, and introduced with
\verb+\lilypondfile+.

\lilypondfile[quote,noindent]{screech-and-boink.ly}

(If needed, replace @file{screech-and-boink.ly} by any @file{.ly} file
you put in the same directory as this file.)

\end{document}

Processing

Save the code above to a file called ‘lilybook.lytex’, then in a terminal run

lilypond-book --output=out --pdf lilybook.lytex
lilypond-book (GNU LilyPond) 2.21.0 
Reading lilybook.lytex...
…lots of stuff deleted…
Compiling lilybook.tex...
cd out
pdflatex lilybook
…lots of stuff deleted…
xpdf lilybook
(replace xpdf by your favorite PDF viewer)

Running lilypond-book and latex creates a lot of temporary files, which would clutter up the working directory. To remedy this, use the ‘--output=dir’ option. It will create the files in a separate subdirectory ‘dir’.

Finally the result of the LaTeX example shown above.³ This finishes the tutorial section.

Output

Documents for lilypond-book may freely mix music and text. For example,

Options are put in brackets.

c'4 f16

Larger examples can be put into a separate file, and introduced with \lilypondfile.

If a tagline is required, either default or custom, then the entire snippet must be enclosed in a \book { } construct.

\book{
  \header{
    title = "A scale in LilyPond"
  }

  \relative {
    c' d e f g a b c
  }
}

3.2 Integrating music and text

Here we explain how to integrate LilyPond with various output formats.

3.2.1 LaTeX

LaTeX is the de-facto standard for publishing layouts in the exact sciences. It is built on top of the TeX typesetting engine, providing the best typography available anywhere.

See The Not So Short Introduction to LaTeX for an overview on how to use LaTeX.

lilypond-book provides the following commands and environments to include music in LaTeX files:

• the \lilypond{…} command, where you can directly enter short lilypond code
• the \begin{lilypond}…\end{lilypond} environment, where you can directly enter longer lilypond code
• the \lilypondfile{…} command to insert a lilypond file
• the \musicxmlfile{…} command to insert a MusicXML file, which will be processed by musicxml2ly and lilypond.

In the input file, music is specified with any of the following commands:

\begin{lilypond}[options,go,here]
  YOUR LILYPOND CODE
\end{lilypond}

\lilypond[options,go,here]{ YOUR LILYPOND CODE }

\lilypondfile[options,go,here]{filename}

\musicxmlfile[options,go,here]{filename}

Additionally, \lilypondversion displays the current version of lilypond. Running lilypond-book yields a file that can be further processed with LaTeX.

We show some examples here. The lilypond environment

\begin{lilypond}[quote,fragment,staffsize=26]
  c' d' e' f' g'2 g'2
\end{lilypond}

produces

The short version

\lilypond[quote,fragment,staffsize=11]{<c' e' g'>}

produces

Currently, you cannot include { or } within \lilypond{}, so this command is only useful with the fragment option.

The default line width of the music will be adjusted by examining the commands in the document preamble, the part of the document before \begin{document}. The lilypond-book command sends these to LaTeX to find out how wide the text is. The line width for the music fragments is then adjusted to the text width. Note that this heuristic algorithm can fail easily; in such cases it is necessary to use the line-width music fragment option.

Each snippet will call the following macros if they have been defined by the user:

• \preLilyPondExample called before the music,
• \postLilyPondExample called after the music,
• \betweenLilyPondSystem[1] is called between systems if lilypond-book has split the snippet into several PostScript files. It must be defined as taking one parameter and will be passed the number of files already included in this snippet. The default is to simply insert a \linebreak.

Selected Snippets

Sometimes it is useful to display music elements (such as ties and slurs) as if they continued after the end of the fragment. This can be done by breaking the staff and suppressing inclusion of the rest of the LilyPond output.

In LaTeX, define \betweenLilyPondSystem in such a way that inclusion of other systems is terminated once the required number of systems are included. Since \betweenLilyPondSystem is first called after the first system, including only the first system is trivial.

\def\betweenLilyPondSystem#1{\endinput}

\begin{lilypond}[fragment]
  c'1\( e'( c'~ \break c' d) e f\)
\end{lilypond}

If a greater number of systems is requested, a TeX conditional must be used before the \endinput. In this example, replace ‘2’ by the number of systems you want in the output.

\def\betweenLilyPondSystem#1{
    \ifnum#1<2\else\expandafter\endinput\fi
}

(Since \endinput immediately stops the processing of the current input file we need \expandafter to delay the call of \endinput after executing \fi so that the \if-\fi clause is balanced.)

Remember that the definition of \betweenLilyPondSystem is effective until TeX quits the current group (such as the LaTeX environment) or is overridden by another definition (which is, in most cases, for the rest of the document). To reset your definition, write

\let\betweenLilyPondSystem\undefined

in your LaTeX source.

This may be simplified by defining a TeX macro

\def\onlyFirstNSystems#1{
    \def\betweenLilyPondSystem##1{%
      \ifnum##1<#1\else\expandafter\endinput\fi}
}

and then saying only how many systems you want before each fragment,

\onlyFirstNSystems{3}
\begin{lilypond}…\end{lilypond}
\onlyFirstNSystems{1}
\begin{lilypond}…\end{lilypond}

See also

There are specific lilypond-book command line options and other details to know when processing LaTeX documents, see Invoking lilypond-book.

3.2.2 Texinfo

Texinfo is the standard format for documentation of the GNU project. An example of a Texinfo document is this manual. The HTML, PDF, and Info versions of the manual are made from the Texinfo document.

lilypond-book provides the following commands and environments to include music into Texinfo files:

• the @lilypond{…} command, where you can directly enter short lilypond code
• the @lilypond…@end lilypond environment, where you can directly enter longer lilypond code
• the @lilypondfile{…} command to insert a lilypond file
• the @musicxmlfile{…} command to insert a MusicXML file, which will be processed by musicxml2ly and lilypond.

In the input file, music is specified with any of the following commands

@lilypond[options,go,here]
  YOUR LILYPOND CODE
@end lilypond

@lilypond[options,go,here]{ YOUR LILYPOND CODE }

@lilypondfile[options,go,here]{filename}

@musicxmlfile[options,go,here]{filename}

Additionally, @lilypondversion displays the current version of lilypond.

When lilypond-book is run on it, this results in a Texinfo file (with extension ‘.texi’) containing @image tags for HTML, Info and printed output. lilypond-book generates images of the music in EPS and PDF formats for use in the printed output, and in PNG format for use in HTML and Info output.

We show two simple examples here. A lilypond environment

@lilypond[fragment]
c' d' e' f' g'2 g'
@end lilypond

produces

The short version

@lilypond[fragment,staffsize=11]{<c' e' g'>}

produces

Contrary to LaTeX, @lilypond{…} does not generate an in-line image. It always gets a paragraph of its own.

3.2.3 HTML

lilypond-book provides the following commands and environments to include music in HTML files:

• the <lilypond … /> command, where you can directly enter short lilypond code
• the <lilyond>…</lilypond> environment, where you can directly enter longer lilypond code
• the <lilypondfile>…</lilypondfile> command to insert a lilypond file
• the <musicxmlfile>…</musicxmlfile> command to insert a MusicXML file, which will be processed by musicxml2ly and lilypond.

In the input file, music is specified with any of the following commands:

<lilypond options go here>
  YOUR LILYPOND CODE
</lilypond>

<lilypond options go here: YOUR LILYPOND CODE />

<lilypondfile options go here>filename</lilypondfile>

<musicxmlfile options go here>filename</musicxmlfile>

For example, you can write

<lilypond fragment relative=2>
\key c \minor c4 es g2
</lilypond>

lilypond-book then produces an HTML file with appropriate image tags for the music fragments:

For inline pictures, use <lilypond … />, where the options are separated by a colon from the music, for example

Some music in <lilypond relative=2: a b c/> a line of text.

To include separate files, say

<lilypondfile option1 option2 …>filename</lilypondfile>

<musicxmlfile> uses the same syntax as <lilypondfile>, but simply references a MusicXML file rather than a LilyPond file.

For a list of options to use with the lilypond or lilypondfile tags, see Music fragment options.

Additionally, <lilypondversion/> displays the current version of lilypond.

3.2.4 DocBook

For inserting LilyPond snippets it is good to keep the conformity of our DocBook document, thus allowing us to use DocBook editors, validation etc. So we don’t use custom tags, only specify a convention based on the standard DocBook elements.

Common conventions

For inserting all type of snippets we use the mediaobject and inlinemediaobject element, so our snippets can be formatted inline or not inline. The snippet formatting options are always provided in the role property of the innermost element (see in next sections). Tags are chosen to allow DocBook editors format the content gracefully. The DocBook files to be processed with lilypond-book should have the extension ‘.lyxml’.

Including a LilyPond file

This is the most simple case. We must use the ‘.ly’ extension for the included file, and insert it as a standard imageobject, with the following structure:

<mediaobject>
  <imageobject>
    <imagedata fileref="music1.ly" role="printfilename" />
  </imageobject>
</mediaobject>

Note that you can use mediaobject or inlinemediaobject as the outermost element as you wish.

Including LilyPond code

Including LilyPond code is possible by using a programlisting, where the language is set to lilypond with the following structure:

<inlinemediaobject>
  <textobject>
    <programlisting language="lilypond" role="fragment verbatim staffsize=16 ragged-right relative=2">
\context Staff \with {
  \remove "Time_signature_engraver"
  \remove "Clef_engraver"}
  { c4( fis) }
    </programlisting>
  </textobject>
</inlinemediaobject>

As you can see, the outermost element is a mediaobject or inlinemediaobject, and there is a textobject containing the programlisting inside.

Processing the DocBook document

Running lilypond-book on our ‘.lyxml’ file will create a valid DocBook document to be further processed with ‘.xml’ extension. If you use dblatex, it will create a PDF file from this document automatically. For HTML (HTML Help, JavaHelp etc.) generation you can use the official DocBook XSL stylesheets, however, it is possible that you have to make some customization for it.

3.3 Music fragment options

In the following, a ‘LilyPond command’ refers to any command described in the previous sections which is handled by lilypond-book to produce a music snippet. For simplicity, LilyPond commands are only shown in LaTeX syntax.

Note that the option string is parsed from left to right; if an option occurs multiple times, the last one is taken.

The following options are available for LilyPond commands:

staffsize=ht

Set staff size to ht, which is measured in points.

ragged-right

Produce ragged-right lines with natural spacing, i.e., ragged-right = ##t is added to the LilyPond snippet. Single-line snippets will always be typeset by default as ragged-right, unless noragged-right is explicitly given.

noragged-right

For single-line snippets, allow the staff length to be stretched to equal that of the line width, i.e., ragged-right = ##f is added to the LilyPond snippet.

line-width

line-width=size\unit

Set line width to size, using unit as units. unit is one of the following strings: cm, mm, in, or pt. This option affects LilyPond output (this is, the staff length of the music snippet), not the text layout.

If used without an argument, set line width to a default value (as computed with a heuristic algorithm).

If no line-width option is given, lilypond-book tries to guess a default for lilypond environments which don’t use the ragged-right option.

papersize=string

Where string is a paper size defined in ‘scm/paper.scm’ i.e. a5, quarto, 11x17 etc.

Values not defined in ‘scm/paper.scm’ will be ignored, a warning will be posted and the snippet will be printed using the default a4 size.

notime

Do not print the time signature, and turns off the timing (time signature, bar lines) in the score.

fragment

Make lilypond-book add some boilerplate code so that you can simply enter, say,

c'4

without \layout, \score, etc.

nofragment

Do not add additional code to complete LilyPond code in music snippets. Since this is the default, nofragment is redundant normally.

indent=size\unit

Set indentation of the first music system to size, using unit as units. unit is one of the following strings: cm, mm, in, or pt. This option affects LilyPond, not the text layout.

noindent

Set indentation of the first music system to zero. This option affects LilyPond, not the text layout. Since no indentation is the default, noindent is redundant normally.

quote

Reduce line length of a music snippet by 2*0.4in and put the output into a quotation block. The value ‘0.4in’ can be controlled with the exampleindent option.

exampleindent

Set the amount by which the quote option indents a music snippet.

relative

relative=n

Use relative octave mode. By default, notes are specified relative to middle C. The optional integer argument specifies the octave of the starting note, where the default 1 is middle C. relative option only works when fragment option is set, so fragment is automatically implied by relative, regardless of the presence of any (no)fragment option in the source.

LilyPond also uses lilypond-book to produce its own documentation. To do that, some more obscure music fragment options are available.

verbatim

The argument of a LilyPond command is copied to the output file and enclosed in a verbatim block, followed by any text given with the intertext option (not implemented yet); then the actual music is displayed. This option does not work well with \lilypond{} if it is part of a paragraph.

If verbatim is used in a lilypondfile command, it is possible to enclose verbatim only a part of the source file. If the source file contain a comment containing ‘begin verbatim’ (without quotes), quoting the source in the verbatim block will start after the last occurrence of such a comment; similarly, quoting the source verbatim will stop just before the first occurrence of a comment containing ‘end verbatim’, if there is any. In the following source file example, the music will be interpreted in relative mode, but the verbatim quote will not show the relative block, i.e.

\relative { % begin verbatim
  c'4 e2 g4
  f2 e % end verbatim
}

will be printed with a verbatim block like

  c4 e2 g4
  f2 e

If you would like to translate comments and variable names in verbatim output but not in the sources, you may set the environment variable LYDOC_LOCALEDIR to a directory path; the directory should contain a tree of ‘.mo’ message catalogs with lilypond-doc as a domain.

addversion

(Only for Texinfo output.) Prepend line \version @w{"@version{}"} to verbatim output.

texidoc

(Only for Texinfo output.) If lilypond is called with the ‘--header=texidoc’ option, and the file to be processed is called ‘foo.ly’, it creates a file ‘foo.texidoc’ if there is a texidoc field in the \header. The texidoc option makes lilypond-book include such files, adding its contents as a documentation block right before the music snippet (but outside the example environment generated by a quote option).

Assuming the file ‘foo.ly’ contains

\header {
  texidoc = "This file demonstrates a single note."
}
{ c'4 }

and we have this in our Texinfo document ‘test.texinfo’

@lilypondfile[texidoc]{foo.ly}

the following command line gives the expected result

lilypond-book --pdf --process="lilypond \
  -dbackend=eps --header=texidoc" test.texinfo

Most LilyPond test documents (in the ‘input’ directory of the distribution) are small ‘.ly’ files which look exactly like this.

For localization purpose, if the Texinfo document contains @documentlanguage LANG and ‘foo.ly’ header contains a texidocLANG field, and if lilypond is called with ‘--header=texidocLANG’, then ‘foo.texidocLANG’ will be included instead of ‘foo.texidoc’.

doctitle

(Only for Texinfo output.) This option works similarly to texidoc option: if lilypond is called with the ‘--header=doctitle’ option, and the file to be processed is called ‘foo.ly’ and contains a doctitle field in the \header, it creates a file ‘foo.doctitle’. When doctitle option is used, the contents of ‘foo.doctitle’, which should be a single line of text, is inserted in the Texinfo document as @lydoctitle text. @lydoctitle should be a macro defined in the Texinfo document. The same remark about texidoc processing with localized languages also applies to doctitle.

nogettext

(Only for Texinfo output.) Do not translate comments and variable names in the snippet quoted verbatim.

printfilename

If a LilyPond input file is included with \lilypondfile, print the file name right before the music snippet. For HTML output, this is a link. Only the base name of the file is printed, i.e. the directory part of the file path is stripped.

3.4 Invoking lilypond-book

lilypond-book produces a file with one of the following extensions: ‘.tex’, ‘.texi’, ‘.html’ or ‘.xml’, depending on the output format. All of ‘.tex’, ‘.texi’ and ‘.xml’ files need further processing.

Format-specific instructions

LaTeX

There are two ways of processing your LaTeX document for printing or publishing: getting a PDF file directly with PDFLaTeX, or getting a PostScript file with LaTeX via a DVI to PostScript translator like dvips. The first way is simpler and recommended⁴, and whichever way you use, you can easily convert between PostScript and PDF with tools, like ps2pdf and pdf2ps included in Ghostscript package.

To produce a PDF file through PDFLaTeX, use:

lilypond-book --pdf yourfile.lytex
pdflatex yourfile.tex

To produce PDF output via LaTeX/dvips/ps2pdf:

lilypond-book yourfile.lytex
latex yourfile.tex
dvips -Ppdf yourfile.dvi
ps2pdf yourfile.ps

The ‘.dvi’ file created by this process will not contain note heads. This is normal; if you follow the instructions, they will be included in the ‘.ps’ and ‘.pdf’ files.

Running dvips may produce some warnings about fonts; these are harmless and may be ignored. If you are running latex in twocolumn mode, remember to add ‘-t landscape’ to the dvips options.

Environments such as;

\begin{lilypond} … \end{lilypond}

are not interpreted by LaTeX. Instead, lilypond-book extracts those ‘environments’ into files of its own and runs LilyPond on them. It then takes the resulting graphics and creates a ‘.tex’ file where the \begin{lilypond}…\end{lilypond} macros are then replaced by ‘graphics inclusion’ commands. It is at this time that LaTeX is run (although LaTeX will have run previously, it will have been, effectively, on an ‘empty’ document in order to calculate things like \linewidth).

Known issues and warnings

The \pageBreak command will not work within a \begin{lilypond} … \end{lilypond} environment.

Many \paper block variables will also not work within a \begin{lilypond} … \end{lilypond} environment. Use \newcommand with \betweenLilyPondSystem in the preamble;

\newcommand{\betweenLilyPondSystem}[1]{\vspace{36mm}\linebreak}

Texinfo

To produce a Texinfo document (in any output format), follow the normal procedures for Texinfo; this is, either call texi2pdf or texi2dvi or makeinfo, depending on the output format you want to create. See the documentation of Texinfo for further details.

Command line options

lilypond-book accepts the following command line options:

-f format

--format=format

Specify the document type to process: html, latex, texi (the default) or docbook. If this option is missing, lilypond-book tries to detect the format automatically, see Filename extensions. Currently, texi is the same as texi-html.

-F filter

--filter=filter

Pipe snippets through filter. lilypond-book will not –filter and –process at the same time. For example,

lilypond-book --filter='convert-ly --from=2.0.0 -' my-book.tely

-h

--help

Print a short help message.

-I dir

--include=dir

Add dir to the include path. lilypond-book also looks for already compiled snippets in the include path, and does not write them back to the output directory, so in some cases it is necessary to invoke further processing commands such as makeinfo or latex with the same ‘-I dir’ options.

-l loglevel

--loglevel=loglevel

Set the output verbosity to loglevel. Possible values are NONE, ERROR, WARNING, PROGRESS (default) and DEBUG. If this option is not used, and the environment variable LILYPOND_BOOK_LOGLEVEL is set, its value is used as the loglevel.

-o dir

--output=dir

Place generated files in directory dir. Running lilypond-book generates lots of small files that LilyPond will process. To avoid all that garbage in the source directory, use the ‘--output’ command line option, and change to that directory before running latex or makeinfo.

lilypond-book --output=out yourfile.lytex
cd out
…

--skip-lily-check

Do not fail if no lilypond output is found. It is used for LilyPond Info documentation without images.

--skip-png-check

Do not fail if no PNG images are found for EPS files. It is used for LilyPond Info documentation without images.

--lily-output-dir=dir

Write lily-XXX files to directory dir, link into ‘--output’ directory. Use this option to save building time for documents in different directories which share a lot of identical snippets.

--lily-loglevel=loglevel

Set the output verbosity of the invoked lilypond calls to loglevel. Possible values are NONE, ERROR, WARNING, BASIC_PROGRESS, PROGRESS, INFO (default) and DEBUG. If this option is not used, and the environment variable LILYPOND_LOGLEVEL is set, its value is used as the loglevel.

--info-images-dir=dir

Format Texinfo output so that Info will look for images of music in dir.

--latex-program=prog

Run executable prog instead of latex. This is useful if your document is processed with xelatex, for example.

--left-padding=amount

Pad EPS boxes by this much. amount is measured in millimeters, and is 3.0 by default. This option should be used if the lines of music stick out of the right margin.

The width of a tightly clipped system can vary, due to notation elements that stick into the left margin, such as bar numbers and instrument names. This option will shorten each line and move each line to the right by the same amount.

-P command

--process=command

Process LilyPond snippets using command. The default command is lilypond. lilypond-book will not ‘--filter’ and ‘--process’ at the same time.

--pdf

Create PDF files for use with PDFLaTeX.

--redirect-lilypond-output

By default, output is displayed on the terminal. This option redirects all output to log files in the same directory as the source files.

--use-source-file-names

Write snippet output files with the same base name as their source file. This option works only for snippets included with lilypondfile and only if directories implied by ‘--output-dir’ and ‘--lily-output-dir’ options are different.

-V

--verbose

Be verbose. This is equivalent to --loglevel=DEBUG.

-v

--version

Print version information.

Known issues and warnings

The Texinfo command @pagesizes is not interpreted. Similarly, LaTeX commands that change margins and line widths after the preamble are ignored.

Only the first \score of a LilyPond block is processed.

3.5 Filename extensions

You can use any filename extension for the input file, but if you do not use the recommended extension for a particular format you may need to manually specify the output format; for details, see Invoking lilypond-book. Otherwise, lilypond-book automatically selects the output format based on the input filename’s extension.

extension	output format
‘.html’	HTML
‘.htmly’	HTML
‘.itely’	Texinfo
‘.latex’	LaTeX
‘.lytex’	LaTeX
‘.lyxml’	DocBook
‘.tely’	Texinfo
‘.tex’	LaTeX
‘.texi’	Texinfo
‘.texinfo’	Texinfo
‘.xml’	HTML

If you use the same filename extension for the input file than the extension lilypond-book uses for the output file, and if the input file is in the same directory as lilypond-book working directory, you must use ‘--output’ option to make lilypond-book running, otherwise it will exit with an error message like “Output would overwrite input file”.

3.6 lilypond-book templates

These templates are for use with lilypond-book. If you’re not familiar with this program, please refer to Running lilypond-book.

3.6.1 LaTeX

You can include LilyPond fragments in a LaTeX document.

\documentclass[]{article}

\begin{document}

Normal LaTeX text.

\begin{lilypond}
\relative {
  a'4 b c d
}
\end{lilypond}

More LaTeX text, and options in square brackets.

\begin{lilypond}[fragment,relative=2,quote,staffsize=26,verbatim]
d4 c b a
\end{lilypond}
\end{document}

3.6.2 Texinfo

You can include LilyPond fragments in Texinfo; in fact, this entire manual is written in Texinfo.

\input texinfo @node Top
@top

Texinfo text

@lilypond
\relative {
  a4 b c d
}
@end lilypond

More Texinfo text, and options in brackets.

@lilypond[verbatim,fragment,ragged-right]
d4 c b a
@end lilypond

@bye

3.6.3 html

<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN">
<!-- header_tag -->
<HTML>
<body>

<p>
Documents for lilypond-book may freely mix music and text.  For
example,
<lilypond>
\relative {
  a'4 b c d
}
</lilypond>
</p>

<p>
Another bit of lilypond, this time with options:

<lilypond fragment quote staffsize=26 verbatim>
a4 b c d
</lilypond>
</p>

</body>
</html>

3.6.4 xelatex

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{ifxetex}
\ifxetex
%xetex specific stuff
\usepackage{xunicode,fontspec,xltxtra}
\setmainfont[Numbers=OldStyle]{Times New Roman}
\setsansfont{Arial}
\else
%This can be empty if you are not going to use pdftex
\usepackage[T1]{fontenc}
\usepackage[utf8]{inputenc}
\usepackage{mathptmx}%Times
\usepackage{helvet}%Helvetica
\fi
%Here you can insert all packages that pdftex also understands
\usepackage[ngerman,finnish,english]{babel}
\usepackage{graphicx}

\begin{document}
\title{A short document with LilyPond and xelatex}
\maketitle

Normal \textbf{font} commands inside the \emph{text} work,
because they \textsf{are supported by \LaTeX{} and XeteX.}
If you want to use specific commands like \verb+\XeTeX+, you
should include them again in a \verb+\ifxetex+ environment.
You can use this to print the \ifxetex \XeTeX{} command \else
XeTeX command \fi which is not known to normal \LaTeX .

In normal text you can easily use LilyPond commands, like this:

\begin{lilypond}
{a2 b c'8 c' c' c'}
\end{lilypond}

\noindent
and so on.

The fonts of snippets set with LilyPond will have to be set from
inside
of the snippet.  For this you should read the AU on how to use
lilypond-book.

\selectlanguage{ngerman}
Auch Umlaute funktionieren ohne die \LaTeX -Befehle, wie auch alle
anderen
seltsamen Zeichen: __ ______, wenn sie von der Schriftart
unterst__tzt werden.
\end{document}

3.7 Sharing the table of contents

These functions already exist in the OrchestralLily package:

http://repo.or.cz/w/orchestrallily.git

For greater flexibility in text handling, some users prefer to export the table of contents from lilypond and read it into LaTeX.

Exporting the ToC from LilyPond

This assumes that your score has multiple movements in the same lilypond output file.

#(define (oly:create-toc-file layout pages)
  (let* ((label-table (ly:output-def-lookup layout 'label-page-table)))
    (if (not (null? label-table))
      (let* ((format-line (lambda (toc-item)
             (let* ((label (car toc-item))
                    (text  (caddr toc-item))
                    (label-page (and (list? label-table)
                                     (assoc label label-table)))
                    (page (and label-page (cdr label-page))))
               (format #f "~a, section, 1, {~a}, ~a" page text label))))
             (formatted-toc-items (map format-line (toc-items)))
             (whole-string (string-join formatted-toc-items ",\n"))
             (output-name (ly:parser-output-name))
             (outfilename (format "~a.toc" output-name))
             (outfile (open-output-file outfilename)))
        (if (output-port? outfile)
            (display whole-string outfile)
            (ly:warning (_ "Unable to open output file ~a for the TOC information") outfilename))
        (close-output-port outfile)))))

\paper {
  #(define (page-post-process layout pages) (oly:create-toc-file layout pages))
}

Importing the ToC into LaTeX

In LaTeX, the header should include:

\usepackage{pdfpages}
\includescore{nameofthescore}

where \includescore is defined as:

%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
% \includescore{PossibleExtension}
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%

% Read in the TOC entries for a PDF file from the corresponding .toc file.
% This requires some heave latex tweaking, since reading in things from a file
% and inserting it into the arguments of a macro is not (easily) possible

% Solution by Patrick Fimml on #latex on April 18, 2009:
% \readfile{filename}{\variable}
% reads in the contents of the file into \variable (undefined if file
% doesn't exist)
\newread\readfile@f
\def\readfile@line#1{%
{\catcode`\^^M=10\global\read\readfile@f to \readfile@tmp}%
\edef\do{\noexpand\g@addto@macro{\noexpand#1}{\readfile@tmp}}\do%
\ifeof\readfile@f\else%
\readfile@line{#1}%
\fi%
}
\def\readfile#1#2{%
\openin\readfile@f=#1 %
\ifeof\readfile@f%
\typeout{No TOC file #1 available!}%
\else%
\gdef#2{}%
\readfile@line{#2}%
\fi
\closein\readfile@f%
}%


\newcommand{\includescore}[1]{
\def\oly@fname{\oly@basename\@ifmtarg{#1}{}{_#1}}
\let\oly@addtotoc\undefined
\readfile{\oly@xxxxxxxxx}{\oly@addtotoc}
\ifx\oly@addtotoc\undefined
\includepdf[pages=-]{\oly@fname}
\else
\edef\includeit{\noexpand\includepdf[pages=-,addtotoc={\oly@addtotoc}]
{\oly@fname}}\includeit
\fi
}

3.8 Alternative methods of mixing text and music

Other means of mixing text and music (without lilypond-book) are discussed in LilyPond output in other programs.

4. External programs

LilyPond can interact with other programs in various ways.

4.1 Point and click

Point and click lets you find notes in the input by clicking on them in the PDF viewer. This makes it easier to find input that causes some error in the sheet music.

4.1.1 Configuring the system

When this functionality is active, LilyPond adds hyperlinks to PDF and SVG files. These hyperlinks are sent to a ‘URI helper’ or a web-browser, which opens a text-editor with the cursor in the right place.

To make this chain work, you should configure your PDF viewer to follow hyperlinks using the ‘lilypond-invoke-editor’ script supplied with LilyPond.

The program ‘lilypond-invoke-editor’ is a small helper program. It will invoke an editor for the special textedit URIs, and run a web browser for others. It tests the environment variable EDITOR for the following patterns,

emacs

this will invoke

emacsclient --no-wait +line:column file

gvim

this will invoke

gvim --remote +:line:normcolumn file

nedit

this will invoke

  nc -noask +line file'

The environment variable LYEDITOR is used to override this. It contains the command line to start the editor, where %(file)s, %(column)s, %(line)s is replaced with the file, column and line respectively. The setting

emacsclient --no-wait +%(line)s:%(column)s %(file)s

for LYEDITOR is equivalent to the standard emacsclient invocation.

Using Xpdf

For Xpdf on UNIX, the following should be present in ‘xpdfrc’. On UNIX, this file is found either in ‘/etc/xpdfrc’ or as ‘$HOME/.xpdfrc’.

urlCommand     "lilypond-invoke-editor %s"

If you are using Ubuntu, it is likely that the version of Xpdf installed with your system crashes on every PDF file: this state has been persisting for several years and is due to library mismatches. Your best bet is to install a current ‘xpdf’ package and the corresponding ‘libpoppler’ package from Debian instead. Once you have tested that this works, you might want to use

sudo apt-mark hold xpdf

in order to keep Ubuntu from overwriting it with the next ‘update’ of its crashing package.

Using GNOME 2

For using GNOME 2 (and PDF viewers integrated with it), the magic invocation for telling the system about the ‘textedit:’ URI is;

gconftool-2 -t string -s /desktop/gnome/url-handlers/textedit/command "lilypond-invoke-editor %s"
gconftool-2 -s /desktop/gnome/url-handlers/textedit/needs_terminal false -t bool
gconftool-2 -t bool -s /desktop/gnome/url-handlers/textedit/enabled true

After that invocation;

gnome-open textedit:///etc/issue:1:0:0

should call ‘lilypond-invoke-editor’ for opening files.

Using GNOME 3

In GNOME 3, URIs are handled by the ‘gvfs’ layer rather than by ‘gconf’. Create a file in a local directory such as ‘/tmp’ that is called ‘lilypond-invoke-editor.desktop’ and has the contents;

[Desktop Entry]
Version=1.0
Name=lilypond-invoke-editor
GenericName=Textedit URI handler
Comment=URI handler for textedit:
Exec=lilypond-invoke-editor %u
Terminal=false
Type=Application
MimeType=x-scheme-handler/textedit;
Categories=Editor
NoDisplay=true

and then execute the commands

xdg-desktop-menu install ./lilypond-invoke-editor.desktop
xdg-mime default lilypond-invoke-editor.desktop x-scheme-handler/textedit

After that invocation;

gnome-open textedit:///etc/issue:1:0:0

should call ‘lilypond-invoke-editor’ for opening files.

Extra configuration for Evince

If gnome-open works, but Evince still refuses to open point and click links due to denied permissions, you might need to change the Apparmor profile of Evince which controls the kind of actions Evince is allowed to perform.

For Ubuntu, the process is to edit the file ‘/etc/apparmor.d/local/usr.bin.evince’ and append the following lines:

# For Textedit links
/usr/local/bin/lilypond-invoke-editor Cx -> sanitized_helper,

After adding these lines, call

sudo apparmor_parser -r -T -W /etc/apparmor.d/usr.bin.evince

Now Evince should be able to open point and click links. It is likely that similar configurations will work for other viewers.

Enabling point and click

Point and click functionality is enabled by default when creating PDF or SVG files.

The point and click links enlarge the output files significantly. For reducing the size of these (and PS) files, point and click may be switched off by issuing

\pointAndClickOff

in a ‘.ly’ file. Point and click may be explicitly enabled with

\pointAndClickOn

Alternately, you may disable point and click with a command-line option:

lilypond -dno-point-and-click file.ly

Selective point-and-click

For some interactive applications, it may be desirable to only include certain point-and-click items. For example, if somebody wanted to create an application which played audio or video starting from a particular note, it would be awkward if clicking on the note produced the point-and-click location for an accidental or slur which occurred over that note.

This may be controlled by indicating which events to include:

• Hard-coded in the ‘.ly’ file:

  \pointAndClickTypes #'note-event
  \relative {
    c'2\f( f)
  }
  

  or

  #(ly:set-option 'point-and-click 'note-event)
  \relative {
    c'2\f( f)
  }
  

• Command-line:

  lilypond -dpoint-and-click=note-event   example.ly
  

Multiple events can be included:

• Hard-coded in the ‘.ly’ file:

  \pointAndClickTypes #'(note-event dynamic-event)
  \relative {
    c'2\f( f)
  }
  

  or

  #(ly:set-option 'point-and-click '(note-event dynamic-event))
  \relative {
    c'2\f( f)
  }
  

• Command-line:

  lilypond \ -e"(ly:set-option 'point-and-click '(note-event dynamic-event))" \ example.ly

4.2 Text editor support

There is support for different text editors for LilyPond.

Emacs mode

Emacs has a ‘lilypond-mode’, which provides keyword autocompletion, indentation, LilyPond specific parenthesis matching and syntax coloring, handy compile short-cuts and reading LilyPond manuals using Info. If ‘lilypond-mode’ is not installed on your platform, see below.

An Emacs mode for entering music and running LilyPond is contained in the source archive in the ‘elisp’ directory. Do make install to install it to elispdir. The file ‘lilypond-init.el’ should be placed to load-path‘/site-start.d/’ or appended to your ‘~/.emacs’ or ‘~/.emacs.el’.

As a user, you may want add your source path (e.g. ‘~/site-lisp/’) to your load-path by appending the following line (as modified) to your ‘~/.emacs’

(setq load-path (append (list (expand-file-name "~/site-lisp")) load-path))

Vim mode

For Vim, a filetype plugin, indent mode, and syntax-highlighting mode are available to use with LilyPond. To enable all of these features, create (or modify) your ‘$HOME/.vimrc’ to contain these three lines, in order:

filetype off
set runtimepath+=/usr/local/share/lilypond/current/vim/
filetype on
syntax on

If LilyPond is not installed in the ‘/usr/local/’ directory, change the path appropriately. This topic is discussed in Other sources of information.

Other editors

Other editors (both text and graphical) support LilyPond, but their special configuration files are not distributed with LilyPond. Consult their documentation for more information. Such editors are listed in Easier editing.

4.3 Converting from other formats

Music can be entered also by importing it from other formats. This chapter documents the tools included in the distribution to do so. There are other tools that produce LilyPond input, for example GUI sequencers and XML converters. Refer to the website for more details.

These are separate programs from lilypond itself, and are run on the command line; see Command-line usage for more information. If you have MacOS 10.3 or 10.4 and you have trouble running some of these scripts, e.g. convert-ly, see MacOS X.

Known issues and warnings

We unfortunately do not have the resources to maintain these programs; please consider them “as-is”. Patches are appreciated, but bug reports will almost certainly not be resolved.

4.3.1 Invoking midi2ly

midi2ly translates a Type 1 MIDI file to a LilyPond source file.

MIDI (Music Instrument Digital Interface) is a standard for digital instruments: it specifies cabling, a serial protocol and a file format. The MIDI file format is a de facto standard format for exporting music from other programs, so this capability may come in useful when importing files from a program that has a converter for a direct format.

midi2ly converts tracks into Staff and channels into Voice contexts. Relative mode is used for pitches, durations are only written when necessary.

It is possible to record a MIDI file using a digital keyboard, and then convert it to ‘.ly’. However, human players are not rhythmically exact enough to make a MIDI to LY conversion trivial. When invoked with quantizing (‘-s’ and ‘-d’ options) midi2ly tries to compensate for these timing errors, but is not very good at this. It is therefore not recommended to use midi2ly for human-generated midi files.

It is invoked from the command-line as follows,

midi2ly [option]… midi-file

Note that by ‘command-line’, we mean the command line of the operating system. See Converting from other formats, for more information about this.

The following options are supported by midi2ly.

-a, --absolute-pitches

Print absolute pitches.

-d, --duration-quant=DUR

Quantize note durations on DUR.

-e, --explicit-durations

Print explicit durations.

-h, --help

Show summary of usage.

-k, --key=acc[:minor]

Set default key. acc > 0 sets number of sharps; acc < 0 sets number of flats. A minor key is indicated by :1.

-o, --output=file

Write output to file.

-s, --start-quant=DUR

Quantize note starts on DUR.

-t, --allow-tuplet=DUR*NUM/DEN

Allow tuplet durations DUR*NUM/DEN.

-v, --verbose

Be verbose.

-V, --version

Print version number.

-w, --warranty

Show warranty and copyright.

-x, --text-lyrics

Treat every text as a lyric.

Known issues and warnings

Overlapping notes in an arpeggio will not be correctly rendered. The first note will be read and the others will be ignored. Set them all to a single duration and add phrase markings or pedal indicators.

4.3.2 Invoking musicxml2ly

MusicXML is an XML dialect for representing music notation.

musicxml2ly extracts the notes, articulations, score structure, lyrics, etc. from part-wise MusicXML files, and writes them to a ‘.ly’ file and is invoked from the command-line as follows;

musicxml2ly [option]… xml-file

Note that by ‘command-line’, we mean the command line of the operating system. See Converting from other formats, for more information about this.

If the given filename is ‘-’, musicxml2ly reads input from the command line.

The following options are supported by musicxml2ly:

-a, --absolute

convert pitches in absolute mode.

-h, --help

print usage and option summary.

-l, --language=LANG

use LANG for pitch names, e.g. ’deutsch’ for note names in German.

--loglevel=loglevel

Set the output verbosity to loglevel. Possible values are NONE, ERROR, WARNING, PROGRESS (default) and DEBUG.

--lxml

use the lxml.etree Python package for XML-parsing; uses less memory and cpu time.

-m, --midi

activate midi-block.

-nd, --no-articulation-directions

do not convert directions (^, _ or -) for articulations, dynamics, etc.

--no-beaming

do not convert beaming information, use LilyPond’s automatic beaming instead.

-o, --output=file

set output filename to file. If file is ‘-’, the output will be printed on stdout. If not given, xml-file‘.ly’ will be used.

-r, --relative

convert pitches in relative mode (default).

-v, --verbose

be verbose.

--version

print version information.

-z, --compressed

input file is a zip-compressed MusicXML file.

4.3.3 Invoking abc2ly

ABC is a fairly simple ASCII based format. It is described at the ABC site:

http://www.walshaw.plus.com/abc/learn.html.

abc2ly translates from ABC to LilyPond. It is invoked as follows:

abc2ly [option]… abc-file

The following options are supported by abc2ly:

-b, --beams=None

preserve ABC’s notion of beams

-h, --help

this help

-o, --output=file

set output filename to file.

-s, --strict

be strict about success

--version

print version information.

There is a rudimentary facility for adding LilyPond code to the ABC source file. For example;

%%LY voices \set autoBeaming = ##f

This will cause the text following the keyword ‘voices’ to be inserted into the current voice of the LilyPond output file.

Similarly,

%%LY slyrics more words

will cause the text following the ‘slyrics’ keyword to be inserted into the current line of lyrics.

Known issues and warnings

The ABC standard is not very ‘standard’. For extended features (e.g., polyphonic music) different conventions exist.

Multiple tunes in one file cannot be converted.

ABC synchronizes words and notes at the beginning of a line; abc2ly does not.

abc2ly ignores the ABC beaming.

4.3.4 Invoking etf2ly

ETF (Enigma Transport Format) is a format used by Coda Music Technology’s Finale product. etf2ly will convert part of an ETF file to a ready-to-use LilyPond file.

It is invoked from the command-line as follows;

etf2ly [option]… etf-file

Note that by ‘command-line’, we mean the command line of the operating system. See Converting from other formats, for more information about this.

The following options are supported by etf2ly:

-h, --help

this help

-o, --output=FILE

set output filename to FILE

--version

version information

Known issues and warnings

The list of articulation scripts is incomplete. Empty measures confuse etf2ly. Sequences of grace notes are ended improperly.

4.3.5 Other formats

LilyPond itself does not come with support for any other formats, but some external tools can also generate LilyPond files. These are listed in Easier editing.

4.4 LilyPond output in other programs

This section shows methods to integrate text and music, different than the automated method with lilypond-book.

4.4.1 LuaTex

As well as lilypond-book to integrate LilyPond output, there is an alternative program that can be used when using LuaTex called lyluatex.

4.4.2 OpenOffice and LibreOffice

LilyPond notation can be added to OpenOffice.org and LibreOffice with OOoLilyPond, an OpenOffice.org extension that converts LilyPond files into images within OpenOffice.org documents. Although this is no longer being developed, it appears to still work with version 4.

4.4.3 Other programs

Other programs that can handle ‘PNG’, ‘EPS’, or ‘PDF’ formats should use lilypond instead of lilypond-book. Each LilyPond output file must be created and inserted separately. Consult the program’s own documentation on how to insert files from other sources.

To help reduce the white space around your LilyPond score, use the following options;

\paper{
  indent=0\mm
  line-width=120\mm
  oddFooterMarkup=##f
  oddHeaderMarkup=##f
  bookTitleMarkup = ##f
  scoreTitleMarkup = ##f
}

… music …

To produce ‘EPS’ images;

lilypond -dbackend=eps -dno-gs-load-fonts -dinclude-eps-fonts myfile.ly

To produce ‘PNG’ images;

lilypond -dbackend=eps -dno-gs-load-fonts -dinclude-eps-fonts --png myfile.ly

For transparent ‘PNG’ images

lilypond -dbackend=eps -dno-gs-load-fonts -dinclude-eps-fonts -dpixmap-format=pngalpha --png myfile.ly

If you need to quote many fragments from a large score, you can also use the clip systems feature, see Extracting fragments of music.

4.5 Independent includes

Some users have produced files that can be \included with LilyPond to produce certain effects and those listed below are part of the LilyPond distribution. Also see Working with input files.

4.5.1 MIDI articulation

The Articulate project is an attempt to enhance LilyPond’s MIDI output and works by adjusting note lengths (that are not under slurs) according to the articulation markings attached to them. For example, a ‘staccato’ halves the note value, ‘tenuto’ gives a note its full duration and so on. See Enhancing MIDI output.

5. Suggestions for writing files

Now you’re ready to begin writing larger LilyPond input files – not just the little examples in the tutorial, but whole pieces. But how should you go about doing it?

As long as LilyPond can understand your input files and produce the output that you want, it doesn’t matter what your input files look like. However, there are a few other things to consider when writing LilyPond input files.

• What if you make a mistake? The structure of a LilyPond file can make certain errors easier (or harder) to find.
• What if you want to share your input files with somebody else? In fact, what if you want to alter your own input files in a few years? Some LilyPond input files are understandable at first glance; others may leave you scratching your head for an hour.
• What if you want to upgrade your LilyPond file for use with a later version of LilyPond? The input syntax changes occasionally as LilyPond improves. Most changes can be done automatically with convert-ly, but some changes might require manual assistance. LilyPond input files can be structured in order to be easier (or harder) to update.

5.1 General suggestions

Here are a few suggestions that can help to avoid (and fix) the most common problems when typesetting:

• Always include a \version number in your input files no matter how small they are. This prevents having to remember which version of LilyPond the file was created with and is especially relevant when Updating files with convert-ly command (which requires the \version statement to be present); or if sending your input files to other users (e.g. when asking for help on the mail lists). Note that all of the LilyPond templates contain \version numbers.
• For each line in your input file, write one bar of music. This will make debugging any problems in your input files much simpler.
• Include Bar and bar number checks as well as Octave checks. Including ‘checks’ of this type in your input files will help pinpoint mistakes more quickly. How often checks are added will depend on the complexity of the music being typeset. For simple compositions, checks added at a few at strategic points within the music can be enough but for more complex music, with many voices and/or staves, checks may be better placed after every bar.
• Add comments within input files. References to musical themes (i.e. ‘second theme in violins’, ‘fourth variation,’ etc.), or simply including bar numbers as comments, will make navigating the input file much simpler especically if something needs to be altered later on or if passing on LilyPond input files to another person.
• Add explicit note durations at the start of ‘sections’. For example, c4 d e f instead of just c d e f can make rearranging the music later on simpler.
• Learn to indent and align braces and parallel music. Many problems are often caused by either ‘missing’ braces. Clearly indenting ‘opening’ and ‘closing’ braces (or << and >> indicators) will help avoid such problems. For example;

  \new Staff {
    \relative {
      r4 g'8 g c8 c4 d |
      e4 r8 |
      % Ossia section
      <<
        { f8 c c | }
        \new Staff {
          f8 f c |
        }
      >>
      r4 |
    }
  }
  

  is much easier to follow than;

  \new Staff { \relative { r4 g'8 g c4 c8 d | e4 r8
  % Ossia section
  << { f8 c c } \new Staff { f8 f c } >> r4 | } }
  

• Keep music and style separate by putting overrides in the \layout block;

  \score {
    …music…
    \layout {
     \override TabStaff.Stemstencil = ##f
   }
  }
  

  This will not create a new context but it will apply when one is created. Also see Saving typing with variables and functions, and Style sheets.

5.2 Typesetting existing music

If you are entering music from an existing score (i.e., typesetting a piece of existing sheet music),

• Enter the manuscript (the physical copy of the music) into LilyPond one system at a time (but still only one bar per line of text), and check each system when you finish it. You may use the showLastLength or showFirstLength properties to speed up processing – see Skipping corrected music.
• Define mBreak = { \break } and insert \mBreak in the input file whenever the manuscript has a line break. This makes it much easier to compare the LilyPond music to the original music. When you are finished proofreading your score, you may define mBreak = { } to remove all those line breaks. This will allow LilyPond to place line breaks wherever it feels are best.
• When entering a part for a transposing instrument into a variable, it is recommended that the notes are wrapped in

  \transpose c natural-pitch {…}
  

  (where natural-pitch is the open pitch of the instrument) so that the music in the variable is effectively in C. You can transpose it back again when the variable is used, if required, but you might not want to (e.g., when printing a score in concert pitch, converting a trombone part from treble to bass clef, etc.) Mistakes in transpositions are less likely if all the music in variables is at a consistent pitch.

  Also, only ever transpose to/from C. That means that the only other keys you will use are the natural pitches of the instruments - bes for a B-flat trumpet, aes for an A-flat clarinet, etc.

5.3 Large projects

When working on a large project, having a clear structure to your lilypond input files becomes vital.

• Use a variable for each voice, with a minimum of structure inside the definition. The structure of the \score section is the most likely thing to change; the violin definition is extremely unlikely to change in a new version of LilyPond.

  violin = \relative {
  g'4 c'8. e16
  }
  …
  \score {
    \new GrandStaff {
      \new Staff {
        \violin
      }
    }
  }
  

• Separate tweaks from music definitions. This point was made previously, but for large projects it is absolutely vital. We might need to change the definition of fthenp, but then we only need to do this once, and we can still avoid touching anything inside violin.

  fthenp = _\markup{
    \dynamic f \italic \small { 2nd } \hspace #0.1 \dynamic p }
  violin = \relative {
  g'4\fthenp c'8. e16
  }
  

5.4 Troubleshooting

Sooner or later, you will write a file that LilyPond cannot compile. The messages that LilyPond gives may help you find the error, but in many cases you need to do some investigation to determine the source of the problem.

The most powerful tools for this purpose are the single line comment (indicated by %) and the block comment (indicated by %{…%}). If you don’t know where a problem is, start commenting out huge portions of your input file. After you comment out a section, try compiling the file again. If it works, then the problem must exist in the portion you just commented. If it doesn’t work, then keep on commenting out material until you have something that works.

In an extreme case, you might end up with only

\score {
  <<
    % \melody
    % \harmony
    % \bass
  >>
  \layout{}
}

(in other words, a file without any music)

If that happens, don’t give up. Uncomment a bit – say, the bass part – and see if it works. If it doesn’t work, then comment out all of the bass music (but leave \bass in the \score uncommented.

bass = \relative {
%{
  c'4 c c c
  d d d d
%}
}

Now start slowly uncommenting more and more of the bass part until you find the problem line.

Another very useful debugging technique is constructing Tiny examples.

5.5 Make and Makefiles

Pretty well all the platforms LilyPond can run on support a software facility called make. This software reads a special file called a Makefile that defines what files depend on what others and what commands you need to give the operating system to produce one file from another. For example the makefile would spell out how to produce ‘ballad.pdf’ and ‘ballad.midi’ from ‘ballad.ly’ by running LilyPond.

There are times when it is a good idea to create a Makefile for your project, either for your own convenience or as a courtesy to others who might have access to your source files. This is true for very large projects with many included files and different output options (e.g. full score, parts, conductor’s score, piano reduction, etc.), or for projects that require difficult commands to build them (such as lilypond-book projects). Makefiles vary greatly in complexity and flexibility, according to the needs and skills of the authors. The program GNU Make comes installed on GNU/Linux distributions and on MacOS X, and it is also available for Windows.

See the GNU Make Manual for full details on using make, as what follows here gives only a glimpse of what it can do.

The commands to define rules in a makefile differ according to platform; for instance the various forms of GNU/Linux and MacOS use bash, while Windows uses cmd. Note that on MacOS X, you need to configure the system to use the command-line interpreter. Here are some example makefiles, with versions for both GNU/Linux/MacOS and Windows.

The first example is for an orchestral work in four movements with a directory structure as follows:

Symphony/
|-- MIDI/
|-- Makefile
|-- Notes/
|   |-- cello.ily
|   |-- figures.ily
|   |-- horn.ily
|   |-- oboe.ily
|   |-- trioString.ily
|   |-- viola.ily
|   |-- violinOne.ily
|   `-- violinTwo.ily
|-- PDF/
|-- Parts/
|   |-- symphony-cello.ly
|   |-- symphony-horn.ly
|   |-- symphony-oboes.ly
|   |-- symphony-viola.ly
|   |-- symphony-violinOne.ly
|   `-- symphony-violinTwo.ly
|-- Scores/
|   |-- symphony.ly
|   |-- symphonyI.ly
|   |-- symphonyII.ly
|   |-- symphonyIII.ly
|   `-- symphonyIV.ly
`-- symphonyDefs.ily

The ‘.ly’ files in the ‘Scores’ and ‘Parts’ directories get their notes from ‘.ily’ files in the ‘Notes’ directory:

%%% top of file "symphony-cello.ly"
\include ../symphonyDefs.ily
\include ../Notes/cello.ily

The makefile will have targets of score (entire piece in full score), movements (individual movements in full score), and parts (individual parts for performers). There is also a target archive that will create a tarball of the source files, suitable for sharing via web or email. Here is the makefile for GNU/Linux or MacOS X. It should be saved with the name Makefile in the top directory of the project:

# the name stem of the output files
piece = symphony
# determine how many processors are present
CPU_CORES=`cat /proc/cpuinfo | grep -m1 "cpu cores" | sed s/".*: "//`
# The command to run lilypond
LILY_CMD = lilypond -ddelete-intermediate-files \
                    -dno-point-and-click -djob-count=$(CPU_CORES)

# The suffixes used in this Makefile.
.SUFFIXES: .ly .ily .pdf .midi

# Input and output files are searched in the directories listed in
# the VPATH variable.  All of them are subdirectories of the current
# directory (given by the GNU make variable `CURDIR').
VPATH = \
  $(CURDIR)/Scores \
  $(CURDIR)/PDF \
  $(CURDIR)/Parts \
  $(CURDIR)/Notes

# The pattern rule to create PDF and MIDI files from a LY input file.
# The .pdf output files are put into the `PDF' subdirectory, and the
# .midi files go into the `MIDI' subdirectory.
%.pdf %.midi: %.ly
        $(LILY_CMD) $<; \           # this line begins with a tab
        if test -f "$*.pdf"; then \
            mv "$*.pdf" PDF/; \
        fi; \
        if test -f "$*.midi"; then \
            mv "$*.midi" MIDI/; \
        fi

notes = \
  cello.ily \
  horn.ily \
  oboe.ily \
  viola.ily \
  violinOne.ily \
  violinTwo.ily

# The dependencies of the movements.
$(piece)I.pdf: $(piece)I.ly $(notes)
$(piece)II.pdf: $(piece)II.ly $(notes)
$(piece)III.pdf: $(piece)III.ly $(notes)
$(piece)IV.pdf: $(piece)IV.ly $(notes)

# The dependencies of the full score.
$(piece).pdf: $(piece).ly $(notes)

# The dependencies of the parts.
$(piece)-cello.pdf: $(piece)-cello.ly cello.ily
$(piece)-horn.pdf: $(piece)-horn.ly horn.ily
$(piece)-oboes.pdf: $(piece)-oboes.ly oboe.ily
$(piece)-viola.pdf: $(piece)-viola.ly viola.ily
$(piece)-violinOne.pdf: $(piece)-violinOne.ly violinOne.ily
$(piece)-violinTwo.pdf: $(piece)-violinTwo.ly violinTwo.ily

# Type `make score' to generate the full score of all four
# movements as one file.
.PHONY: score
score: $(piece).pdf

# Type `make parts' to generate all parts.
# Type `make foo.pdf' to generate the part for instrument `foo'.
# Example: `make symphony-cello.pdf'.
.PHONY: parts
parts: $(piece)-cello.pdf \
       $(piece)-violinOne.pdf \
       $(piece)-violinTwo.pdf \
       $(piece)-viola.pdf \
       $(piece)-oboes.pdf \
       $(piece)-horn.pdf

# Type `make movements' to generate files for the
# four movements separately.
.PHONY: movements
movements: $(piece)I.pdf \
           $(piece)II.pdf \
           $(piece)III.pdf \
           $(piece)IV.pdf

all: score parts movements

archive:
        tar -cvvf stamitz.tar \       # this line begins with a tab
        --exclude=*pdf --exclude=*~ \
        --exclude=*midi --exclude=*.tar \
        ../Stamitz/*

There are special complications on the Windows platform. After downloading and installing GNU Make for Windows, you must set the correct path in the system’s environment variables so that the DOS shell can find the Make program. To do this, right-click on "My Computer," then choose Properties and Advanced. Click Environment Variables, and then in the System Variables pane, highlight Path, click edit, and add the path to the GNU Make executable file, which will look something like this:

C:\Program Files\GnuWin32\bin

The makefile itself has to be altered to handle different shell commands and to deal with spaces that are present in some default system directories. The archive target is eliminated since Windows does not have the tar command, and Windows also has a different default extension for midi files.

## WINDOWS VERSION
##
piece = symphony
LILY_CMD = lilypond -ddelete-intermediate-files \
                    -dno-point-and-click \
                    -djob-count=$(NUMBER_OF_PROCESSORS)

#get the 8.3 name of CURDIR (workaround for spaces in PATH)
workdir = $(shell for /f "tokens=*" %%b in ("$(CURDIR)") \
          do @echo %%~sb)

.SUFFIXES: .ly .ily .pdf .mid

VPATH = \
  $(workdir)/Scores \
  $(workdir)/PDF \
  $(workdir)/Parts \
  $(workdir)/Notes

%.pdf %.mid: %.ly
        $(LILY_CMD) $<      # this line begins with a tab
        if exist "$*.pdf"  move /Y "$*.pdf"  PDF/ # begin with tab
        if exist "$*.mid" move /Y "$*.mid" MIDI/  # begin with tab

notes = \
  cello.ily \
  figures.ily \
  horn.ily \
  oboe.ily \
  trioString.ily \
  viola.ily \
  violinOne.ily \
  violinTwo.ily

$(piece)I.pdf: $(piece)I.ly $(notes)
$(piece)II.pdf: $(piece)II.ly $(notes)
$(piece)III.pdf: $(piece)III.ly $(notes)
$(piece)IV.pdf: $(piece)IV.ly $(notes)

$(piece).pdf: $(piece).ly $(notes)

$(piece)-cello.pdf: $(piece)-cello.ly cello.ily
$(piece)-horn.pdf: $(piece)-horn.ly horn.ily
$(piece)-oboes.pdf: $(piece)-oboes.ly oboe.ily
$(piece)-viola.pdf: $(piece)-viola.ly viola.ily
$(piece)-violinOne.pdf: $(piece)-violinOne.ly violinOne.ily
$(piece)-violinTwo.pdf: $(piece)-violinTwo.ly violinTwo.ily

.PHONY: score
score: $(piece).pdf

.PHONY: parts
parts: $(piece)-cello.pdf \
       $(piece)-violinOne.pdf \
       $(piece)-violinTwo.pdf \
       $(piece)-viola.pdf \
       $(piece)-oboes.pdf \
       $(piece)-horn.pdf

.PHONY: movements
movements: $(piece)I.pdf \
           $(piece)II.pdf \
           $(piece)III.pdf \
           $(piece)IV.pdf

all: score parts movements

The next Makefile is for a lilypond-book document done in LaTeX. This project has an index, which requires that the latex command be run twice to update links. Output files are all stored in the out directory for .pdf output and in the htmlout directory for the html output.

SHELL=/bin/sh
FILE=myproject
OUTDIR=out
WEBDIR=htmlout
VIEWER=acroread
BROWSER=firefox
LILYBOOK_PDF=lilypond-book --output=$(OUTDIR) --pdf $(FILE).lytex
LILYBOOK_HTML=lilypond-book --output=$(WEBDIR) $(FILE).lytex
PDF=cd $(OUTDIR) && pdflatex $(FILE)
HTML=cd $(WEBDIR) && latex2html $(FILE)
INDEX=cd $(OUTDIR) && makeindex $(FILE)
PREVIEW=$(VIEWER) $(OUTDIR)/$(FILE).pdf &

all: pdf web keep

pdf:
        $(LILYBOOK_PDF)  # begin with tab
        $(PDF)           # begin with tab
        $(INDEX)         # begin with tab
        $(PDF)           # begin with tab
        $(PREVIEW)       # begin with tab

web:
        $(LILYBOOK_HTML) # begin with tab
        $(HTML)          # begin with tab
        cp -R $(WEBDIR)/$(FILE)/ ./  # begin with tab
        $(BROWSER) $(FILE)/$(FILE).html &  # begin with tab

keep: pdf
        cp $(OUTDIR)/$(FILE).pdf $(FILE).pdf  # begin with tab

clean:
        rm -rf $(OUTDIR) # begin with tab

web-clean:
        rm -rf $(WEBDIR) # begin with tab

archive:
        tar -cvvf myproject.tar \ # begin this line with tab
        --exclude=out/* \
        --exclude=htmlout/* \
        --exclude=myproject/* \
        --exclude=*midi \
        --exclude=*pdf \
        --exclude=*~ \
        ../MyProject/*

TODO: make this thing work on Windows

The previous makefile does not work on Windows. An alternative for Windows users would be to create a simple batch file containing the build commands. This will not keep track of dependencies the way a makefile does, but it at least reduces the build process to a single command. Save the following code as build.bat or build.cmd. The batch file can be run at the DOS prompt or by simply double-clicking its icon.

lilypond-book --output=out --pdf myproject.lytex
cd out
pdflatex myproject
makeindex myproject
pdflatex myproject
cd ..
copy out\myproject.pdf MyProject.pdf

See also

This manual: Command-line usage, Running lilypond-book

A. GNU Free Documentation License

Version 1.3, 3 November 2008

Copyright © 2000, 2001, 2002, 2007, 2008 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
http://fsf.org/

Everyone is permitted to copy and distribute verbatim copies
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8. AGGREGATION WITH INDEPENDENT WORKS

   A compilation of the Document or its derivatives with other separate and independent documents or works, in or on a volume of a storage or distribution medium, is called an “aggregate” if the copyright resulting from the compilation is not used to limit the legal rights of the compilation’s users beyond what the individual works permit. When the Document is included in an aggregate, this License does not apply to the other works in the aggregate which are not themselves derivative works of the Document.

   If the Cover Text requirement of section 3 is applicable to these copies of the Document, then if the Document is less than one half of the entire aggregate, the Document’s Cover Texts may be placed on covers that bracket the Document within the aggregate, or the electronic equivalent of covers if the Document is in electronic form. Otherwise they must appear on printed covers that bracket the whole aggregate.

9. TRANSLATION

   Translation is considered a kind of modification, so you may distribute translations of the Document under the terms of section 4. Replacing Invariant Sections with translations requires special permission from their copyright holders, but you may include translations of some or all Invariant Sections in addition to the original versions of these Invariant Sections. You may include a translation of this License, and all the license notices in the Document, and any Warranty Disclaimers, provided that you also include the original English version of this License and the original versions of those notices and disclaimers. In case of a disagreement between the translation and the original version of this License or a notice or disclaimer, the original version will prevail.

   If a section in the Document is Entitled “Acknowledgements”, “Dedications”, or “History”, the requirement (section 4) to Preserve its Title (section 1) will typically require changing the actual title.

10. TERMINATION

    You may not copy, modify, sublicense, or distribute the Document except as expressly provided under this License. Any attempt otherwise to copy, modify, sublicense, or distribute it is void, and will automatically terminate your rights under this License.

    However, if you cease all violation of this License, then your license from a particular copyright holder is reinstated (a) provisionally, unless and until the copyright holder explicitly and finally terminates your license, and (b) permanently, if the copyright holder fails to notify you of the violation by some reasonable means prior to 60 days after the cessation.

    Moreover, your license from a particular copyright holder is reinstated permanently if the copyright holder notifies you of the violation by some reasonable means, this is the first time you have received notice of violation of this License (for any work) from that copyright holder, and you cure the violation prior to 30 days after your receipt of the notice.

    Termination of your rights under this section does not terminate the licenses of parties who have received copies or rights from you under this License. If your rights have been terminated and not permanently reinstated, receipt of a copy of some or all of the same material does not give you any rights to use it.

11. FUTURE REVISIONS OF THIS LICENSE

    The Free Software Foundation may publish new, revised versions of the GNU Free Documentation License from time to time. Such new versions will be similar in spirit to the present version, but may differ in detail to address new problems or concerns. See http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/.

    Each version of the License is given a distinguishing version number. If the Document specifies that a particular numbered version of this License “or any later version” applies to it, you have the option of following the terms and conditions either of that specified version or of any later version that has been published (not as a draft) by the Free Software Foundation. If the Document does not specify a version number of this License, you may choose any version ever published (not as a draft) by the Free Software Foundation. If the Document specifies that a proxy can decide which future versions of this License can be used, that proxy’s public statement of acceptance of a version permanently authorizes you to choose that version for the Document.

12. RELICENSING

    “Massive Multiauthor Collaboration Site” (or “MMC Site”) means any World Wide Web server that publishes copyrightable works and also provides prominent facilities for anybody to edit those works. A public wiki that anybody can edit is an example of such a server. A “Massive Multiauthor Collaboration” (or “MMC”) contained in the site means any set of copyrightable works thus published on the MMC site.

    “CC-BY-SA” means the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 license published by Creative Commons Corporation, a not-for-profit corporation with a principal place of business in San Francisco, California, as well as future copyleft versions of that license published by that same organization.

    “Incorporate” means to publish or republish a Document, in whole or in part, as part of another Document.

    An MMC is “eligible for relicensing” if it is licensed under this License, and if all works that were first published under this License somewhere other than this MMC, and subsequently incorporated in whole or in part into the MMC, (1) had no cover texts or invariant sections, and (2) were thus incorporated prior to November 1, 2008.

    The operator of an MMC Site may republish an MMC contained in the site under CC-BY-SA on the same site at any time before August 1, 2009, provided the MMC is eligible for relicensing.

ADDENDUM: How to use this License for your documents

To use this License in a document you have written, include a copy of the License in the document and put the following copyright and license notices just after the title page:

  Copyright (C)  year  your name.
  Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document
  under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.3
  or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation;
  with no Invariant Sections, no Front-Cover Texts, and no Back-Cover
  Texts.  A copy of the license is included in the section entitled ``GNU
  Free Documentation License''.

If you have Invariant Sections, Front-Cover Texts and Back-Cover Texts, replace the “with…Texts.” line with this:

    with the Invariant Sections being list their titles, with
    the Front-Cover Texts being list, and with the Back-Cover Texts
    being list.

If you have Invariant Sections without Cover Texts, or some other combination of the three, merge those two alternatives to suit the situation.

If your document contains nontrivial examples of program code, we recommend releasing these examples in parallel under your choice of free software license, such as the GNU General Public License, to permit their use in free software.

B. LilyPond index

Footnotes

[1] The status of GUILE is not reset after processing a .ly file, so be careful not to change any system defaults from within Scheme.

[2] At least, this is possible in any LilyPond file which does not contain scheme. If there is scheme in the file, then the LilyPond file contains a Turing-complete language, and we run into problems with the famous “Halting Problem” in computer science.

[3] This tutorial is processed with Texinfo, so the example gives slightly different results in layout.

[4] Note that PDFLaTeX and LaTeX may not be both usable to compile any LaTeX document, that is why we explain the two ways.

Table of Contents

About This Document

This document was generated by Karlin High on October 3, 2017 using texi2html 1.82.

The buttons in the navigation panels have the following meaning:

where the Example assumes that the current position is at Subsubsection One-Two-Three of a document of the following structure:

• 1. Section One
  • 1.1 Subsection One-One
    • ...
  • 1.2 Subsection One-Two
    • 1.2.1 Subsubsection One-Two-One
    • 1.2.2 Subsubsection One-Two-Two
    • 1.2.3 Subsubsection One-Two-Three     <== Current Position
    • 1.2.4 Subsubsection One-Two-Four
  • 1.3 Subsection One-Three
    • ...
  • 1.4 Subsection One-Four

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LilyPond — Usage v2.21.0 (development-branch).