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Linuxmusician.com Interviews LilyPond Authors
jcn writes "Chris Cannam talks to
the authors of
one of the best-known and most ambitious music programs for Linux, the LilyPond score engraving system. Unlike other typesetting software like Finale or Sibelius, LilyPond is not a score editor, it aims to use simple textual description of the music and turn it into the highest possible quality output, automatically.
Han-Wen says: In my opinion, any file format that claims to be universal should have two properties: it should have an expressive structure, so other formats can be expressed in it, and it should be as lean as possible, so that converting from other formats amounts to removing information. I think that MusicXML fits neither. Ouch."
A good example of seperating content from presentation is to use an XML-type file (at least have a structured document model) where the music data is defined. Then, have somthing like an XLS sound stylesheet to define how the data will sound like. As a developer, this would create greater posibilities what I could do with the sound that my application processes.
On a side noce GNoise is a good sound editor that I recommend to anyone doing edeting or large sounds like game-music (that is uncompressed in raw format.)
It seems to me that they're trying to redefine "score editor" and yet generally, that's what it seems to be, more or less.
While the printed output is asthetically pleasing, it strikes me as an odd technology to persue, because I wonder how many musicians today can actually read music. I'd wager the vast majority of rock musicians can't, and that roughly half of pop musicans can't. I can't, and I've written "plenty" of material and play several instruments. It's not truly a necessity anymore, with a good ear and modern equipment, ideas can quickly be stored for future embellishment or shown to others in the absence of an actual instrument. It's not even necessary for registering with the library of congress, an audio tape will suffice.
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Hear, hear.
I used Word 2.0 to type up my Master's thesis, which being Physics, had *lots* of equations. Equation Editor was hell. And my Math grad friends were using this thing called LaTeX for theirs, and it intimidated the hell out of me. Now I'm typing up my PhD, and LaTeX is a godsend.
Having something similar for musical scores is cool -- just one or two minor projects I have in mind.