New LilyPond Templates (part 2)

As promised, here is the second installment of templates. I've created templates for Rock and Pop, Jazz, and Latin style scores.

New LilyPond Templates (part 1)

Greetings, everyone!

It feels strange to (once again) not have put up a post before another month passed, but, alas, it has happened again. Let's remedy the situation!

I've decided to take it upon myself to create a small library of LilyPond 2.18.2 template files that are inspired by those found in the latest version of Sibelius (7.5). When all is said and done, I plan on replicating ALL of its templates in the following categories:

1. No Category
2. Solo Instruments
3. Band
4. Chamber Groups
5. Choral and Song
6. Handbells
7. Jazz
8. Latin
9. Marching Band and Percussion
10. Orchestral
11. Orff Instruments
12. Rock and Pop

So far, I've got #1 and 2 done, but hopefully will be able to pick up the pace and get the others cranked out. I've tried to follow Sibelius' designs as faithfully as possible in hopes that Sibelius users who are familiar with them will find the change over to LilyPond that much easier.

Recent Developments

Wow, over a whole month has gone by without a post. Well, I've been busy working on myriad of (mostly font-related) projects. I'm still not quite done with most of them, but here are some highlights of my latest adventures that will hopefully be released soon:

Different Staff Sizes

I've seen a lot of discussion as to how to deal with staves of different heights, either within the same score or elsewhere. I don't propose to have a great solution for this, but I'd like to share something I discovered (accidentally) while preparing some LilyPond tutorials.

Panorama Mode

Do you come from a notation program that has a "Panarama" mode for viewing your score? Well, fear not! Such a feature exists even in LilyPond to make you feel right at home, but it's not called "Panorama". It's a layout algorithm called ly:one-line-breaking.

To have your score print on a single sheet that adjusts to the length of the score, use the following code:

\paper {
  page-breaking = #ly:one-line-breaking
}

For example, here are the first two pages from a 3-page score in "normal paper" mode:

And here's how it looks when we use the one-line-breaking algorithm (cropped slightly):

That's it! Now, there are some things to remember about using this mode (from the official docs):

1. Each score gets its own line, but everything is on a single page.
2. All text in the \header block is NOT typeset, which is fine since this is really more of a preview mode anyway.
3. The width of the page will be adjusted so the longest score fits on one page.
4. Some variables in the \paper block will be ignored (like paper-width, indent, line-width) while others will be honored (like left-margin, right-margin, etc.).
5. The height of the page is un-changed, but honored to whatever you set it to be.

Personally, I wish the height of the page automatically fit to the scores, but oh-well.

Do you miss this mode? Do you find it useful? Let me know in the comments!

Font Update (Improviso, Ross, Profondo)

Another set of updates have been applied and are now available on my font site: fonts.openlilylib.org. Here are the highlights:

• Improviso (v1.1)
• Fixed a bad contour in the clefs.C_change glyph.
• Packaged three hand-written text fonts (one of my own creation) to compliment the font style.
• Ross (v1.1)
• Thickened up the scripts.tenuto articulation (which also updated the up and down portato).
• Added information about the IM FELL text fonts.
• Profondo (no version change)
• Packaged my tuplet number font so the style is more consistent (the glyphs come from Bravura). The \override is now part of the default profondo.ily stylesheet.

If you haven't been over there in a while, go check them out and let me know if something is not working correctly!

Do you have a score that uses one of your favorite music fonts? Let me know so I can add it as an example on the respective font page!

Happy Engraving!

Engraver Spotlight: David Stephen Grant

I was recently introduced to the composer/engraver David Stephen Grant, who shared with me a very lovely score he had composed and engraved using LilyPond. The score is done with my Ross music font (and accompanying stylesheet), complimented perfectly by the IM Fell English text font.

David shared with me some background to the score:

... "Overture to Bérénice" was actually used as an Overture to a modern theatre production of Racine's "Bérénice" that I composed and contributed sound design for. The music quickly moved from this "Baroque" atmosphere into more noisy electronic sound design, ...

Great job, David, and thanks for sharing this with us!

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Have you engraved something you'd like to feature here that shows off one of my music fonts? Let me know or provide a link in the comment section!