Proud as we Filipinos are over Manny Pacquiao’s victory last Sunday, someone else delivered that much expected knockout punch in the boxing arena. Kyla , beautifully dressed in a white terno, with not a single hair out of place, did a perfect rendition of the national anthem, giving Mexican and American counterparts the total knockout. She was one of two Filipinos that made the country proud that night. Likewise, Ms. Geneva Cruz did a splendid performance before the Pacquiao-Solis boxing event last April. My 6 year old son was so awed at Kyla’s performance that he sang the national anthem over and over last Sunday. Gheez.
Truly, Filipinos are blessed with bountiful musical talent. I’d like to do my share in supporting Filipino musical geniuses inside and outside the country by suggesting a macro for OpenOffice.org that could integrate music notation into a wordprocessor, drawing or presentation. It’s called OOoLilyPond .
A few decades ago, sheet music was engraved into plates by cutting and stamping the music into a zinc or pewter plate in mirror image . The art of music typography relied on highly skilled craftsman who used their hands and a few manual tools to document music. It was a highly esteemed profession, with the title of master engraver earned only by a craftsman with five years of training plus an additional five years of experience.
Nowadays, computers made it possible for music sheets to be printed out on paper. While comptuer printuots are easier and cheaper to make, it had also decreased the graphical quality of scores , which are not comparable to those made by hand decades earlier.
Individuals with no musical talents nor inclinations like me probably wouldn’t notice the difference. However, to professional musicians, this could be a source of frustration. For example, the distribution of space between notes should reflect the durations between notes. However, computer generated music sheets adhere to the durations with mathematical precision, which leads to less satisfactory results. It’s like reciting poetry without the proper rhythm.
The importance of a perfectly laid out musical piece can not be overestimated. During a performance, a musical performer should be able to take a glimpse of his sheet music and then focus on playing the music without having to stop and think if there are any errors. Simply said, better typography leads to better performances. However, music typography is a subtle and complex art, which not all musicians are skilled at.
Thankfully, musicians can now have the skills of the master engraver in a very short time. LilyPond “brings the graphical excellence of hand-engraved music to the computer age, and makes it available to normal musicians. We have tuned our algorithms, font-designs, and program settings to produce prints that match the quality of the old editions we love to see and love to play from.”, according to LilyPond creators.
Lilypond is not just for musical composers. It can also be used by writers of musical books, music critics who would like to add pieces of text to portions of musical scores, or music teachers who wish to write down exercises for music instruments or voices .
The user enters the music expression as text code in the LilyPond editor. Then , LilyPond renders the text into an image. There is a steep learning curve , but once a user becomes familar with the LilyPond language, small pieces of music are entered much faster.
The latest version, OOo Lily version 0.3.2 , released on July 2007, will run on Linux/Unix Windows XP, Windows 2000 and Mac OS X. You have to install OpenOffice.org first, then install OOoLilyPond from there.
The LilyPond macro can be downloaded from :
http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=177831
OpenOffice.org can be downloaded from:
http://www.openoffice.org/
To install Lilypond , just follow the instructions found on the LilyPond website:
http://ooolilypond.sourceforge.net/
To activate LilyPond within an OOo document, click Ctrl M. LilyPond is not a drag and drop kind of program. Music should be entered in text files with .ly as the extension (preferably in UTF-8 encoding), and then compiled into sheet music (pdf, ps, dvi, tex, midi, etc). Beginners can work their way around Lilypond with a little help from the LilyPond tutorial found at:
http://lilypond.org/doc/v2.6/Documentation/
Other users can also be an invaluable resource. There’s a mailing list, which is displayed on a Nabble forum, where you can get help.
http://www.nabble.com/Gnu—Lilypond-f1718.html
[...] 539047546 wrote an interesting post today onHere’s a quick excerptNowadays, computers made it possible for music sheets to be printed out on paper. While comptuer printuots are easier and cheaper to make, it had also decreased the graphical quality of scores , which are not comparable to those made by … [...]