LilyPond and Alternative Music Notation Systems

 

LilyPond offers native support for chromatic-staff notation systems. See our LilyPond wiki page for the most current documentation.

LilyPond is a free, open-source application that has support for displaying and printing music in alternative music notation systems. LilyPond is used by writing and editing text documents that contain music notation data, rather than pointing and clicking with a mouse. Instead of providing a graphical user interface for editing scores, LilyPond's developers concentrate on producing the highest-quality output, sheet music that looks as good as if it had been typeset by hand.

The LilyPond developers are experimenting with a graphical interface for LilyPond (see Schikkers List), but it is in very early stages. There are free open-source applications that offer graphical editing of music notation that can export music to the LilyPond file format (i.e. Canorus). One could use them to graphically edit music in traditional notation, and then export the music to LilyPond for transnotation into an alternative notation. Also, since LilyPond can import MusicXML files, any of the many applications that export to MusicXML (e.g. MuseScore) could also be used in this way. (See Open-Source Strategy.)

 

Support for Alternative Notation Systems in LilyPond

See our LilyPond wiki page for the most current documentation.

Kevin Dalley volunteered his time and programming skills to add features to LilyPond to support chromatic-staff notation systems. Mark Hanlon also contributed his time by updating and maintaining Kevin's code so that it would continue to work with more recent versions of LilyPond. Andrew Wagner set up a git repository for the patches and additional files on github.com to help organize and facilitate future work. (See Information for Developers.)

Below are some images of chords in various notation systems that have been automatically generated using LilyPond. They illustrate some of the different types of chromatic staves that are possible.

Some features of these notation systems may not yet be supported. See our LilyPond wiki page for the most recent information. Eventually we would like to provide support for more features of alternative music notation systems. More details are available under Information for Users, Information for Developers, and Kevin Dalley's website (where you can also see J.S. Bach's Invention 9 automatically transnotated into each of the notation systems below).

If you would like to help contribute to this effort, please contact us.

 

 

The following illustrations were automatically generated using LilyPond.

 

Traditional Music Notation

 

[image of chords using traditional notation]
 

Basic 5-line Chromatic Staff

 

[image of chords using 5-line notation]

 

A prototype of Grace Frix's 5-Line Chromatic Staff is also implemented, but is not shown here since its staff is basically identical to the one above, except for a shift in pitch.

 

Prototype of Parncutt's 6-6 Tetragram

 

[image of chords using 6-6 tetragram notation]

 

Prototypes of Ailler-Brennink chromatic notation by Albert Brennink and Untitled notation by Johann Ailler are also implemented, but are not shown here since their staves are basically identical to Parncutt's 6-6 Tetragram, except for a shift in pitch.

 

First steps toward Isomorph Notation by Tadeusz Wojcik
Bold lines are absent. Some pitches should be white/hollow noteheads. Notes are not always on the correct side of the stem. Noteheads should be circular and not oval.

 

[image of chords using isomorph notation]
 

First steps toward Untitled notation by Johannes Beyreuther
Some pitches should be white/hollow noteheads.

 

[image of chords using Beyreuther untitled notation]
 

First steps toward Twinline Notation by Tom Reed
All pitches should be white/hollow noteheads. Notes are not always on the correct side of the stem.

 

[image of chords using Twinline prototype notation]

Standard note heads are used for C, D, E, F#, G#, and A#. An upward pointing triangle is used for C#, F, and A, and a downward pointing triangle for D#, G, and B. The standard notehead and the upward pointing triangle are noteheads which are already available under LilyPond. Kevin has added the downward pointing triangle.

The standard notehead located in a space, the upward-pointing triangle before it, and the downward-pointing triangle after it are all in the same vertical position. This may cause undesirable behavior in beaming.

 

First steps toward Express Stave by John Keller
Some pitches should be white/hollow noteheads. Vertical spacing of notes is not compressed.

 

[image of chords using Express notation]

 

First steps toward Klavar, Mirck Version by Jean de Buur
Some pitches should be white/hollow noteheads. Notes are not always on the correct side of the stem. The external ledger lines are not correct. The groups of 3 lines should be darker than the groups of 2 lines. Noteheads should be circular and not oval.

 

[image of chords using Mirck notation]
 

First steps toward Avique notation by Ann and Bill Collins
The external ledger lines are not correct (but this does not appear in this example).

 

[image of chords using Avique notation]
 

Kevin Dalley also experimented with the following notations:

 

Twinline, Kevin Dalley Version
This is a slightly different version of Twinline, with the standard vertical separation between the notes. The traditional notes do not always touch the lines. Each note has a different vertical position.

Chromatic Scale   |   Chord Example   

 

Untitled by Kevin Dalley
This is a version of Parncutt's 6-6 Tetragram with 3 styles of noteheads, with the noteheads changing at every semitone. This may work nicely with a chromatic accordion, which is a 4-4-4 instrument.

Chromatic Scale   |   Chord Example   

 

LilyPond Software Design once offered custom development for LilyPond. You could hire them to add a desired feature to the software. They even had a price list for open feature requests (prices since removed). However, they have been closed down since September 1, 2006.