3 % this document should be run through the mudela-book script after lilypond
4 % has been installed. The rules have been precooked into the
5 % Documentation/Rules.make file; do
11 % mudela-book --outdir=out/ --outname=mudela.mudtex mudela.doc
12 % latex '\nonstopmode \input out/mudela.mudtex'
14 % Hoi Tim, hier staan wat 'enge' commando's (die dingen met een '\'
15 % zoals \documentclass en \def\mudela...).
16 % Daar moet je je niets van aantrekken, ga gewoon naar Introduction
19 \documentclass{report}
22 \author{Jan Nieuwenhuizen \& Han-Wen Nienhuys}
24 \def\file#1{\verb+#1+}
26 % ugh: trick to get examples not generate par
28 \def\mudelapaperlinewidth{-28.452756}%
29 \def\mudelapaperindent{28.452756}%
30 \def\mudelapaperrulethickness{0.400000}%
31 \def\mudelapaperbarsize{16.000000}%
32 \def\mudelapaperinterline{4.000000}%
33 \def\mudelapapernotewidth{5.930000}%
34 \def\mudelapaperwholewidth{8.640000}%
35 \def\mudelapaperunitspace{22.000000}%
36 \def\mudelapaperbasicspace{4.000000}%
37 \def\mudelapapergeometric{0.000000}%
38 \def\mudelapaperarithmetic_basicspace{2.000000}%
39 \def\mudelapaperarithmetic_multiplier{4.800000}%
40 \def\mudelapaperinterbeam{3.140000}%
41 \def\mudelapapergourlay_energybound{100000.000000}%
42 \def\mudelapapergourlay_maxmeasures{14.000000}%
44 % \def\exampleheight{2\mudelapaperbarsize pt}
45 \def\exampleheight{2cm}
47 % ful of pars, needs the above
51 \def\musixsixteendefs{}
54 \def\turnOnPostScript{}
62 %\def\interexample{\hskip15mm$\Longrightarrow$\hskip15mm}
63 %\def\interexample{\hbox to10mm{\hfill\hbox to0pt{\hss\vbox to\exampleheight{\vss$\Longrightarrow$\vss}\hss}\hfill}}
66 \def\postexample{\par\medskip}
68 \def\file#1{{\texttt{#1}}}
69 \setcounter{secnumdepth}{-1}
73 \emph{\Large ***Under construction: may 98***}
75 \section{Introduction}
77 This chapter is a gentle introduction to using LilyPond to typeset
80 LilyPond is a so called ``batch'' program. This means, that you use a
81 text editor (such as \texttt{emacs} or \texttt{vi}) to create an input
82 file. When you are done editing your input file, you save it, and you
83 run LilyPond on the file. If Lily finds any errors in your input file
84 then she\footnote{ We're sure that if computer programs could have
85 gender, LilyPond would be a female computer program. So we will refer
86 to the program as a she. This gender-bending is not to tease you, dear
87 reader. We do it in real life as well. In the past two years LilyPond
88 has become sort of a baby daughter to us, keeping us awake at night,
89 but also providing us lots of joy. We hope you do not mind our little
90 aberration from computer-manual tradition.
92 % The name LilyPond is actually sort of a girl's name. Can you guess which
95 } will complain. If everything is well, than she'll generate a file, that
96 you can process further to view or print.
98 Using LilyPond to print or view some music is a procedure with four
99 steps. To get you started we'll run down the full procedure for you
104 Fire up your favourite editor (if you know none, try \texttt{joe silly.ly}),
105 and key in the following text:
109 \type Staff = aStaff \melodic { g'2 e'4 }
110 \type Lyrics = yell \lyric { Air2 ball!4 }
116 Save your file as \file{silly.ly}.
118 %The input files for LilyPond have the default extension \file{.ly}.
121 Run LilyPond on your newly created file: enter \verb+lilypond silly+.
122 LilyPond will then print all kinds of mumbo jumbo that can safely be
123 ignored. You might see something like this:
125 GNU LilyPond 0.1.55/FlowerLib 1.1.39
126 Parsing ... [/home/hanwen/musix/spacer/init/lily-init.ly[/home/hanwen/
128 ... stuff left out here ...
130 Documentation/silly.ly]
131 Interpreting music ...[1] (time: 0.04 seconds)
132 Preprocessing elements...
133 Calculating column positions ... [2]
134 Approximated: 1 lines, (with an average of 4.0 columns)
136 warning: Can not solve this casting problem exactly; revert to Word_wrap
137 [2]Time: 0.00 seconds
139 Postprocessing elements...
140 TeX output to silly.tex ...
142 All has gone well; there were some warning but no errors. The output
143 is a TeX file, and it is called \file{silly.tex}. \file{TeX} is
144 usually spelled as \TeX. It is batch program for typesetting text,
145 developed by the great programmer and scientist Donald Knuth to
146 typeset his famous The Art of Computer Programming bookseries. As you
147 can see \TeX\ can be adapted to do a lot more. In fact, the document
148 that you are reading now was also done with \TeX.
150 To do something useful with the output you have to run \TeX\ on it
151 first. Run the command \verb+tex silly+. The output should resemble this:
153 This is TeX, Version 3.14159 (C version 6.1)
155 Babel <v3.6h> and hyphenation patterns for american, dutch, loaded.
156 (/home/hanwen/lib/texmf/tex/lilypond/lilyponddefs.tex
157 (/home/hanwen/lib/texmf/tex/lilypond/dyndefs.tex)
158 (/home/hanwen/lib/texmf/tex/lilypond/fetdefs.tex
159 (/home/hanwen/lib/texmf/tex/lilypond/feta20.tex)
160 (/home/hanwen/lib/texmf/tex/lilypond/lily-ps-defs.tex))) [1] )
161 Output written on silly.dvi (1 page, 3084 bytes).
162 Transcript written on silly.log.
164 The human translation is ``everything went OK, the result is one
165 page long, and I put it in \file{silly.dvi}.''
167 \item The \file{silly.dvi} file is a description of how a piece of
168 text looks when it is printed. You can view it, or print it. If you
169 are using a Unix system equipped with X-Windows, then you can issue
170 the command \file{xdvi silly} to view the result. If this is not the
171 case, consult your local \TeX\ guru on printing and viewing DVI files.
172 What is in your window should look like this:
176 \type Staff = aStaff \melodic { g'2 e'4 }
177 \type Lyrics = yell \lyric { Air2 ball!4 }
183 The above is quite a lot of work. Moreover, the result is pretty
184 crude: the page does include prettily printed titles, composer. Jan
185 Arne Fagertun wrote a tool to take the above tedious steps out of
186 your hands. The tool is called ly2dvi, and it should be on your
187 system if you run Unix. If you use ly2dvi, then you can do
191 in stead of steps 2 and 3. You feel the real win of ly2dvi when you
192 add titling to the music. This is something that we will discuss in [XXX]
195 The remainder of this document is not about \TeX, and mostly not even
196 about LilyPond. What you entered into your text editor in step~1. and
197 fed to LilyPond is a special kind of file composed of notenames,
198 special words and punctation. The remainder of this document explains
199 how to combine these elements to express a piece of music in the
200 language that LilyPond understands. In other words, we try to explain
201 how to use LilyPond, and not how LilyPond works. For want of a better
202 name we call the language Mudela (short for Music Description
205 This document does not cover all of Mudela. Due to technical details,
206 the precise working of Mudela is coupled to the innards of LilyPond.
207 If you really want to know all the details, your best bet would be to
208 get the sources to LilyPond and read the parser and scanner source.
209 They are in \file{lilypond-x.y.z/lily/parser.y},
210 \file{lilypond-x.y.z/lily/lexer.l}\footnote{Of course, it would be even
211 better if you would improve LilyPond and send the resulting diffs to
212 us. But that would a really different ballpark (And we haven't
213 started with the programming guide yet.)}
215 In the following sections the basic elements of Mudela are presented.
216 We don't want to bore you too much with details, so we will leave-out
217 some red tape that's needed for a valid piece of Mudela: to be
218 precise, we will write \verb+X Y Z+, when we really mean
225 Usually, we will also print the resulting fragment of music on the
226 right just as it was produced by LilyPond.
228 For the remainder we will assume that you can carry out steps 1 to 4
229 from the above instruction. We will also assume that you know how
230 music notation works. If you are not familiar with the English terms
231 for music notation, then you should consult XXXX [FIXME], it contains
232 a glossary of musical terms.
234 \section{Music copying versus music definition versus music entry}
236 If you have done music copying before, then using LilyPond may seem
237 awkward to you in the beginning. The purpose of LilyPond is informally
238 explained by the term ``music typesetter.''
240 This may give the impression that the program is like a drawing tool
241 that lets you control precisely how the music is formatted. This is
242 not the case: not only does the program print musical symbols,
243 LilyPond also tries to make esthetic decisions---to be precise, we
244 programmed her to do what we find pretty. You do not have complete
245 control over what is happening. On the other hand, good engraving is
246 a very complex trade, so it is a Good Thing that you do not have to
247 worry about what is happening.
249 Secondly, LilyPond operates on musical definitions. This really is
250 something different from graphical definitions. If you copy music by
251 hand from a printed score, you don't have to know what the score
252 means; you just copy the symbols. With LilyPond such a thing is not
253 possible: we expect you to enter the meaning of the score, not the
254 score itself. If put more concretely: you do not enter ``black
255 notehead without flag, fourth staff line, with dot'', but ``a dotted
256 quarter note, pitch d$^2$''. LilyPond will figure out from the
257 musical info what kind of graphic presentation is needed.
259 This has some drawbacks: most notably, it is difficult to enter sheet
260 music that you cannot read. On the other hand, any piece of music
261 once entered can be played and transposed automatically.
263 Finally, in some spots we will cheat a bit when it comes to musical
264 definition. Mudela has some entry modes that help you to make typing
265 mudela pleasant. For example, the verbose phrase ``a dotted quarter
266 note, pitch d$^2$'' translates to the following longhand
268 \musical_pitch { 1 2 0 } \duration { 2 1}
270 You can be conveniently abbreviate this to \verb+d''4.+, which is
271 considerably shorter. There are some features that also make the
272 quotes and numbers in \verb+d''4.+ superfluous in some cases.
274 \section{When you know the notes to print\ldots}
276 The basic building block of music is the note. You can have LilyPond
277 print a note by specifying its pitch and the duration. The pitch of
278 the central C, also known as c$^1$, is written as \verb+c'+. A quarter
279 note duration is written as \verb+4+. So, to print quarter note with
280 central C pitch, you enter the following
281 \begin{mudela}[fragment,verbatim,center]
284 The pitch \verb+c'+ actually consists of two parts: one for the note
285 name, and one part for the octave. The number of apostrophes
286 specifies the octave to use if you are above central c. If you want
287 the octaves below central c, use the comma, eg, \verb+c,,+ (The comma
288 is meant to represent a ``sunken'' apostrophe). The letter specifies
289 which note name to use. The note names simply are the letters
290 \verb+a+ to \verb+g+.
292 By convention, the \verb+a'+ concert pitch is the tone that is used to
293 tune instruments. The exact frequency of this tone has wandered: in
294 Baroque time it was 335 Hz, most textbooks will tell you it is 440 Hz,
295 and a lot of orchestras nowadays tune at 441.5 Hz.
298 \begin{mudela}[fragment,verbatim]
299 c'4 d'4 e'4 c'4 c''4 d''4 e''4 f''4 g''4 a''4 b''4 c'''4
302 The duration of a note is specified as a number: a whole note is
303 denoted by 1, the half note by 2, the quarter by 4, and so on. Here
304 are some random notes to show how it works
305 \begin{mudela}[fragment,verbatim]
306 c,8 c8 c'16 c''32 d''64 b'64 c'''2 c1 c'4 d'4 e'4 f'4 g'4 a'4
309 This gives us already enough material to make simple songs:
310 \begin{mudela}[fragment,verbatim]
313 g''8 a''8 g''8 f''8 e''4 c''4
317 There is only one part about pitches that we haven't told you:
318 chromatically altered pitches. The names ``a'' to ``g'' for typing
319 pitches are convenient: they are short, pronounceable and they
320 resemble the normal vocabulary for pitches.
322 Enter flats and sharps. In English there is no standard terse word
323 for C sharp or C flat. For this reason, we implemented a different,
324 non-english convention for entering altered pitches, see
325 table~\ref{notename-tab}: one makes a note sharp by adding the suffix
326 ``--is'' to the name, one makes the a note flat by adding the suffix
327 ``--es.'' For a double sharp you simply add another ``--is'' suffix,
333 \caption{Default note names}\label{notename-tab}
338 c double flat &ceses\\
342 c double sharp &cisis\\
348 Variations on this convention are used in a number of germanic
349 languages, notably Dutch, German, Swedish, and Norwegian. To be
350 precise, LilyPond actually defaults to dutch notenames, with aes,
351 aeses, ees and eeses added for consistency.
353 If you are not comfortable with these names, you can make your own
354 names. Included with the example initialisation files are note names
355 for different languages, among others English (C sharp is abbreviated
356 to cs), Italian, Swedish, Norwegian
360 Up till so far we have only considered music that was rather simple.
361 All the music had notes going in one direction, from left to right,
362 the one following the other. You might be wondering if this is all
363 Lily could do, or whether is possible to stack notes as well (creating
364 \emph{chords}). Rest assured: we designed LilyPond with the goal mind
365 that she must handle any notation construct that can be expressed
366 conveniently. Of course, we did not leave out chords.
368 In mudela you can form a chord of several notes, by enclosing them in
369 pointed parentheses, ie, $\langle$ and $\rangle$, for example a
370 D-major chord can be described by
371 \begin{mudela}[fragment,verbatim]
374 Recall what was said in the previous section about flats and sharps:
375 the \texttt{fis} is an f sharp. Chords can be entered in the music in
376 same places that notes can. As an example we give a snippet of
377 ``twinkle twinkle little star'' in chords. The chords may seem, well,
378 unconventional, but they mostly serve to show how chords work
379 \begin{mudela}[verbatim, fragment]
380 c''4 c''4 <c''4 g''4> <c''4 e''4 g''4>
381 <c''4 e''4 a''4> <b'4 d''4 a''4> <b'2 d''2 g''2>
382 <a'4 d''4 f''4> <bes'4 d''4 f''4> <bes'4 c''4 e''4> <g'4 c''4 e''4>
383 <e'4 a'4 d''4> <a4 g'4 cis''4> <d'2 f'2 d''2>
388 If you have typed the last example in to a mudela file, you will have
389 noticed that the input has lots of repetitions. You probably made
390 some little errors with the right amount of \texttt{'}'s as well. For
391 these reasons, saving keystrokes and preventing errors, mudela has
392 some handy shortcuts. You don't have to type the duration, if it the
393 same as the last duration entered. This saves a considerable number
394 of keystrokes, and thus it reduces the potential for errors. The
395 previous example can be reduced to
397 c''4 c'' <c'' g''> <c'' e'' g''>
398 <c'' e'' a''> <b' d'' a''> <b'2 d'' g''>
399 <a'4 d'' f''> <bes' d'' f''> <bes' c'' e''> <g' c'' e''>
400 <e' a' d''> <a g' cis''> <d'2 f' d''>
403 The need for quotes can also be reduced: most of the pitch intervals
404 in traditional music are small. Therefore, it makes sense to leave
405 out the quotes when the interval is small. This is called the
406 relative mode for octaves. You can switch it on by entering
407 \verb+\relative+. From then on, the pitch of a note will be the
408 closest to the last one. You have to specify the first pitch because
409 the first note of a row obviously has no predecessor. Thus, you can
410 enter a scale without using octavation quotes, eg,
412 \begin{mudela}[fragment,verbatim]
413 \relative c' { c d e f g a b c }
416 For chords, the relative mode works slightly differently. In a
417 sequence of chords, the first note of a chord gives the starting point
418 for the next. We can demonstrate this with our twinkle twinkle example
422 <c e a> <b d a'> <b2 d g>
423 <a4 d f> <bes d f> <bes c e> <g c e>
424 <e a d> <a, g' cis'> <d2 f d'>
430 \section{Finishing touch}
436 Durations are entered as their reciproce values
437 % a1 a2 a4 a a8 a a16 a a32 a a64 a a a a
438 \begin{mudela}[fragment,verbatim,center]
439 a1 a2 a4 a a8 a a16 a32 a64
441 note that you only have to specify
442 the duration when it changes:
443 Lily assumes a note has the same duration as the previous one.
445 Now we can already write a little tune
446 \begin{mudela}[fragment,verbatim,center]
447 c d e c | c d e c | e f g2
449 As you'll probably have guessed,
450 the vertical bar (pipe) \verb+|+ may be used to mark
453 In the scale shown above
454 we left-out the last c note of the next octave.
455 Postfixing the pitch with a quote \verb+'+
456 produces a note by one octave higher
457 \begin{mudela}[fragment,verbatim,center]
461 Prefixing the pitch with a quote \verb+'+
462 produces a note by one octave lower
463 \begin{mudela}[fragment,verbatim,center]
467 \section{Slurs and Ties}
469 A tie connects two adjacent noteheads
471 \begin{mudela}[fragment,verbatim,center]
475 Whereas a slur rather connects `chords',
476 and tries to avoid crossing stems
478 \begin{mudela}[fragment,verbatim,center]
482 And of course, such a (legato) slur can span several notes
483 \begin{mudela}[fragment,verbatim,center]
487 \section{Beams and Plets}
490 \begin{mudela}[fragment,verbatim,center]
494 Here's a beamed triplet
495 \begin{mudela}[fragment,verbatim,center]
499 a triplet without a beam
500 \begin{mudela}[fragment,verbatim,center]
505 \begin{mudela}[fragment,verbatim,center]
510 \begin{mudela}[fragment,verbatim,center]
514 \begin{mudela}[fragment,verbatim,center]
520 Lily has predefined sets of notenames
521 for various languages%
522 \footnote{These are Dutch, English, German, Italian and Swedish.
523 Simply include the language specific init file \file{<language.ly>}.}.
524 The default set are the ones we like best are the Dutch notenames.
526 A sharp is formed by adding \verb+is+
527 \begin{mudela}[fragment,verbatim,center]
528 cis dis eis fis gis ais bis
531 and a flat is formed by adding \verb+es+%
532 %\footnote{Exceptions: \verb+es+ and \verb+as+.}
533 \footnote{Exceptions: {\tt es} and {\tt as}.}
534 \begin{mudela}[fragment,verbatim,center]
535 ces des es fes ges as bes
538 With the obvious names for double sharps
539 \begin{mudela}[fragment,verbatim,center]
540 cisis disis eisis fisis gisis aisis bisis
544 \begin{mudela}[fragment,verbatim,center]
545 ceses deses eses feses geses ases beses
549 There are two special `notenames', the rest
550 \begin{mudela}[fragment,verbatim,center]
555 \begin{mudela}[fragment,verbatim,center]
556 a2 s-"diminuendo" | a
562 \begin{mudela}[fragment,verbatim,center]
567 \begin{mudela}[fragment,verbatim,center]
568 \clef "violin"; f' e' \clef "alto"; d' c'
571 \begin{mudela}[fragment,verbatim,center]
575 \begin{mudela}[fragment,verbatim,center]
577 g, a, b, cis d e fis g'
579 Note how Mudela allows you to
580 convey a musical message
581 rather than forces you to produce a list of typesetting commands.
582 If the music a \verb+cis+, you type a \verb+cis+.
583 Depending on the key and context of the note
584 Lily will determine what accidentals to typeset.
586 A reminder accidental can be forced by
587 using an exclamation mark \verb+!+
588 on a pitch a reminder accidental
589 \begin{mudela}[fragment,verbatim,center]
590 cis d e cis | c! d e c |
593 \begin{mudela}[fragment,verbatim,center]
595 \bar "|:"; c c \bar ":|:"; c c \bar ":|"; c c \bar "|.";
598 \section{Chords and Voices}
600 Here's a simple chord
601 \begin{mudela}[fragment,verbatim,center]
606 \begin{mudela}[fragment,verbatim,center]
615 \begin{mudela}[fragment,verbatim,center]
617 { \voiceone c g c g }
618 { \voicetwo c,2 g,2 }
623 \section{A complete example}
626 A Mudela file needs some red tape
628 \begin{mudela}[verbatim,center]
641 \begin{mudela}[verbatim,center]
664 Check-out this handy little script
665 that not only may save you quite some keystrokes,
666 but produces titles and takes care of
667 margins and (hopefully) papersizes.
668 See \file{ly2dvi (1)}.
670 \chapter{Input format reference}
674 This document describes the the GNU LilyPond input format, which is an
675 effective language for defining music. We call this language (rather
676 arrogantly) The Musical Definition Language or Mudela, for
677 short.\footnote{If anybody comes up with a better name, we'd gladly
678 take this. Gourlay already uses Musical Description Language,
679 G-Sharp Score Definition Language. ISO standard 10743 defines a
680 Standard Music Description Language. We're not being original here}
682 The first aim of Mudela is to define a piece of music, being complete
683 from both from a musical typesetting, as from a musical performing
686 The Musical Definition Language (Mudela), has a logical structure,
687 making use of identifiers, that allows for flexible input, and
688 definition reuse. See \file{MANIFESTO} for reasons and design considerations.
690 The below included for explanatory purposes only (i.e., for a complete
691 and up-to-date definition, see \file{lily/parser.y} and
692 \file{lily/lexer.l}):
694 As a related note, you should take a look at the examples and the init
695 files, as this document does not cover every aspect of mudela yet, and
696 may be out of date.\footnote{Ok, I am being pessimistic here. This
697 just is a disclaimer. Docs usually are written after the program
698 itself.} This document intends to give an idea of how it works, it
699 is not a guide on how to use it.
702 \section{Basic elements}
706 The de-facto extension of Mudela is \file{.ly}. Files may be included by
707 entering \verb+\include+ at the start of a line:
714 \subsection{Comments}
716 Line comments are introduced by a
718 Block comments are delimited
725 \subsection{Versions}
727 Occasionally, small changes in syntax across different versions of
728 Mudela might give syntax errors. To warn you about possible
729 incompatibilities, you can specify the Mudela version for which the
730 inputfile was written,
735 A perl-script which tries to convert to newer versions
736 (\file{convert-mudela}) is included in the LilyPond distribution.
740 Keywords are preceded by a backslash: \verb+\+. They contain
741 alphabetic characters only.
743 Identifiers in their normal form consist start with a backslash, a
744 alpha character, followed by alpha-numerics. Identifiers can contain
745 any characters (except whitespace,
746 and \verb+%+), if you use this construct:
749 \$i'm_a_weird!!!identifier
752 (which is the identifier with the name
753 \verb+i'm_a_weird!!!identifier+). \verb+$+ Takes any sequence of
754 characters which are not whitespace, \verb+$+ and \verb+%+.
755 \verb+$i'm_a_weird!!!string+
756 \def\foobar{$} % silly fontlock mode
758 \subsection{Nesting characters}
760 Mudela uses the brace (\verb+{+ and \verb+}+) for most hierarchical
761 structures. For chords the \verb+<+ and the \verb+>+ are used as
764 \subsection{Constants}
766 Please note that -.5 is not a Real.
775 \subsection{Identifiers}
777 When assigning identifiers you use
783 If you reuse identifiers, then the previous contents will be thrown
784 away after the right hand is evaluated, eg
786 bla = \melodic { \bla }
790 When using identifiers they have to be escaped:
793 oboe = \melodic { ... }
794 \score{ \melodic { \oboe }}
797 The left-hand part of the assignment is really a string, so
799 "Foo bar 4 2 " = \melodic { .. }
802 is also a valid assignment (but you would have trouble referencing to it)
805 \subsection{Hierarchical structures}
807 The general structure consists of declarations:
816 \TYPE{ <type specific data> }
819 (Currently, \verb+\score+ is the only type that can be instantiated
820 at top level. Currently declarations can only be done at top level)
822 Most instantiations that use an IDENTIFIER are specified as follows:
825 \TYPE{ IDENTIFIER [...] }
828 Some exceptions on this rule have been made to prevent inputting
829 Mudela becoming tedious
834 To simplify different aspects of music definition (entering the notes
835 and manipulating them) Mudela has a number of different input "modes":
842 At the start of parsing, Mudela assumes normal mode.
843 In Normal mode, a word is looked up in the following order:
845 \item{\verb+word+} string
846 \item{\verb|"string"|} string
847 \item{\verb|\word|} keyword, identifier
849 In normal mode, a word is assumed to start with an alphabetic
850 character, followed by alpha-numeric characters.
852 \item[Note mode] Note mode is introduced by the keyword
853 \verb+\melodic+. In Note mode, a word is looked up in the following
856 \item{\verb+word+} notename, string
857 \item{\verb|"string"|} string
858 \item{\verb|\word|} keyword, identifier
861 In Note mode a word is considered to have alphabetic characters only,
862 so the underscore (\_) is illegal. If you accidently mistype a
863 notename, the parser will assume that you are entering a string (and
864 it will most likely complain that you should be in \verb|\lyrics| mode to
868 \item[Lyric mode] Lyrics mode (and thus Simple mudela) is introduced
869 by the keyword \verb+\lyrics+. Because of the various control
870 characters that can appear in lyrics, eg, ``foreign language''
871 accents, the inputting a string containing these has been made very
874 In Lyrics mode, a word is looked up in the following order:
876 \item{\verb+word+} string (thus a lyric)
877 \item{\verb|"string"|} string
878 \item{\verb|\word|} keyword, identifier
881 In Lyric mode every sequence of non-digit and non-white characters
882 starting with an alphabetic character or the \_ is considered a word.
885 a&@&@&TSI|{[ % a word
886 1THtrhortho % not a "word"
887 Leise Fl\"u\ss{}teren meine Sapfe % 4 words
888 _ _ _ _ % 4 words: 4 spaces
892 These modes are of a lexical nature. Normal and Note mode largely
893 resemble each other, save the possibility of entering Reals,
894 meaning of \verb+_+ and the resolution of words
898 You enter a note by giving the name and the reciprocal of the duration:
900 \begin{mudela}[fragment,verbatim]
904 is a A-1 pitched crotchet. The ' signifies an octave change. A-1 is 440
905 Hz concert-pitch. \verb+c'+ is also known as the central c. More examples:
907 \begin{mudela}[fragment,verbatim]
910 A % 110, uppercase octavates down
916 The last one is an A flat, (just below 110 Hz concert-pitch). The \verb+*2/3+
917 signifies that this note is part of a triplet (3 in stead of 2). The
918 duration is one and a half quarter note (\verb+4.+) times 2/3.
920 Notenames are just a special kind of identifiers, and can be declared
921 for any language appropriate (see \file{init/dutch.ly}). The default language
922 for notenames is defined to be Dutch. In Dutch, the notenames are
923 a,b,c,d,e,f and g. Sharps are formed by adding the extension "is",
924 flats by adding ``es''
928 cisis disis eisis fisis gisis aisis bisis
930 cis dis eis fis gis ais bis
934 ces des es fes ges as bes
936 ceses deses eses feses geses ases beses
939 Rests are named r or s
942 s % a "space" rest, nothing is printed.
945 These notenames along with duration are enough material to construct
948 \begin{mudela}[verbatim,fragment]
954 Music is able to express more. generally speaking, the other
955 'features' are either connected between notes (slurs, beams: spanning
956 requests) or attached to notes (eg. accents). The former are
957 implemented as START and STOP stop features and then attached to the note.
960 \item{[ and ]} start and stop a beam
961 \item{( and )} start and stop a slur
965 \begin{mudela}[verbatim,fragment]
968 e8(] [)g8 <c'8] e'8> % NO nesting!
969 [2/3 c8 c8 c8]1/1 % a triplet
972 Please note that these two characters do \emph{not} necessarrily nest,
973 they should be attached to the note. For this reason, the construct
974 \verb+[ <c4 c4>]+ will generate a parse error.
976 \subsection{Slurs and Ties}
978 Ties connect the noteheads of adjacent notes. They are entered as follows:
980 \begin{mudela}[verbatim,fragment]
984 Slurs connect whole chords, and try to avoid crossing stems. They are
987 \begin{mudela}[verbatim,fragment]
993 Symbols which can be put at either side (above or below) of a staff
994 are entered as follows:
995 \begin{mudela}[verbatim,fragment]
996 a-^ % marcato, direction: default
997 %a^- % portato, direction: above note
998 a_. % staccato, direction: below note
999 a^\fermata % predefined identifier
1000 c_"marcato" % add a text
1005 If you want to define your own scripts refer to \file{init/script.ly} for
1009 Dynamics can be put after the notename:
1011 a4 \dynamic { 0 } % 0 = fff, 7 = ppp
1014 Mudela defines the following dynamic identifiers:
1017 ppp pp p mp mf f ff fff sfz fz fp
1019 and the following abbreviations:
1022 \> % start decrescendo
1023 \! % end crescendo/decrescendo
1026 \subsection{Defaults}
1028 If omit the duration of a note, a default value is substituted. For
1029 this default value mudela uses the last duration explicitly entered.
1031 Thus the following inputs are equivalent
1033 c4 c4 c16 c16 c16 s16 c4 c16
1034 c4 c c16 c c c c4 c16
1037 If you are typing music which does not lie in the "small" and "large"
1038 octave, you can prevent having to type \verb+'+ all the time by using the
1039 \verb+\octave+ command: These two lines have the same pitch.
1041 c'' d'' e'' c d e c d e
1042 \octave c''; c d e ''c ''d ''e \octave c; c d e
1045 By default the setting of \verb+\octave+ is 0.
1049 Lyrics in Mudela resemble Simple mudela a lot, with notes substituted
1052 All syllables are entered separately, separated by whitespace
1054 Twin-4 kle4 twin-4 kle4 ...
1057 Two syllables or words that compose a single
1058 duration entry are bound together using an underscore
1063 \section{Composition: forming bigger structures}
1065 The previous examples tacitly assumed that a sequence of notes is
1066 printed in a left to right manner. This is not entirely correct, you
1067 will get the bigger picture in this section.
1069 In mathematics you can form expressions by combining expressions,
1070 which are ultimately some kind of atom or terminal symbol. The same
1071 goes for mudela: there are some basic building blocks, and by
1072 combining those you create complex music.
1074 You can combine music in three ways:
1076 \item If you enclose a sequence of music-elements in braces ( \verb+{+
1077 and \verb+}+ ), then you form another kind of music called (Voice) with those pieces.
1078 The duration of the Voice is the sum of the durations of its elements
1080 { c c g g a a g2 } % twinkle twinkle
1081 { { c c g g} { a a g2 } }
1083 \item You can stack music by enclosing a sequence of music elements
1084 with \verb+<+ and \verb+>+. This is called a Chord. The duration of a Chord is
1085 the union of the durations of its elements Example:
1087 <a4 {cis8 cis8} e'4> % a-major chord
1090 You can form music by transposing music:
1093 d % from c to the d that's one octave down
1094 { e4 f4 } % the horizontal music
1098 Of course you can also combine these three mechanisms.
1100 { c <c e> <c e g> <c e g \transpose d' dis > } % 4 increasing chords
1103 The basic building block in Mudela is called Request. Examples of
1104 Requests are: Timing (such as Meter), Rhythmic, Melodic, Note (which is a combination of
1105 Rhythmic and Melodic), Musicscript (put an accent over a note or
1106 rest), etc. For the actual up to date listing, you should consult the
1107 LilyPond source code: the Request types form a big class hierarchy.
1109 Normally you don't enter Requests directly, since that would be
1110 tedious. Mudela has standard abbreviations for the most common
1111 combination of Requests. If you enter \verb+c4+, this is an
1116 notename: 0 acc: 0 oct: -1
1125 The \verb+Request_chord+ is a special kind of chord which only allows
1126 Requests as its elements. The examples of the previous section were
1127 processed with \verb+{+ and \verb+}+ enclosing the input.
1129 \subsection{Durations}
1131 A duration always starts with the duration type (1,2,4 etc), and then
1132 any optional multipliers/dots. Old fashioned durations can be entered
1141 \subsection{Meters/groupings}
1143 A meter has this form:
1148 Rhythmic grouping is a concept closely associated with this. For
1149 example, in a 5/8 meter, the counts are grouped 2+3. In mudela this is
1154 You can start the piece with a partial measure, the command takes the
1155 same syntax as grouping:
1160 Make the piece start with a upstep [english translation?]
1161 lasting 1 3/4 quarter notes.
1163 These commands are also "voice elements", and constitute ``Music''
1164 (consisting of stuff with duration 0).
1167 \subsection{Voicegroups}
1172 If more than one "voice" is in a staff, then you have the option of
1173 putting the different voices into so called voicegroups: members of
1174 the same voicegroup share certain characteristics, among others:
1181 For the actual list, see the init file \file{init/register.ly}
1183 Putting different musical lines in to the same voicegroup effectively
1184 makes LilyPond try to form chords of all those lines. Putting
1185 different musical lines in to different voicegroups effectively makes
1186 LilyPond try to set those lines as independently as possible.
1188 [adsolete. Has to be fixed in lily]
1190 You can set the voicegroup of a voice with the command \verb+\group+, e.g.,
1201 oboeII = \melodic { \group "oboes";
1209 melodicregs \melodic{ oboeI }
1214 In this example, the two oboe voices share one staff and are initially
1215 in the voicegroup called "oboes". They will share beams, dynamics etc.
1216 After two quarter notes, oboeI "pushes" its group: a new voicegroup is
1217 created, called "oboes+solo". The \verb+\group "-"+ command makes the
1218 voice enter "oboes" again.
1220 Please do note that [] are voicegroup wide; the previous input is
1221 valid: the beam, started in oboeI, voicegroup "oboes" is also ended in
1222 voicegroup "oboes", albeit not in oboeI but oboeII
1224 This concept may seem contorted, but it allows you to set the separate
1225 oboe parts without changing the \verb+oboeI+ and \verb+oboeII+ (assuming that
1226 you edit the [] in the example.)
1230 < { .... } {......} >
1232 makes a chord (all horizontal parts are in the same voicegroup). The construct
1234 \multi 2 < { ....} { .... } >
1236 creates horizontal parts which behave independently. You will have to
1237 set voicegroup features by hand (\verb+\stem+ and \verb+\hshift+. See examples)
1241 \multi 3 < { ....} { .... } >
1243 creates a chord with each part in a different staff
1246 \subsection{Examples}
1248 Examples are included with the GNU LilyPond distribution. For the sake of
1249 maintenance no long examples are included in this document.
1254 This language has a number of roots. First and foremost, GNU
1255 LilyPond's predecessor mpp was the inspiration of the Note-mode input.
1256 Secondly, the hierarchical structure looks a lot like Rayce's (Rayce
1257 is a raytracer that I've written as a hobby project. ), which in turn
1258 owes a lot to POVRay.
1260 Now, we know, musictypesetting and raytracing do not necessarily
1261 require the same input format, and we know that a lot more ways exist
1262 to convert music to ASCII, but we did give this language some
1263 thoughts. As always suggestions are appreciated.