Tonight i decided to write out “Mamma Mia” for my cousin whom i teach piano. I got out my pad of music lines, but hadn’t even set pen to paper before thinking, “I hate doing this! I wonder if there’s an open-source music notation package …”
One quick search later and i remembered LilyPond! A friend showed me this years ago, and i was really intrigued by it. As a programmer, this is very satisfying to me. You write your music as a kind of code, ‘compile’ it, and it outputs PDF, PS and, if you want it, a MIDI file.
We used to do this on Windows, with Cygwin. It is very pleasing to use it on its intended operating system now! :) It was easy to input, and i do love the pure geekiness of the notation! :D
