Re: Supporting my work on LilyPond financially

[Richard Shann]

On Sun, 2013-12-01 at 17:27 +0100, Martin Tarenskeen wrote:
> 
> On Sun, 1 Dec 2013, Kieren MacMillan wrote:
> 
> > I am looking forward to examining Denemo, once my current project load 
> > diminishes to the point where “free time” is a reality.
> 
> Denemo is mentioned several times in this thread.
> 
> I have installed and tried Denemo several times recently and in the past, 
> but never managed to make it make life with LilyPond easier for me.
> 
> I guess that if you are used to writing Lilypond Code by hand, using 
> Frescobaldi, or another editor, there is not much benefit in using Denemo.

It would depend on what sort of activity you were doing - composing and
transcribing being the two main ones. I have heard it said that most
composers still use pencil, rubber and paper until they are ready to
publish. For transcribing I gain both in speed and enjoyment by using
Denemo for transcribing. That's because while typing in note names and
durations I get no sense of the music, I tend to lose my place. By
contrast, by playing rhythms and then the piece on a MIDI controller I
am leveraging my ability to read music - I know where I am in the score
as I know where I am when reading a book.
> 
> If you are used to using Finale, Sibelius - from a Sibelius/Finale-users 
> point of view - there is not much benefit in using Denemo either.

AFAIK they don't offer such a method of entering the music, so are
slower and less pleasant. And then you have to adjust the positions of
things by dragging them around...

> 
> Which leads to my question: Denemo seems to be a powerful and feature-rich 
> tool, which is continuously improved, but how many people do actually use 
> it for real-life music engraving projects?

Not many I think. I would like to know why, but I guess that devoting a
lot of screen space (you want ideally to see your original to transcribe
from, your input and the typeset at once) and desk space (for a MIDI
keyboard) could be factors. But mostly I suspect, it is because it is an
unusual program - people expect to work steadily away entering their
notes using Sibelius, Finale or MuseScore, and for some (e.g. those
doodling about composing things) the raw speed of music entry is not an
issue. And people expect to spend time tidying up the engraving just to
remove collisions.

But the feedback I get about Denemo is almost entirely positive - those
who find it unusable just quietly switch to something else, out of
politeness I guess. Most unhelpful!

Richard Shann