Re: Questions From a New User

[Damien Garwood]

Hi Aaron,
Having no prior knowledge of print, please excuse me for asking, but I 
take it the "angle brackets" are the < and > symbols? The reason I ask 
is because screen readers often read these out as "less" and "greater".
That's one of the things that confused us - the fact that sometimes you 
would see braces inside the <<->> sections and vice versa.
So far, we have been using MIDI to hear our scores back, but since MIDI 
is an events-only system, does that accurately reflect how the score 
looks? For instance, articulations wouldn't be able to be replicated in 
MIDI, nor would the tons of different barlines (still another thing that 
threw us).
Cheers,
Damien.

On 30/10/2020 02:19 am, Aaron Hill wrote:
> On 2020-10-29 6:25 pm, Jenny Suchan wrote:
> > My name is Jenny Suchan, and I just joined this list yesterday. I am a
> > totally blind musician seriously pursuing a career in music
> > composition. After looking into several different score-writing
> > software, I am now studying LilyPond to see how I could use it to
> > produce music scores. My friend Damien, another totally blind musician
> > who I have been working with and who made me aware of this software,
> > is copied on this message.
>
> Welcome to the Pond.
>
> The topic of LilyPond and Braille has come up before, so you are 
> certainly not alone.  I would recommend reviewing information in the 
> archives [1].
>
> [1]: 
> https://lists.gnu.org/archive/cgi-bin/namazu.cgi?query=braille&submit=Search%21&idxname=lilypond-user&max=20&result=normal&sort=score 
>
>
>
> > We have been making our way through the Learning Manual and are
> > struggling with the concepts underlying the construction of chords,
> > multiple parts, and multiple voices. For example, it isn't clear to us
> > how information within less-than and greater-than signs and that
> > within brackets relate to each other. Also, the manual states that
> > tied notes share the same pitch, so how can two chords be tied
> > together if only one note is sustained between them? Any additional
> > tutorials or one-on-one help that anyone can offer would be greatly
> > appreciated.
>
> Curly braces are used principally to denote sequential music, with 
> events following one after another.  Angle brackets are generally for 
> simultaneous music, with events occurring at the same time.  In 
> particular, single angle brackets are for chords; double angle brackets 
> are for grouping together voices or staves of music.
>
> Ties between chords will only apply to notes that are in common. 
> Consider a tie between a D minor chord and a D major chord.  The third 
> is the only thing that changes, so ties would exist between just the D's 
> and A's.  By placing the tilde outside the chord, you will instruct 
> LilyPond to automatically tie any notes shared between the two chords. 
> If you only want to tie specific notes, you may use the tilde inside the 
> angle brackets after each individual note name.
>
> The following snippet demonstrates both usage patterns.  The first 
> measure is precisely the D minor to D major example I mentioned.  The 
> second measure involves an G major to C major where the common G note is 
> tied within the chord construct.
>
> %%%% BEGIN SNIPPET
> \version "2.20.0"
>
> \fixed d' {
>    | <d f a>2 ~ <d fis a>
>    | <d g~ b>2 <e g c'>
> }
> %%%% END SNIPPET
>
>
> > Also, is there a way-or a potential way-that LilyPond code can be
> > converted to MusicXML? It would be very helpful for me to be able to
> > translate my scores into Braille music, and we both could benefit from
> > audio feedback regarding our scores.
>
> MIDI output from LilyPond is usually the way one would be able to listen 
> to their score.
>
> While MusicXML can be converted *to* LilyPond, the reverse is not 
> possible to my knowledge.  There is an open issue [2] filed requesting a 
> MusicXML backend to LilyPond, which would enable it to output that format.
>
> [2]: https://gitlab.com/lilypond/lilypond/-/issues/665
>
>
> -- Aaron Hill