Good thing "compiling" is in quotes. I don't think it actually meets the definition. It's more like "encoding."
“Compiling” Music
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Re: “Compiling” Music
#42I've been using Lilypond for a number of years now and it's a truly remarkable piece of software. The quality of the engraving is extremely high, the amount of customization you can carry out is unrivalled, and it is also incredibly versatile. Out of the box it supports stuff ranging from Guitar and lute tablature[1] and notation specific to percussion[2] to modern chord names[3] and Baroque figured bass [4]. Did you know you can also use it to typeset neumes for Gregorian chant[5] and mensural notation[6]?
Nevertheless I should mention that Lilypond serves a different purpose and is aimed at a different audience when compared to popular scorewriters such as musescore. It is primarily an engraver and should be used to typeset existing music, composing directly into it is always going to be very awkward compared to WYSIWYG editors or even just manuscript paper. The learning curve is also quite large and you must be ready to constantly refer back to its (very well written) documentation. But like any complex tool, acquiring familiarity with it is very rewarding in the long run.
[1] http://lilypond.org/doc/v2.22/Documentation/notation/common-...
[2] http://lilypond.org/doc/v2.22/Documentation/notation/common-...
[3] http://lilypond.org/doc/v2.22/Documentation/notation/display...
[4] http://lilypond.org/doc/v2.22/Documentation/notation/figured...
[5] http://lilypond.org/doc/v2.22/Documentation/notation/typeset...
[6] http://lilypond.org/doc/v2.22/Documentation/notation/typeset...
Re: “Compiling” Music
#43I'm greatly thankful for the hard work put into lilypond and frescobaldi.
I use lilypond to type up leadsheets for jazz and some other genres [0], inspired by Mark Veltzer's Openbook [1]. I've gotten pretty fast at typing up songs over time. The goal is to have a CLI or web interface to generate a pdf for concert/bb/bass clef/etc, optionally include lyrics/QR codes, and so on.
Being able to transpose is quite handy, although I'm working on a system to automatically handle larger transpositions (e.g. for Eb instruments or for bass clef). The problem is if I statically pick one direction (up or down), some leadsheets will have the notes too high or low. I think I can resolve it with having all songs entered in absolute pitches and scanning for the lowest/highest note.
Re: “Compiling” Music
#44Lilypond also has a guile API, and if you are not interested in the actual notation generation or at least how it looks, it can make some pretty weird and cool midi files. You can turn it into a kind of makeshift lisp Supercollider pattern generator.
Can you say a bit more about this? I know I can go look at the API, but I had no idea that it was capable of generating (?) MIDI files (I don't have cause to use Lilypond, really). Do you personally use it for generative music? Or something adjacent to that?
Re: “Compiling” Music
#45One of my family members is a music theory professor, here's what they had to say about this:
> [Lilypond] was one of a handful of early programs turning notation into ASCII text. Older program but still useful. MusicXML has made a lot of these older systems less productive these days, though: https://www.musicxml.com/
> Developed by Michael Goode at Stanford – it's now the international standard for music encoding.