As a matter of fact, I started learning LilyPond last weekend using Frescobaldi, because of its awesome midi input, and because I figured I might get more efficient with code than with a WYSIWYG editor (I use MuseScore).
Frescobaldi is a very nice way of getting started. It generates code that you see, you can use buttons for features you don't know yet and then you can type code directly when you know it. Frescobaldi then remains useful for at least these reasons:
- midi input and output
- the rendered view and mapping between this view and the code when you click on stuff, quite like those latex IDEs
- new feature discovery. I discovered the concept of the UI that shows you what code is generated and where recently with LuCI for OpenWrt, which shows what config file is going to be updated and how; I love it and Frescobaldi has the same quality. I find it lets you get started and then master a new complex system efficiently and painlessly.
Of course I suspect I will reach for my usual text editor at some point... and maybe I need a midi input plugin for it (Kate, if anybody happens to know something about this)
Of course storing repeated notes in variable is incredibly useful, and managing different voices on the same clef is surprisingly easier than with MuseScore.
One thing I dislike is how stuff applying to several notes need to be "opened" after the first note. I needed to do such a thing to a group of notes that was also used elsewhere and storing this group of notes in a variable was only natural but then it's difficult to open something after the first note. But this is easily overcome by using an empty chord ( <> ) to start the grouping thing. Feels hacky but seems to work, I hope it doesn't have unintended consequences. I'm sure there's a very sensible reason for this that I will discover later and will make me think that it was an obvious design choice after all.
I'm not sure it's for everyone though. MuseScore is better at this, LilyPond has started being for me at a time WYSIWYG started being frustrating and when I started wishing the UI didn't get in the way of my note input (before this, I absolutely didn't want to write code to make a music sheet - just let me click already). But I'm used to code and to please compilers. Code scares a lot of people. I wish it didn't.
The fact that slurs and grouping must be appended after the note hasn't always been so. I have been a user since its first versions, and at the beginning you would write a legato scale like this:
(c d e f g a b c)
which indeed looks more natural because resembles the way parentheses are used in mathematics and programming.
If I remember correctly, the change happened ~20 years ago because it made the notation more consistent: everything related to the note happens after the note name (durations, staccato, marcato, slurs, etc.). I remember that it took me several months to get acquainted with the new syntax.
Frescobaldi is a very nice way of getting started. It generates code that you see, you can use buttons for features you don't know yet and then you can type code directly when you know it. Frescobaldi then remains useful for at least these reasons:
- midi input and output
- the rendered view and mapping between this view and the code when you click on stuff, quite like those latex IDEs
- new feature discovery. I discovered the concept of the UI that shows you what code is generated and where recently with LuCI for OpenWrt, which shows what config file is going to be updated and how; I love it and Frescobaldi has the same quality. I find it lets you get started and then master a new complex system efficiently and painlessly.
Of course I suspect I will reach for my usual text editor at some point... and maybe I need a midi input plugin for it (Kate, if anybody happens to know something about this)
Of course storing repeated notes in variable is incredibly useful, and managing different voices on the same clef is surprisingly easier than with MuseScore.
One thing I dislike is how stuff applying to several notes need to be "opened" after the first note. I needed to do such a thing to a group of notes that was also used elsewhere and storing this group of notes in a variable was only natural but then it's difficult to open something after the first note. But this is easily overcome by using an empty chord ( <> ) to start the grouping thing. Feels hacky but seems to work, I hope it doesn't have unintended consequences. I'm sure there's a very sensible reason for this that I will discover later and will make me think that it was an obvious design choice after all.
I'm not sure it's for everyone though. MuseScore is better at this, LilyPond has started being for me at a time WYSIWYG started being frustrating and when I started wishing the UI didn't get in the way of my note input (before this, I absolutely didn't want to write code to make a music sheet - just let me click already). But I'm used to code and to please compilers. Code scares a lot of people. I wish it didn't.