Score metadata
These are the most critical components that can be supplied to lilypond. These are the three arguments immediately after the input score and output file. While they have default values, they will almost invariably need to be changed for just about any song. key specifies the key signature, e.g. key ="dm". Key changes in the middle of a song are not supported, but you can always edit the LilyPond file by hand to make highly customized changes. time gives the time signature, defaulting to common time, or 4/4 time. tempo provides the song tempo, defaulting to tempo = "2 = 60". Note that key takes the tabr consistent key signature notation whereas time and tempo take literal LilyPond strings. Look up options for these strings if you are not familiar with them in LilyPond.
Throughout this tutorial section, the guitar and bass example from the section on tracks and scores is reused. The chord chart and chord sequence are retained to provide the most complete illustration of a rendered score. For completeness, here is what you have so far.
voice1 <- rp(p("c5 d5 e5 f5 g5", "1 2 4 4 1", "1*5"), 2)
notes <- "c e g c' e' c' g e g b d' g' f a c' f' c e g e c"
strings <- "5 4 3 2 1 2 3 4 4 3 2 1 4 3 2 1 5 4 3 4 5"
voice2 <- rp(p(notes, "8*20 2", strings), 2)
bass <- rp(p("c2e2*4 g1*2 f1*2 c2e2*3", "4*10 2", "32*4 4*4 32*3"), 2)
t1 <- track(voice1, voice = 1)
t2 <- track(voice2, voice = 2)
t3 <- track(bass, tuning = "bass", music_staff = "bass_8")
chords <- chord_set(c(c = "x32o1o", g = "355433", f = "133211"))
chord_seq <- rep(setNames(c(1, 2, 2, 1), names(chords)[c(1:3, 1)]), 3)
chords
#> c g f
#> "x;3;2;o;1;o;" "3;5;5;4;3;3;" "1;3;3;2;1;1;"
chord_seq
#> c g f c c g f c c g f c
#> 1 2 2 1 1 2 2 1 1 2 2 1
song <- trackbind(t1, t2, t3, tabstaff = c(1, 1, 2)) %>% score(chords, chord_seq)
song
#> # A tibble: 3 x 7
#> phrase tuning voice staff ms_transpose ms_key tabstaff
#> <list> <chr> <int> <chr> <int> <chr> <int>
#> 1 <S3: phrase> e, a, d g b e' 1 treble_8 0 <NA> 1
#> 2 <S3: phrase> e, a, d g b e' 2 treble_8 0 <NA> 1
#> 3 <S3: phrase> e,, a,, d, g, 1 bass_8 0 <NA> 2This time, when rendering the song, use settings for the three arguments discussed above. Given what is written, it doesn’t make sense to change them all. For example, this won’t fit well as a waltz (time = “3/4”). But for illustration purposes, pretend the song is actually in the key of D minor (F major). This key has one flat, B, so this will force the B note in the G chord to be annotated as an accidental. Change the time to 2/2 just for the sake of changing it, which won’t really be any different from 4/4 except you will see a line through the common time symbol. Finally, change the tempo to 4 = 120, which is also equivalent to the default, but will show up in the output slightly differently as well.
lilypond(song, "ex32.ly", "dm", "2/2", "4 = 120")
tab(song, "ex32.pdf", "dm", "2/2", "4 = 120")
Notice how the key change alone, which added room for a single flat symbol to be squeezed into the start of the treble and bass clef staves, was enough to push everything to the point of wrapping around onto a second entire line compared to the earlier tutorial section where it all fit on one line. This is because it was a really tight fit to in the previous examples and there was not enough room for LilyPond to continue fitting everything on one line with this slight widening created by the key change. LilyPond generates sheet music with a somewhat responsive layout engraver. It won’t leave everything on line one jam packaged and push a single measure to the line two. This will return to fitting on one line in a moment when we revert the key change.
Ouput file and path
The output file specified with file ends in pdf in every example. However, you can switch to png output simply by specifying a file name with that extension. file can specify just the file named or the path to the file. The path may be relative or absolute. Optionally, the path to the output file can be passed separately to path, which otherwise defaults to NULL.
