Jack Cooper - Guelph, ON Musician

As I mentioned in a previous entry, I have been using lilypond as my primary tool for transcribing and formatting sheet music.  Lilypond is open source and freeware and runs on Windows, Mac and unix/linux environments.  There is no user interface with lilypond.  You simply type the markup language commands into a file or series of files and then run the commands through the lilypond program.  In Windows in Mac, it is simply a matter of double-clicking the file containing lilypond code (usually containing the file extension “.ly”)

So how does it all work when I am creating a leadsheet for a song?  I’ll use an example most everyone is familiar with- Stephen Foster’s “Oh! Susanna”.  Rather than hum the song for you here, I’ll ask you to hunt down an .mp3 over the internet if you are not familiar with how it goes.  Although there are many, many covers and interpretations of this song, the structure of the song is usually the same.  This is a Verse / Chorus structure.  The original version published in 1848 contains four verses.  The song wouldn’t be politically correct today, but as a coworker pointed out, he remembers seeing blackface routines on television growing up.

Now, there are small details to quibble over.  You may argue that there is an introduction before each verse, and instrumental bit at the end of the song.  I wouldn’t argue with you, but for simplicity sake I am going to transcribe this with no filler bits.

Once I’ve determined the song structure and I am familiar enough with the chords and melody, I will start entering my lilypond information.  I’m not an overly organized person by nature, but I’ve adopted a structure use for transcribing leadsheet or any songs with lyrics in lilypond.  I have a ‘master’ file, which describes the song’s structure, a file containing melody information, a file containing accompanying lyrics, a file containing chord information, a file containing all additional lyrics, and a file containing fret diagram descriptions.  I am going to omit the fret diagrams from this example.

Okay, let’s start with the song structure.  I created a file called ‘Oh Susanna.ly’. Here is an image of that file:

There are a bunch of \include statements that link in the other files containing melody, lyrics and chord information. There is also some information that defines how the musical score will look- what elements will appear as music staffs, above staffs, below staffs, etc. I don’t change much here except the names of the files I am linking in.

The next thing I do is enter the melody information. Here is the contents of the melody file:

Real pretty, huh?
There is a lot of cut-and-paste involved- if a certain melodic line repeats, I just copy and paste that bit. The lines beginning with ‘%’ are comments, and help me remember why I entered what I did. The ‘\break’ command forces lilypond to output a new staff line. The note information consists of letters followed by a symbol and number. This indicates the note, which octave, and the length. There are a couple of commands at the top of this file defining the key, tempo and clef. I am using a \repeat command so that the verse and melody chorus, entered here once, is followed by a repeat sign.

Following the melody is the accompanying lyrics:

With lilypond, syllables are separated by double-dashes surrounded by spaces. The \set stanza prints a verse number or text before the actual lyrics. Slur notes are just attached to one syllable. It is difficult at first figuring out how to properly match lyrics to melody, but after running lilypond a pdf file of output is produced so you can check for errors.

Next, the chords (or as Wendell Ferguson says, “Christ, the Chords”):

Entering the chord information is the easiest part of lilypond if you are using relatively simple chords. Complicated chords are a bit tricky- you have to read through the lilypond manual (available online) to find the right way to print out some chords.

Finally, the additional lyrics. I basically print this out as freestanding text after the musical score:

The \markup command is used for text formatting in a variety of circumstances. It allows text and graphical images to be placed above staffs, within lyrics, or as a separate entity.

To ‘compile’ my code, I double-click on my master file in Windows. A log file is produced showing what was done or not done, and any errors. Both a postscript and pdf file are produced if the code ran successfully. Here is the result of the above code:
oh-susanna

It’s getting late and I’ve undoubtedly made a few errors along the way. More about leadsheets later.

Cheers,
Jack