Re: Ramble In The Bramble for solo looped (classical) guitar

[Todd Pafford <calenlas@gmail.com>]

Yeah, Finale, Sibelius, and a few others have been the only options
for so long that I think most folks have stopped looking for
alternatives.  I can tell you, though, Lilypond rocks.  A while back I
had to arrange Pachabels Canon for cello & guitar for a friend's
wedding.  It was my first full-sized Lilypond project and a great test
drive.  Once you get the hang of it it's quick and easy to use and the
output is just beautiful...better than much of the published music I
have on my shelf.

I haven't worked with MusicXML much either, but Lilypond does import
it so I'll have to give it a try.  I wouldn't expect an XSL transform
would be responsible for outputting a PDF.  Much more likely the XML
is used to build the data structures in memory and Finale uses a
seperate engine to output the PDF.  XSL is very good at walking
through XML element by element, but has a harder time looking ahead
and back to glean the context that typesetting (for PDF) would need.

And regarding the "Finale = Finally I figured out how to...", of
course, Lilypond has a bit of that too.  Thankfully, the tricky bits
are more obscure, like fine tuning the placement of fingering or
string markings to take an example from my own experience.  (I never
did get those just how I wanted either.)

Todd

On 12/27/05, Warren Sirota <wsirota@wsdesigns.com> wrote:
> Todd, you make compelling points. I will happily make a PDF of the score
> today (in fact, that's what I should have done to start. I just wasn't
> thinking) and post it along with an MP3. I had thought that the RealAudio
> would be a universal format, but you've corrected me on that. Thanks for 
>the
> pointers. Finale outputs MusicXML, so it should be transferable, but I 
>can
> always print to a PDF driver to make the file. (I've never used MusicXML 
>- I
> hope it includes all the info that would be in a tab file. Does anyone 
>have
> a any experience with it? It seems like a good concept, on the face of 
>it.
> But you'd need a pretty insanely complicated XSL file to format it into a
> PDF, wouldn't you?)
>
> I am a big fan of free sw, btw. Who isn't? When I started learning Finale
> there were no viable alternatives, free or otherwise, and it's just been
> easiest to stay on that horse once I finally tamed the beast (isn't that
> what Finale stands for? It's Latin or something for "Finally... I figured
> out how to get rid of the measure numbers!" :-) ).
>
> Best wishes,
> Warren Sirota
>