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LilyPond

Music notation for everyone.

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LilyPond is a music engraving program that processes text input to produce sheet music. It is free software under the GNU Project, running on GNU/Linux, macOS, and Windows. The text-based approach keeps score content and layout tweaks human-readable, supporting version control and accessibility through speech recognition and screen readers.

Features include automatic spacing, line and page breaking, and resolution of clashes between lyrics, notes, and chords. Layout is customizable through style sheets and the built-in Scheme scripting language. LilyPond can be embedded in LaTeX, HTML, OpenOffice.org, and LibreOffice via OOoLilyPond, with plugins for blogs and wikis. As a command-line tool, it can be called from other applications and scripts for programmatic score generation. Documentation and example files are included, and an active mailing list provides user support.

12 alternatives to LilyPond

Ranked by how well each tool replaces LilyPond: shared features, audience, price and popularity.

  1. Flat

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    Covers 7 of 12 key features.

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  2. MuseScore Studio

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    Covers 2 of 12 key features.

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  3. Denemo

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    Covers 0 of 12 key features.

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  4. GIMP

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  5. Frescobaldi

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  6. Processing

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  7. KiCad

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    Covers 7 of 12 key features.

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  8. Rosegarden

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  9. BandLab

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    Covers 2 of 12 key features.

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  10. Adobe

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  11. Myriad (Harmony Assistant)

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  12. Kile

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