LilyPond

LilyPond is a music engraving program, devoted to producing the highest-quality sheet music possible. It brings the aesthetics of traditionally engraved music to computer printouts. LilyPond is free software and part of the GNU Project.

General information

• Main website: https://lilypond.org
• Downloads: https://lilypond.org/download.html
• Documentation: https://lilypond.org/manuals
• Official repository: https://savannah.gnu.org/projects/lilypond
• Development repository and issue tracker: https://gitlab.com/lilypond/lilypond
• Mailing lists: https://lilypond.org/contact
• Contributor’s Guide: https://lilypond.org/doc/latest/Documentation/contributor

Overview

LilyPond is a text-based music notation program. It produces elegant, balanced scores, the look of which was inspired by classical hand-engraving. LilyPond is cross-platform and extremely flexible thanks to its extension system written in the Scheme programming language.

More about LilyPond in our Introduction.

Building and installing

Binaries are available at https://lilypond.org/download.html

For compiling LilyPond yourself, refer to Compiling in the Contributor's Guide.

Versioning

LilyPond uses a versioning scheme that easily identifies stable and development releases. In a version x.y.z, an even second number y denotes a stable version. For development versions, y is odd.

Documentation

The manuals can be read online at https://lilypond.org/manuals

It is also possible to build the documentation locally: follow the instructions at https://lilypond.org/doc/latest/Documentation/contributor/generating-documentation

Support

The lilypond-user@gnu.org mailing list is the primary place for users to help each other. Refer to Contact for subscription and archives. Mailing lists in other languages are also referenced there.

Contributing

LilyPond is run by volunteers. If you are interested in contributing, please get in touch with us on the lilypond-devel@gnu.org mailing list (more information). The Contributor’s Guide will help you get started.