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<i>36C3 preroll music</i>

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Herald: Welcome back to the WikipakaWG,

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live from Congress, wir haben Lucas da,[br]Lucas is back, Lucas was just here 15

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minutes ago, and now he's going to talk[br]about LilyPond. LilyPond is like LaTeX but

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for music notes and I hope you will have[br]fun!

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Lucas: Yeah. Thank you. Yeah, so I just[br]want to talk a bit about LilyPond, which

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is a really cool program, in my opinion,[br]to turn basically plain text input, such

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as the code you can see up here, into[br]beautifully typeset musical scores, such

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as down here, and that's actually the[br]result of this code up here, so you can

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try to find what belongs to what or[br]something. And, yeah, it’s free software

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obviously, it takes plain text as input,[br]which means you can put the code in a git

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repository and add comments and stuff,[br]it's all very nice, the output is PDF, or

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MIDI if you want to listen back to it, or[br]you can even integrate it into LaTeX or

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Texinfo documents, such as these slides,[br]which are created with LaTeX beamer and

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LilyPond in them, which is really funny[br]combination and it works perfectly well.

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So let's just start with some of the[br]syntax elements in a LilyPond file, and

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it's pretty straightforward to make a note[br]with a certain note name, you write that

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note name, so this is (I think) the[br]American note names, I'm not sure if the

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English ones use different ones, but[br]ABCDEFGA are the note names, and you write

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the letter and you get a note in return,[br]and the relative mode here means that each

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note is going to be as close as possible[br]to the previous one, for example this A

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here at the beginning and the one at the[br]end, that's the same input, but you can

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see they resulted in different notes, so[br]this is one octave higher than the

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original one, because that's the note[br]that's closest to the preceding note, and

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to control the duration of a note, you put[br]a number after it, for example this is a

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quarter note, so you put a number four[br]after it, this is a sixteenth note, so you

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put a sixteen after it, and if it's a[br]dotted note, such like this one, you put a

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literal dot after it. So there's a fair[br]bit of ASCII art in there, which is kind

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of cute, and if it's more complicated,[br]like the triplets here at the end, you

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write something like this \tuplet, so[br]that's kind of inspired by LaTeX syntax,

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this backslashes and braces business, so[br]this started out, actually, as a – I

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assume horrible – hack to make actually[br]LaTeX produce these scores, and then

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eventually they realized that's not going[br]to work, we should actually write this as

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a dedicated program in C or C++ (I don't[br]remember which one), but the syntax kind

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of stayed similar, at least, in[br]remembrance of that. And let's go back to

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a bit more syntax, as I said, in relative[br]mode the notes try to stay close together,

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for example if I would just write C after[br]this G, it would be the upper C up here,

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because that's closer than the lower C[br]down here, and to get the lower C, which

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is correct in this melody (if you can[br]identify it that's an Easter Egg for you),

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I put a comma after it, and to then jump[br]back to the upper G instead of the lower

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one, I put an apostrophe after it, which[br]depending on the font – in this one it

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works really well, it's kind of the same[br]character, just at the bottom and at the

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top the line. In German the apostrophe is[br]also sometimes called the Hochkomma, the

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upper comma, so it kind of makes sense[br]that you have these two characters to jump

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up and down between octaves, and then you[br]start to get a feel eventually when you

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need them and when you don't need them.[br]But otherwise you can just compile your

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LilyPond code as often as you want and see[br]if it's right or not, because it doesn't

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take that long. And if you need to modify[br]the notes further, so if you have flat or

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sharp notes, you can teach LilyPond to[br]understand “G sharp”, for example, but no

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one will understand your score, because[br]the standard notation in LilyPond is to

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add either an -is or an -es to the end of[br]the note, which is exactly what these

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notes are called in German, which is very[br]convenient if you're German, like me – the

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manual says it's Dutch notation or[br]something – so fis means the F sharp, but

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what's important is, this doesn't[br]literally mean: put an F and then put a

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sharp right in front of it, it means,[br]logically, in the music, there's an F

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sharp, but then LilyPond can look, for[br]example here it just puts an F, because

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the F sharp is already part of the key[br]signature, this whole snippet is in B

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minor, so it has to have… no, it's in E[br]minor, sorry, so it has to have F sharp

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already and we don't need to put one here.[br]On the other hand, here we have an F, and

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in the syntax, in the input that's just an[br]F, but then LilyPond knows, because the

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key signature has an F sharp, it actually[br]needs to put a natural sign here to cancel

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that out. So what you put in is kind of[br]the logical, real music, so to speak, and

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then it's LilyPond’s job to figure out,[br]where do I need to put these accidentals,

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where do I need to put these natural[br]signs, and this depends even on which

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century’s style you're trying to emulate[br]and which instrument, like sometimes these

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things are in parentheses and sometimes[br]they're not, but in general all of this is

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LilyPond’s job, you put in just the music[br]and LilyPond makes a beautiful score for

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you, that's the job, at least. If that[br]doesn't work out, you can tweak the

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output, and here I have some… a bit[br]sillier tweaks, for example I wanted a

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larger note head, for some reason, and the[br]note head is a character in a special font

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which LilyPond ships and embeds in this[br]PDF file, and if I say, I would like to

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add 4 to the font size, then I get a[br]larger note head, at least for this one

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note. Or I can say I would like the color[br]of all the note heads to be in dark red

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now, or this tie, which would normally be[br]downwards, like this one, it should now go

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upwards, because I've overridden it here,[br]and I can even say – so this tie is

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actually a cubic Bezier curve, so it's[br]going to have four control points, and I

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would like to add these four pairs of[br]offsets to the four control points, to

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make this kind of looping shape – that's[br]obviously very silly, but sometimes this

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can be useful, like if you have a score[br]where you have a long… articulation bow

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(I'm not sure what it's called in English,[br]actually), but this kind of thing over a

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long period of notes, where it makes like[br]a Z shape or an S shape, and LilyPond

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can't figure that out by itself, then you[br]can tell it, I would like the curve to

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look exactly like this, and kind of tweak[br]the output as much as you want. And you

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can actually go even further than this –[br]does anyone in the audience recognize this

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kind of syntax here? This kind of –[br](audience member: Lisp!) Yes! Lisp, it is

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a dialect of Lisp called Scheme, so you[br]can embed whole Scheme programs in your

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score, so here I've said the color of each[br]stem should be controlled by this lambda,

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this anonymous function, which takes a[br]graphical object, in this case that's

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going to be the stem, and compare the[br]direction of that to “up”, if it's “up”,

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then return red, otherwise return blue, so[br]now I have a score where all the stems are

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blue if they point down and red if they[br]point up, which is completely pointless,

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but it's very funny. And you can go much[br]further than this, like, this is some

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monstrosity I wrote because I wanted to[br]have this score, where you can see, in the

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right hand, here, you have the same notes[br]twice, once in the baseline and then one

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octave higher, and it's just always one[br]octave higher, and for some reason I could

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not be bothered to actually add the second[br]note to each of the eight chords here,

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which would have taken, like, two minutes[br]at most, and instead I spent, like, one

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and a half hours putting together this[br]code, which takes an arbitrary melody and

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goes through it and for each note creates[br]a copied note which is somewhere here,

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yeah, it creates a copy of the note, then[br]sets the pitch to something else and

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copies some of the articulations but not[br]others, so this has a second tie here but

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it should not have a second fermata sign,[br]and in the end you have this function and

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you can even put it on StackOverflow or[br]something, and that kind of represents

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what I really like about LilyPond, that it[br]represents this whole spectrum between

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just simple music transcription and full-[br]blown programming, so if I get home at the

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end of the day, and I'm really tired and[br]don't have much mental capacity, I can

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just take some public domain score and[br]transcribe it and just say, this is a D,

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this is an F sharp, this is a quarter[br]note, and so on, and it doesn't take much

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work, but if I want, if I feel up to it or[br]if I want to have some fun, then I can

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also do the whole programming thing and[br]write monsters like this and completely

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bend the score to my will, make it look[br]exactly how I want to, and that's what I

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find really neat about LilyPond, and if[br]you want to find out more about that,

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there are two manuals here, they're really[br]well written, I basically read them front

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to back a while ago, and they have lots of[br]examples as well. The LilyPond snippet

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repository is even cooler, it's just a[br]huge collection of tiny snippets of

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LilyPond code, and all of them are CC0, so[br]you can use them however you want without

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worrying about attribution or anything,[br]and you can even try it out in your

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browser, on lilybin.com, without[br]installing anything, and if you're

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wondering, “wait, doesn't that mean I'm[br]running arbitrary code on someone else's

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computer?” – it's not my computer,… I[br]don't know, knock yourself out, I guess,

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but that's all I have already, I'm out of[br]time, but thank you for indulging me!

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<i>applause</i>

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<i>postroll music</i>

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