LilyPond

LilyPond 2.26.0

Text-based music engraving and score creation

LilyPond is an open-source music engraving program that turns text-based notation into printed scores. It automatically handles spacing, line and page breaks, symbol placement, and collisions in polyphonic music. Its notation covers orchestral parts, lyrics, tablature, percussion, microtones, tuplets and more. Automated processing also supports bulk score generation.

LilyPond 2.26.0 details

Author:
License: Open Source
Price: FREE
Released:
File size: 43.50 MB
Downloads: 833
Keywords: text based music notation, metronomic, Han-Wen Nienhuys, notation, LilyPond software, mensural, lilypond download, music notation software, x64 architecture, orchestral score creator, open-source software, music notation, sheet music engraving, print music, music score to pdf, Mensural notation, Windows 10 compatible
Author URL: https://lilypond.org/
LilyPond screenshot
LilyPondOtherWindows 11, Windows 10 32/64 bit

User Rating: 2.3 (9 votes)

LilyPond Awards

Windows 10 download 5 stars award Windows 10 download editor's pick

LilyPond for Windows 10 - Full description

LilyPond is an open-source music engraving program for composers, arrangers, music educators and publishers who want to create printed scores from text-based notation. Rather than arranging notes by dragging them across a page, users write musical instructions in source files and process them with LilyPond. This approach suits both carefully edited individual works and repeatable score-generation workflows.

The program lays out notation automatically, including spacing between notes and measures, line breaks and page breaks. It positions accidentals, beams, slurs and ties using engraving rules, and manages collisions among notes, dots and rests in polyphonic passages. These decisions help keep a score readable as its musical content changes, without requiring users to adjust every symbol manually. LilyPond's Feta music font was designed for the program to give its symbols the character of engraved notation.

Its notation supports a broad range of musical forms and detail. Users can create orchestral scores with automatic part combining, extract parts, transpose passages and quote music fragments. Other capabilities include lyrics, chord names, figured bass, guitar tablature and fret diagrams, drum notation, grace notes, ornaments, tremolos, tuplets, microtones and quarter-tone accidentals. Score details such as dynamics, metronome markings, fingerings, piano pedals, cue notes, polymetric passages and adjustable staff layouts can also be represented. Teaching-oriented tools include balloon text, colored or blanked notation elements, and analysis brackets.

Because LilyPond runs without requiring interaction during score generation, it can be incorporated into automated workflows. This makes it useful for producing many scores from digitized music databases, generating algorithmic compositions, or rebuilding a score after edits to its source. Text-based files also make notation changes explicit and repeatable, which can be helpful when maintaining related versions of a piece or working with scripts and other text-processing tools.

LilyPond is free and open source, and this release is available for Windows 10 and Windows 11 on 32-bit and 64-bit systems. Its text-based method differs from a conventional graphical score editor, so it is most suitable for users comfortable entering notation as structured instructions. The resulting pages are designed for printing or sharing as sheet music, with layout handled by the engraving engine rather than by manual page composition.

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