LilyPond For Mac

LilyPond is a free and open source macOS application that enables you to produce high-quality music scores that mimic the scores engraved by hand.

With the help of LilyPond, you can enjoy the aesthetics of the traditionally engraved sheet music on computer printouts.

The interesting part about LilyPond is that it is capable to programmatically provide highly detailed layouts and, at the same time, enables composers, publishers and transcribers to focus on the music and spend less time trying to improve the output.

Hence, musicians can use LilyPond to create elegant sheet music that is easy to read and beautiful to look at. The remarkable font designs, advanced algorithms and style settings are heavily inspired by the finest hand-engraved music scores.

From LilyPond’s main window you can input your text with information about the content of your score and, you also have the option to change the layout and preview the result in real time. The “Undo” function will help you repair any mistakes with just a click of a mouse button.

Moreover, LilyPond comes with version control, a function that makes it easy for you to go through the entire development history of your scores.

Music and text seamlessly work together as you integrate music into LaTeX or HTML and add music to various documents with ease. On top of that, the layout settings can be changed to fit your personal typographical taste.

Consequently, you can store the same score in separate files and switch between two different stylesheets and enjoy two different appearances or layouts.

More experienced users have the option to use the built-in scripting language Scheme, access LilyPond’s layout engine and add their own functions.