From Denemo - Free and Open Music Notation Editor

Denemo is a music notation program for Linux and Windows that lets you rapidly enter notation for typesetting via the LilyPond music engraver. Music can be typed in at the PC-Keyboard, or played in via MIDI controller, or input acoustically into a microphone plugged into your computer's soundcard.

Denemo itself does not engrave the music for printout - it uses LilyPond which generates beautiful sheet music to the highest publishing standards. Denemo just displays the staffs in a slim and efficient way, so you can enter and edit the music efficiently.

The word Denemo is a corruption of the French word dénouement. From Wikipedia: In literature, a dénouement (IPA:/deˈnuːmɑ̃/) consists of a series of events that follow the climax of a drama or narrative, and thus serves as the conclusion of the story. This would mean the pronounciation has to be french, but all other ways have been heard, too. To (double-)quote Denemo's developer Jeremiah Benham: But it in the spirit of linus torvald, "I don't care what you call it, just as long as you use it."

Features

• Logically arranged menus to locate any particular command - once found the keypress and/or mouse-action to use is displayed with the command.
• Complete, quick and easy control over which keypress/mouse-action to use for any particular Denemo action. E.g. if you have a lot of notes to *** assign the *** action to a mouse-click and go through the score ***-ing by clicking on the notes. (Fill in your choice of command at ***)
• Help for every command on the menu item itself - just right click.
• Playing back your music while the measures scroll on the screen.
• PDF output, with a choice of parts, full score, reduced score - all the control that the LilyPond language supplies. Output of excerpts as graphics (.png format) for inclusion in documents, web pages etc.
• Multiple movements/songs in one Denemo file.
• Entering music following rhythmic patterns - type in the rhythm once and you need only type in the notes in future when the same rhythm recurs.
• Playing music in via MIDI - the notes played are entered according to the prevailing rhythm, or overlaying a rhythm previously entered. The enharmonic range can be set (e.g. Eb-G# or Ab-D# etc) and shifted as the music is entered.
• Playing music in via microphone - the notes played are detected and entered as with entering notes via MIDI (see previous entry).
• Files of Templates and Examples showing you how to exploit LilyPond features. An extreme example - a cue in one part extracted from another part. Should you edit the first part, the cue changes automatically! As usual, Denemo does not display the cue, only a sign telling you what LilyPond is doing.
• A musical instrument tuner - in fact, probably the best. Temperaments include mean-tone and the Lehman temperament for J.S. Bach.
• Control of Denemo from scripts. Scripts can be named and included in the menu system, given keyboard shortcuts, etc. In this way Denemo can be tailored to support the commands you need.
• Tabs for multiple files opened
• Customization of the command set available to you - it can select commands for, say, piano music leaving out commands for, say, choral music. This makes it easier to find the commands you need, while leaving the option of loading more command-sets.
• Customization for mouse-users. Mouse shortcuts can be set as with keyboard shortcuts. Examples included: dragging notes around, drawing slurs and crescendos..
• in git: Custom sets of buttons for your most-used commands
• Customization of Score, Layout, Movement, Staff, Voice, Clefs, Key signatures, Time signatures, Notes and Chords. Enables such things as fingering, fret number, Drum Clef ... to be set/edited separately.
• Print Preview Pane. Graphics can be captured from this pane to be used to represent elements in Denemo. Elements can be dragged in this frame and the drag applied to the element in Denemo - WYSIWYG comes to Denemo!
• General Edit Object action. By default right click edits any object, including the clef, time signature and key signature; also staff and score directives are editable by a right click at the start of the staff/score.
• Background printing to print preview window and to viewer.
• Downloading new commands and edit scripts between releases of Denemo
• MIDI Tempo and Volume changes and MIDI message inserts.
• Edit lyrics in built-in text editor and see the syllable placement as you type. Multiple verses per voice allowed.
• Denemo can update its set of commands (scripted menu items) without recompiling by connecting to its online server.
• Pasting LilyPond text directly into the Denemo window. By pasting the actual music text a Denemo editable score can be created from almost any LilyPond file.
• Unfinished measure indicator. Shows you which measures are short/overfull of notes/rests.
• Easy generation of new commands from an existing example: no knowledge of scheme required!
• With JACK, the playback starts from the cursor or plays back the selection if there is one. All this happens without re-creating the MIDI data, and in any case without generating external files.
• Easier setting/unsetting the selection by mouse clicks.
• Volume and Tempo changes in MIDI output, and insertion of arbitrary MIDI messages at any point in the music.
• Display of attributes set on the Score and separately on each movement: Titles, page breaks etc are now displayed & can be clicked on to edit them.
• Popup attributes set on Staffs and Voices so they can be edited.
• Easy positioning cursor with mouse even when there are several voices on a staff.
• Timebase - after MIDI playback the timing of a note is given on the status bar when the cursor is moved onto it
• Educational games - note naming and more via keyboard or mouse

Whats next?

There is also a Roadmap where we write down our ideas and Wishlist-entries.