12.7.3. Adjust Frescobaldi's Output

⁠12.7.3. Adjust Frescobaldi's Output

These steps are useful in establishing a consistent input style for LilyPond. The things suggested here are also useful for getting used to working with large scores, which can be a challenge in any text editor. Thankfully, careful (and consistent!) code organization goes a long way in helping you to quickly find your way around your files. Setting up files the right way to begin with makes this much easier in the end.

When you first setup the score, Frescobaldi will have created many sections for you by default. The program avoids making too many stylistic choices for you, which allows you to create your own style. It also sets up the default sections in a logical way:

version
header
widely-used settings like tempoMark and "global"
individual parts
score formatting

The specific ordering will become more obvious to you as you get used to LilyPond.

Here are some of the things that I do before inputting notes:

Use section-dividers (like %%%%%%%% NOTES %%%%%%%% for individual parts) to demarcate sections.
Use different levels of dividers (like %%%% RIGHT HAND %%%% for the right hand) to show sub-sections
Add blank lines between large sections, to separate them more obviously
Begin braces on new lines (as
```
\header
{
  title = "Impromptu"
  ...
}
```
instead of on the same line (as
```
\header {
  title = "Impromptu"
  ...
}
```
This is simply a matter of personal taste, resulting from prior experience with C and C-like programming languages.
Familiarize myself with the sections and commands created by Frescobaldi, getting a sense of what the section/command does (even if I don't understand what each specific command does). This makes it easier to sort out problems and customization down the road. Sometimes, when the setup is quite complex, I make comments about what seems to be going on.
At this point, I also added the "Dynamics Context" commands, as described below in the "Piano Dynamics" section