Re: Creating MP3 files

[mskala]

On Mon, 14 Oct 2019, Lisa C Lewis wrote:
> It appears that LilyPond only creates MIDI output.  Given that I need to
> share the audio with other people who may not have MIDI players, is
> there a means of generating MP3 files?  If not, what do folks recommend
> for converting MIDI to MP3?  I've looked through the documentation, but
> if it's in there I missed it.

Creating MP3, or any digital-audio format, requires synthesizing the
actual sounds of the notes.  It's far outside the scope of what a music
notation program does and no surprise Lilypond doesn't do it;
Lilypond isn't even good at MIDI, and MIDI is much closer to scope.

I usually use TiMidity++ (http://timidity.sourceforge.net/) to synthesize
WAV files from Lilypond MIDI output, then LAME to encode the WAV files
into MP3 (encoding MP3 would usually also be a separate step from the
audio synthesis).  With this or any software synth, the choice of a
library of patches or samples is also quite important - probably more
important to the final sound than the synthesis software itself.  Most
often, I use the "Nordic Upright Piano" soundfont which I licensed from
Precisionsound; they appear to be selling it now at
   
https://majesy.com/samples-sounds/nordic-upright-piano-v2-multiformat-krock.html

but that wasn't the Web site through which I bought the product several
years ago; I don't know the history there.  There are free soundfonts
available, and other commercial ones for sounds other than piano, but I
don't have specific recommendations.

-- 
Matthew Skala
address@hidden                 People before tribes.
https://ansuz.sooke.bc.ca/