Software: How do you write your gregorian chant?
  • Hi everyone,
    Wondering what software everyone uses to write gregorian chant? I am current using Sibelius 7 and unfortunately It seems there is no way to write chant on it. Wondering if there is a program that can facilitate this? I saw a post where they mention Illuminare Score Editor, but from reading the post it says it might be down and its an online thing.
  • Adam WoodAdam Wood
    Posts: 6,482
    The Illuminare tool is an online interface to Gregorio.
    http://home.gna.org/gregorio/

    Gregorio seems to be becoming the standard for Chant notation.
    Thanked by 1ngsc
  • BenBen
    Posts: 3,114
    I always use gregorio for any project. Not only does it almost automatically create correct chant scores (without needing to worry about following many of the various conventions), but for someone (like me) who is coding oriented, it's by far the quickest way too.

    In addition to that, the code can be shared very easily and used, making it very open source friendly. I wouldn't do it any other way,
    Thanked by 1theloniouslopez
  • thanks! i tried following the link but its an exe file to install. not sure if clicking the right places but hoping this is mac compatible.
  • chonakchonak
    Posts: 9,216
    He probably meant to include this link:
    http://illuminarepublications.com/gregorio/

    That's a nice on-line interface to the gregorio software. You won't need to install any software on your machine.

    My less fancy web interface for running gregorio is at
    http://gregorio.gabrielmass.com/

    But before you use those, you can read the tutorial on using Gregorio:
    http://home.gna.org/gregorio/tutorial/tutorial-gabc-01
  • Adam WoodAdam Wood
    Posts: 6,482
    thelonius-
    The link I posted is to the Gregorio home page, not an exe file.
    Gregorio is a bit of a burden to spin up on your machine, so the two web based tools chonak mentioned are your best bet until you're ready to turn hardcore geek and get your own install of TeX up and running on your own machine.
    Thanked by 1theloniouslopez
  • Carl DCarl D
    Posts: 992
    I used Gregoire, but it's a very old program at this point - probably 8 or 9 years. And I haven't been writing much in the last couple of years. The other options have improved a lot.
    Thanked by 1theloniouslopez
  • InDesign + caecelia font.
    Thanked by 1theloniouslopez
  • donr
    Posts: 971
    I only need small snippets for leaflets and programs so using Illuminare Score Editor is perfect for what I need.
    For modern notation or chant notation you can load the Saint Meinrad fonts onto your computer and simply type them in using your favorite document editor.
    Thanked by 1theloniouslopez
  • tomjaw
    Posts: 2,782
    Apple Pages + Caecilia font
    Thanked by 1theloniouslopez
  • @March Cerisier: I'm actually starting to use InDesign, is the Caecelia font free? Do you import of a staff or how do you write your music on InDesign?

    @donr: THANKS! that is pretty much straight-forward font
  • http://marello.org/caeciliae/

    There's a great PDF at the above site explaining the font. It's much easier to use than the st meinrad fonts, though I do use their melody font in indesign also. The beauty of caeciliae is that the pitch and type of nueme are entered separately, instead of every possibly having to be a character in the font. For example, you'd enter '3p' for a punctum at line 3. Multi element nuemes are super easy also. I highly recommend trying it. It is free.
    Thanked by 1theloniouslopez
  • francis
    Posts: 10,821
    thelon

    Here is my inDesign drag and drop chant method. This is 1 of 3. The others are there on youtube if you find the first one useful enough.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gYp2Xg3dyMA&feature=youtube_gdata_player
    Thanked by 1theloniouslopez
  • matthewjmatthewj
    Posts: 2,700
    If you're looking to do modern notation, I use Finale. I've been able to get some good results for doing Psalm tone stuff.
  • I started with InDesign + Caeciliae. After setting chant pieces that spanned several pages though, I found that I was spending more time correcting layout and pagination than I was on the chant itself. So I wrote my own layout program...my screen looks like the attached screenshot when setting chant: 1) write the chant in a gabc-like format; 2) run it through the layout engine; 3) place the generated images/PDFs in InDesign for publishing.

    The major reason I didn't go with gregorio was mostly personal...I don't enjoy working with TeX, I wanted more control over the layout than I had with gregorio, and I just wanted to tackle the problem of chant layout for the fun of it. When gregorio started using the Caeciliae glyphs back in 2008, I nearly just went with it. In the end though, I needed some other features than I couldn't accomplish with gregorio, so I'm still using a custom solution for now...
    workspace.png
    1600 x 900 - 306K
  • I'm using gregorio for all chant scores and Lilypond for the rest.
    Thanked by 1theloniouslopez
  • CHGiffenCHGiffen
    Posts: 5,193
    Gregorio for chant, Finale for the rest. Lilypond is okay, but not as flexible for formatting as Finale is for my purposes - which may be influenced by my long time use of and corresponding familiarity with Finale.
    Thanked by 1theloniouslopez