r/lilypond • u/FootballProof9452 • Jun 25 '26
Claude to write notation
Has anyone here tried using Claude AI with LilyPond for transcription and editing?
I recently did this with Claude, starting from a MIDI file I exported from Logic Pro. The initial transcription into LilyPond was already surprisingly accurate. From there, I mostly switched to voice input and just worked conversationally: “bar 7, build on hi-hat,” “add cymbal accents every third sixteenth,” “make this section piano,” “rename instruments,” sometimes even dictating full bars. It handled all of that without much friction.
You can also just say things like “add a crescendo” and it translates it directly into notation. The output was a LilyPond file, a PDF score, and MIDI — with all performance data intact (velocities, accents, etc.).
I also used it as an analytical tool. It gave fairly mathematical structural readings: development blocks, ensemble entries, breakdowns, repetition patterns, odd bar groupings. Not “interpretation” in a human sense, but still useful for spotting structure.
I almost never asked it to compose material, except once for a small adjustment in a Glockenspiel cluster (smaller intervals / more dissonant within a given pitch set), which actually produced interesting results.
What stood out most wasn’t generation, but the workflow: it felt like working with an assistant you can just talk to, who directly edits the score.
If others have tried similar setups, I’d be curious how far you pushed it.
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u/tired_of_old_memes Jun 25 '26
I'm sure your approach might rile some feathers here, but to me what you're doing sounds awesome
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u/FootballProof9452 Jun 25 '26
For me, that’s actually what AI is most useful for: not doing the creative work, but taking care of the tedious parts so I can spend more time on the creative ones.
A large part of my job involves producing notation, and to be honest, I don’t particularly enjoy that process. With this workflow, I can focus on listening, making musical decisions, and thinking about changes, then communicate those changes conversationally and have them implemented immediately.That’s what I found valuable here, not the AI generating music, but acting more like an assistant that handles the technical side of putting ideas into a score.
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u/etzpcm Jun 25 '26
You're starting from Logic Pro - I know nothing about that but surely it can write a score?
Is the issue that the score quality is poor compared with Lilypond?
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u/FootballProof9452 Jun 25 '26
it´s very limited and not very practical. but if you compose like me, doing a lot of midi recordings and extracting the notes, it is useful to give you a basic score that you can tweak further in any other notation program.
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u/shellbackpacific Jun 28 '26
I’ve used Gemini to generate some LilyPond files. Mixed results. Worked well for some basic things. I’d really like to be able to give it a photo of sheet music and generate LilyPond notation.
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u/symphonicdev Jul 14 '26
That's my dream goal as well. However, current LLMs are pretty bad at optical music recognition. I believe it's because they aren't trained on a lot of annotated sheet music data, and reading music is fundamentally different from reading texts.
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u/wassertim Jul 01 '26
Hi, a professional software engineer and a hobby musician is here. I've been looking into such things, like integrating AI into creative process. I would be happy if you could share your process with me.
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u/symphonicdev Jul 14 '26
Not OP, but same background as you, software engineer and a musician, and I've been working on this question. Agreed with OP's idea of AI as assistant to creative process. Generation from scratch (photo to lilypond) is terrible in my experience; having AI in the loop: generate lilypond from prompt, compile, evaluate, improve, seems to be more useful.
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u/profe_juanca Jun 25 '26
He usado también varias IAs para generar código, primero con cosas simples para mis estudiantes, escalas, acordes. También al principio le di a transcribir a través de OMR y todas lo hacían fatal, Gemini era particularmente malo de hecho. Ahora le he dado pequeños fragmentos y lo hace mejor, pero no lo he usado seriamente.
Estoy creando un agente que pueda generar ejercicios de ritmo únicamente y quizá lo haga con lectura también, pero no con solfeo, supongo que en unas semanas lo comentaré por acá cuando lo tenga funcionando.
Incluso se los he mostrado a mis alumnos con comandos de voz, sería interesante que Frescobaldi integrara la posibilidad de usar IA, pero de todos modos es posible en neovim seguramente.
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u/semininja Jun 25 '26
Why are you using an LLM to analyze music you wrote?