Additional functionality of music21, such as plotting graphs, is available with the installation of additional Python libraries. The following topics cover additional software used by music21. For each library, visit the websites listed below, download the additional python libraries, and install them just as you did with music21 above. If you don’t feel like installing them now, no worries: you can always install them later.
The Python Imaging Library provides resources for transforming and editing graphics files. Without this library, the output from Lilypond is less good.
Graphing and visual displays in Music21 are provided by Matplotlib. Matplotlib itself has additional dependencies (such as SciPy). Please read the detailed instructions in the link below.
Additional functionality of Music21 is available with the installation of numerous helper applications. While not essential for all applications, these tools will aid in working with Music21.
MuseScore offers a free, full-featured, cross-platform (Windows, Mac OS, Ubuntu, Debian, and Fedora) application for viewing and editing music notation. MuseScore can import and export MusicXML, and provides an excellent way to view, edit, and export musical data for working in music21. Use of MuseScore is highly recommended for working with music21.
Finale is one of the industry leaders in creating musical scores. It can import MusicXML that music21 generates and let you see, edit, or print these scores for your own use. There is also a free version of Finale, Finale Reader that can load MusicXML files but cannot edit them. The reader is available for Windows and Mac OS computers. Use of Finale or Finale reader is highly recommended for working with music21.
http://www.finalemusic.com/Reader
On Windows, after you install Finale or Finale Reader, you will probably want to associate .xml files so that they are automatically opened by Finale or Finale Reader. To do so download http://web.mit.edu/music21/blank.xml to your desktop. Right click the file in on your desktop and click “Open with” then choose “browse”, select c:\Program Files\Finale Reader\Finale Reader.exe (or c:\Programs\Finale\Finale.exe depending on if you’re on Windows Vista or if you’re using Finale vs. Finale Reader), and the check the box for always using this program for opening xml files. (Thanks to Craig Sapp for this missing step)
Lilypond is a free, open-source music display program that can produce beautiful scores. Music21 can generate PDF or PNG (like JPG) files automatically if Lilypond is installed on your system. Download it at:
Eclipse is a free, open-source integrated development environment (IDE), essentially a program that makes writing (and finding bugs in) other programs much easier. Eclipse is set up primarily for editing in Java, but the add-in PyDev makes it extremely powerful for creating Python scripts as well. First download Eclipse at:
Then follow the “Quick Install” instructions in the right-hand column of: