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3.6.1 Supported notation for MIDI

The following musical notation can be used with LilyPond’s default capabilities to produce MIDI output;

• Breath marks
• Chords entered as chord names
• Crescendi, decrescendi over multiple notes. The volume is altered linearly between the two extremes
• Dynamic markings from ppppp to fffff, including mp, mf and sf
• Lyrics
• Markers: rehearsal marks, segni, coda marks, and section labels
• Microtones but not microtonal chords. A MIDI player that supports pitch bending will also be required.
• Pitches
• Rhythms entered as note durations, including tuplets
• ‘Simple’ articulations; staccato, staccatissimo, accent, marcato and portato
• Tempo changes using the \tempo function
• Ties
• Tremolos that are not entered with a ‘:[number]’ value

Panning, balance, expression, reverb and chorus effects can also be controlled by setting context properties, see Context properties for MIDI effects.

When combined with the articulate script the following, additional musical notation can be output to MIDI;

• Appoggiaturas. These are made to take half the value of the note following (without taking dots into account). For example;

  \appoggiatura c8 d2.
  

  The c will take the value of a crotchet.

• Ornaments (i.e., mordents, trills and turns et al.)
• Rallentando, accelerando, ritardando and a tempo
• Slurs, including phrasing slurs
• Tenuto

See Enhancing MIDI output.