Using verovio in a terminal

Getting started

Downloading verovio

To use the command-line version of verovio, you must first download and compile it.

Installing git

To download, use git. Which may need to be downloaded first.

To check if you have git installed on your computer, type the command:

which git

If git is installed, then the above command will report where it is located. If no location is given, then git is not installed.

Cloning from Github

Once git is installed, download verovio with this command:

git clone https://github.com/rism-ch/verovio

Cloning a repository with git means to download it. This command should download the verovio source code to a directory called verovio in the current directory.

Select develop-humdrum branch

The most up-to-date version of verovio for use with Humdrum is found in the develop-humdrum branch of the repository. Switch to this branch with the command:

cd verovio
git checkout develop-humdrum

Installing cmake

You must also have cmake installed in order to configure the Makefile for compiling verovio. Type:

which cmake

To see if it is installed. If not then it will have to be installed. To install in MacOS if you can run the following command to install cmake if Homebrew is installed:

brew install cmake

For linux, one of the commands yum install cmake, apt-get install cmake or dnf install cmake should install cmake. Which installation command to run will depend on your version of linux.

Creating Makefile with cmake

Next, you need to create a makefile for verovio with this command:

cd tools
cmake ../cmake

Compiling the executable

After cmake has created the Makefile, type this command to compile verovio:

make
make install

The make install will copy the verovio music fonts to /usr/local/share/verovio, and the executable will be copied to /usr/local/bin/verovio.

You can test if the installation is complete by typing:

which verovio

and the command should reply with /usr/local/bin/verovio.

Updating verovio

To update verovio later to the most recent vervio, you can do these commands:

cd verovio/tools
git pull
make
make install

If there have been major changes to the source code, then you might have to add make clean before make:

cd verovio/tools
git pull
make clean
make
make install

Using verovio

See the verovio command-line documentation page for a full list of options that verovio recognizes. Typing:

verovio --help

will give a list of most options.

Basic conversion from Humdrum to SVG

The simplest use of verovio to convert Humdrum data into an SVG image is:

verovio file.krn

This will create a file called file.svg with the notation. Here is some Humdrum data to use as a test. This is what the SVG output should look like:

–adjust-page-height

Notice that the example in the previous section has a large empty space at the bottom of the SVG image. A particularly useful option to fix this is --adjust-page-height. This option will shrink the height of the output SVG image to the last system of music on a page with extra space below the last staff.

You can set the page height to be very high, and then add --adjust-page-height to force all music to be displayed in a single SVG image, even if there is a lot of music:

verovio file.krn --adjust-page-height -h 60000

Now the SVG image output will not have any empty space at the bottom of the music:

Piping data into verovio

Verovio accepts standard input if you use - as the input filename. For example, if you want to transpose the test data to G minor and print with verovio in one command:

transpose -kg file.krn | verovio - -o d-minor-version --adjust-page-height

This will create the file d-minor-version.svg:

Image height/width

Here is an example of setting the height and width of the SVG image:

verovio file.krn -w 900 -h 1500

Selecting a page

If the rendered notation is longer than one page, use the --page option:

verovio file.krn -w 900 -h 1500 --page=2

Scaling the image

The -s option can be used to set the size of the notation, with the default being -s 100 for 100% (full-size).

verovio file.krn -w 1000 -h 60000 --adjust-page-height -s 20

Output all pages

The --all-pages option can be used to output all pages with a single command:

verovio file.krn -w 1000 -h 1000 --all-pages -s 50

Page 1:

Page 2:

Page 3:

Page 4:

Adjusting the space between systems

The --spacing-system option controls the distance between systems. The units of the paremeter argument are in diatonic step heights.

The default padding between systems is “6” which is equal to the height of 3 staff lines. Using 0 will still leave space between the systems, but it is the minimum value for this option.

verovio file.krn -w 1000 -h 1000 --page=2 --spacing-system=0 -s 50

verovio file.krn -w 1000 -h 1100 --page=2 --spacing-system=8 -s 50

The --spacing-staff option functions similar to --spacing-system, but controls the distance betwen staves within a system.

Equal-duration spacing

You can set the value for the --spacing-non-linear to 1 in order to generate music notation which has horizontal spacing between notes which is proportional to the duration of the notes.

The --spacing-linear option (default 0.25) usually has to be used in this case to compress the notation; otherwise it is too wide when setting only the --spacing-non-linear.

verovio file.krn -w 1000 -h 1000 --spacing-system=0 -s 40 --spacing-non-linear=1 --spacing-linear=0.05 --page=2

The --spacing-non-linear option is used to control the ratio of the horizontal layout widths of a note and note with twice the former’s duration. Setting this ratio to 1 is linear spacing (the name of the option is confusing). Setting to a value of 0.5 produces an equal spacing for all note durations:

verovio file.krn -w 1000 -h 1000 --spacing-system=0 -s 40 --spacing-non-linear=0.5 --spacing-linear=0.05

The basic spacing of the notes will be slightly adjusted in order to fit accidentals into the music. And notice that each line of music in the above exmaple have slightly different spacings from the other staves since the systems are justified to the full width of the page, causing the music on each staff to be stretched or compressed slightly.

Convert Humdrum data into MEI data

Here is an example of how to convert Humdrum data into MEI data:

verovio file.krn -t mei --all-pages --no-layout

The last two options are required when converting into MEI data.

Options:

-t mei

set the target output to the MEI format (default is SVG).

–all-pages

include all pages of data (no pages really, but still required).

–no-layout

do not calculate notation layout (which is only needed for SVG creating).

Convert MusicXML into Humdrum data

You can use the embedded MusicXML-to-Humdrum converter to generate Humdrum data from an input MusicXML file:

verovio file.xml -t musicxml-hum