2. Make one note — Abjad v1.1.1 documentation

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# 2. Make one note

Type the following and hit return.

    abjad> Note(13, (1, 4))
    Note(c'', 4)

Abjad responds with the Abjad representation of the note you created.

Now name the note and call `show()`.

    abjad> note = Note(13, (1, 4))
    abjad> show(note)

Abjad does some behind-the-scenes work to format the note as LilyPond input, call LilyPond, and then display the resulting PDF that LilyPond creates.

And now that we see the note we’ve created, we can look over our work and decide what comes next: perhaps staccato or marcato articulations, or maybe more notes.

Note

The Abjad workcycle

We’ve so far made only one note. But we’ve now traversed the Abjad workcycle for the very first time. No matter what type of work you’re doing in Abjad, and no matter how complex or involved a piece of notation you’re in the process of building up, the Abjad workcycle stays basically the same and goes something like this.

1. Describe some gesture, texture or other score element as Abjad code.
2. Inspect the notation that Abjad produces as a result.
3. Repeat, going back to step 1 to describe your material in greater, or different, detail.

This describe - inspect - repeat workcycle is both iterative and incremental, and we’ll meet it over and over again as we explore Abjad in greater detail.

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