Try Finale Notepad (also freeware) instead. Totally GUI, free, and the starter program in the series that leads to Finale, the most powerful score writing program of all, and the one used by the majority of professional music engravers.

I really don't like this coding approach. I use BBEdit to write HTML, CSS and PHP by hand, and even I can see that music engraving is one place that you don't want to use code. Music really benefits from GUI, using something like Finale Notepad gives you true WYSIWYG.

Of course there are many text/CLI/non-GUI tools which are essential (bash, vi, pico etc.) but I personally wouldn't put LilyPond in that category, it's heading in the wrong direction IMHO.

One thing that really concerns me about this project is that the developer states "Don't waste time with tweaking the output; LilyPond gets the formatting correct right from the start." As a professional music engraver myself I can tell you that this is very far from true, Lilypond produces clashes of many kinds, there are problems with slurs and note flags colliding with other elements – and there's precious little that you can do about it.

If the developers believe that LilyPond is getting these things right, then it's unlikely that these things will ever be fixed and that's a big problem, or maybe they're just "bending the truth", which is another problem.

IMHO LilyPond promises the Earth but fails to deliver. There is a decided lack of notation samples on their site, why is that? Perhaps it won't match up the exaggerated claims. I understand the need to be enthusiastic about your work, but distorting reality this much just wastes peoples time when the delivery falls way short of the promise.

My advice would be, if you like to tinker with programming and get involved in an exciting project where you can be hands on with development and contribute your own ideas, give LilyPond a go. If you want first class music notation look elsewhere and allow Lilypond to mature into an application that actually delivers what it says - one day.