a *very* odd question especially for me.

[Peter Billam]

Hi.  Karen wrote:
> but as you say manually putting all the parts into lillypond
> may have its drawbacks.

I'm sorry if I gave that impression; I would never want to imply that.
Lilypond is the best, there's nothing it can't do.
And for robustness and longevity,
just check out the size of their development team, at the bottom of:
  http://lilypond.org/
The introductory manuals are at, for example:
  http://lilypond.org/text-input.html
  http://lilypond.org/doc/v2.18/Documentation/learning/index.htm
but those pages are not very accessible, unfortunately :-(

> abc notation comes  with packages that might a low the audio
> say one track at a time to be converted into their program ...
> Are you aware of this package?

Oh, sure:
  http://abcnotation.com/
If you're writing in the single line, it is absolutely The Standard,
because (given that restriction) it's ultra-easy to use,
very very compact and readable.

Muscript, which I use all the time:
  http://www.pjb.com.au/muscript/index.html
lies between lilypond and abc; it has most of the flexibility
of lilypond, and most of the simplicity of abc.

They all use text-input, very accessible :-)

( They all run on windows too, eg:
  http://lilypond.org/download.html
  http://abcnotation.com/software
though to run muscript on windows you need to install Perl, or cygwin
  https://www.cygwin.com

Once your score is in muscript form,
there's really no need to convert it into anything else.
Once your score is in lilypond form,
there's _absolutely_ no need to convert it into anything else :-)

Regards,  Peter Billam

http://www.pjb.com.au      pj at pjb.com.au     (03) 6278 9410
"Follow the charge, not the particle."  --  Richard Feynman
 from The Theory of Positrons, Physical Review, 1949