# First Steps

After you installed &frescobaldi;, run it from your KDE4 menu (under Audio or Utilities). You'll see an empty screen like this:

Empty &frescobaldi; window

Now write some &lilypond; code, like this:

    \relative c'' {
      \time 7/4
      c2 bes4 a2 g a bes4 a( g) f2
    }
    \addlyrics {
      Join us now and share the soft -- ware!
    }

If you want, save the file by pressing Ctrl+S and enter a name (if you leave out the extension, &frescobaldi; will add the `.ly` extension for you).

Then click the &lilypond; toolbar button or press Ctrl+M. If all is good, &lilypond; starts now and processes your file. At the bottom of the screen you can follow &lilypond;'s progress. If &lilypond; does not encounter any mistakes on your part, it will produce a PDF file that will be displayed at the right of the &frescobaldi; window:

&frescobaldi; window with Free Software Song

You can zoom the PDF preview by dragging the middle mouse button or by using the mouse wheel with Ctrl pressed down. The PDF preview is an embedded Okular, KDE's default PDF viewer.

Everytime you change the &lilypond; document, you must press the button (or Ctrl+M) to update the PDF preview.

If &lilypond; produced PDF and/or MIDI files, you will see buttons below the &lilypond; output log to quickly open those files in their default applications, to print the PDF directly, or to email the generated output to someone else.

If &lilypond; does not start at all, check if you have installed &lilypond; correctly and that the lilypond command is in your system's PATH environment variable. If needed, provide the exact path to your &lilypond; executable under &menu.settings.paths;.