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If there is only one voice, specifying place for a phrase just tells Mup where to draw the phrase mark. If there are two or more voices, and a place is specified, "above" indicates to Mup that the phrase is associated with voice 1, and "below" indicates to Mup that the phrase is associated with voice 2.
If no place is specified and there is only one voice with notes, Mup will decide which side would be better based on the musical data. This means the phrase mark may come out above or below. In the case where there are two voices and there are notes present in both voices, phrase marks will be drawn both above and below.
Each phrase statement item must include a begintime and duration. A phrase mark must begin and end on a chord, so Mup first takes the begintime and duration and finds the chords nearest to each of them. It then draws a phrase mark between them, shaping it to be out of the way of other things as much as possible. It is possible to specify a "grace back up" on the begintime (a negative number in parentheses, specifying how many grace notes to back up), to make the phrase include leading grace notes. It is possible to "nest" phrase marks (i.e., have one phrase on a subset of the chords of another phrase).
Some examples:
staff 2 vscheme=2o music 1: d;f;a;b; 2,3 1: a;f;d;g; 2 2: 4.c;8b-;4d;g; phrase 1: 1 til 4; phrase above 2,3: 1 til 2; 3 til 4; phrase below 2: 2.5 til 1m + 1.5; bar 1: b;c+;d+;e+; 2,3 1: g;a;f;c; 2 2: 4.e;8f;4b-;g; bar
Phrase marks are sometimes used on
tablature staffs in conjunction with slides.
score staffs=2 staff 2 stafflines=tab music 2: a3<>;a4;e4<>;e2; phrase above 2: 1 til 2; 3 til 4; bar
The word "phrase" can be preceded by a line type modifier: dotted or dashed. The dotted or dashed styles might be used for phrase marks that were added by an editor rather than the composer, or to show a phrase that doesn't apply to all verses.