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+
+ MUP Overview
+
+ 1. OVERVIEW OF THE MUP MUSIC PUBLICATION PROGRAM
+
+ Mup is a shareware program for printing music. It takes an
+ input file containing ordinary (ASCII) text describing
+ music, and produces PostScript output for printing the
+ musical score described by the input. Arkkra Enterprises
+ was established to make Mup readily available at low cost to
+ anyone who would like to use Mup.
+
+ A Mup input file can contains several kinds of sections or
+ contexts. The description of musical notes is given in the
+ "music" context. There are contexts for defining page
+ headers and footers. There are also several contexts used
+ for setting various parameters. For example, there is a
+ "score" context in which global aspects are listed, such as
+ the number of staffs, the time signature, page margins, etc.
+ It is also possible to set parameters for individual staffs
+ and even individual voices. (Each staff can have up to three
+ independent voices.) Any parameter that can be set for an
+ individual voice can also be set for a staff, and any
+ parameter that can be set for a staff can be set for the
+ score as a whole. The actual value used for a given
+ parameter is obtained by searching from the most specific
+ (i.e., voice), to the most general (i.e., score) until a
+ value is found. All values are given a default at the score
+ level, so that everything will always resolve to some value.
+ Parameters include items such as:
+
+ - Number of staffs
+
+ - Number of voices per staff
+
+ - Time signature
+
+ - Key signature
+
+ - Clef
+
+ - Transposition amount
+
+ - Whether to use beams or flags on notes of 8th note
+ duration or shorter
+
+ - Margins
+
+ - Which staffs to group with braces or brackets, and what
+ labels to use
+
+ - How tightly to pack output together, both horizontally
+ and vertically.
+
+ - Whether to print measure numbers
+
+ Mup can handle up to 40 parallel staffs. Each staff can have
+ a different key signature, clef, and transposition value.
+ Staffs can be 5-line, 1-line, or tablature (1 to 9 lines).
+ It is possible to print a subset of staffs or voices.
+ Guitar grids are supported.
+
+ Music data is organized into measures. Each measure consists
+ of data for one or more voices followed by a bar line. Data
+ for each voice consists of one or more chords. Each chord
+ consists of a time value and one or more notes, and possibly
+ additional items associated with the chord. To minimize
+ input, an omitted time value defaults to being the same as
+ the previous time value, and if the notes are omitted, the
+ notes of the previous chord are used. There are also two
+ special kinds of "notes": rests and space. Time values from
+ double whole through 256th are supported, as well as
+ tuplets, and any number of dots. Notes are specified by a
+ letter 'a' to 'g', which may be followed by an accidental
+ (#, &, x, &&, or n for sharp, flat, double sharp, double
+ flat, and natural respectively), and an optional octave. The
+ octave can be an absolute number 0 to 9 or one or more + or
+ - signs to indicate one or more octaves above or below the
+ default octave. It is also possible to specify that octave
+ marks are to be printed.
+
+ Individual notes or entire chords can be tied or slurred to
+ notes in the following chord. Slides, bends, and phrase
+ marks can also be specified. Mup takes care of all details
+ of drawing appropriate curves and splitting the curves
+ across scores or pages if necessary.
+
+ Grace notes can be specified before any chord. It is also
+ possible to specify that notes are to be printed in "cue"
+ (small) size rather than regular size, or that "X" or
+ diamond shaped notes are to be used. Shaped note used in
+ "Sacred Harp" music are also supported.
+
+ Each measure ends with a bar line. There are several types
+ of bars: an ordinary bar, a double bar, a heavy bar to end
+ the song, and bars with repeat signs. There is also an
+ "invisible bar" which allows for organizing the input into
+ bars without having the bar lines printed on the output.
+
+ First and subsequent endings can be specified at bar lines.
+ Rehearsal marks can be requested at any bar line.
+
+ Macros can be defined to minimize input or improve
+ readability. There is a generalized "if" clause that lets
+ you produce different outputs based on macro values. It is
+ also possible to "include" one file in another.
+
+ Lyrics can be specified for zero or more verses, above,
+ below or between staffs. You can control the font and size
+ used for the lyrics.
+
+ Music symbols or words can be placed relative to staffs and
+ notes. This may include musical marks such as fermatas and
+ accents, as well as words to indicate tempo or dynamics,
+ etc.
+
+ Since both the input and output of Mup are ASCII text files,
+ it is easy to write programs to do various transformations.
+ For example, a program could be written to move voices from
+ one staff to another, or any sort of PostScript filter
+ program could be used on the output.
+
+ Mup will optionally provide output in standard Musical
+ Instrument Digital Interface (MIDI) format, for performance
+ rather than PostScript output for printing.
+
+ While Mup itself bucks the trend of graphical, mouse-driven
+ input, it has proven to be a very useful and powerful method
+ of capturing the complexities of musical notation, and there
+ is a companion program, called Mupmate, that provides a
+ graphical interface on top of Mup for those who are more
+ comfortable with that kind of interface. The use of ordinary
+ text input and PostScript output make it largely device
+ independent. Mup was designed and written by people who are
+ both musicians and computer programmers. The result is a
+ program that provides the capability to produce full-
+ featured, very high quality musical scores with a minimum of
+ effort. It is available ready-to-run for selected computer
+ operating systems, and source code is also available so that
+ it can be run on most platforms that have a C compiler. You
+ can get a copy of Mup to try out with no obligation, and if
+ you like it, the registration fee is far lower than the
+ price of most music publication software.
~mdw / mup / blobdiff