MUP Overview
1. OVERVIEW OF THE MUP MUSIC PUBLICATION PROGRAM
Mup is a 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.
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 up to 4
accidentals (#, &, x, &&, or n for sharp, flat, double
sharp, double flat, and natural respectively, or user
defined accidentals), 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. Custom
accidentals and alternate tuning systems are supported. You
can specify gradual changes in things like tempo and volume.
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
are welcome to download Mup and use it for free.
