Mup 5.2 review
DownloadMup takes a text file as input and produces PostScript output for printed music
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Mup takes a text file as input and produces PostScript output for printed music. Mup can handle both regular notation and tablature notation. (It can also produce MIDI output.)
Here are some key features of "Mup":
Up to 40 staffs, which can include 1-line, 5-line, and tablature staffs. Output can be restricted to any subset of the staffs. Different staffs can be different sizes.
Up to 3 independent voices per staff, up to 70 simultaneous notes per voice.
Double whole to 256th notes, with any number of dots. Tuplets.
Note styles of normal, grace, cue, X, diamond, plus shaped notes. Optional parentheses around notes and/or accidentals.
Cross-staff stems.
Time signatures of cut, common, or numerators from 1 to 99 and denominators from 1 to 64. Complicated time signatures, including numerators with two or more numbers added together, or two or more fractions added together, or alternating time signatures.
All standard clefs, including treble, treble8, 8treble, French violin, soprano, mezzosoprano, alto, tenor, baritone, and bass, as well as the drum (neutral) clef. Clefs can be changed in the middle of measures.
Barline styles of single, double, dashed, dotted, end, repeats, or none.
8th note and shorter notes can have either flags or beams; beams can be cross-staff.
Guitar grids
Lyrics can be placed above, below, or between staffs. Unlimited number of verses, with control of font and size.
Headers and footers.
Staffs can be grouped with braces or brackets.
Automatic transposition of music and chord marks per staff.
First and subsequent endings.
Optional rehearsal marks and/or automatic measure numbering. Rehearsal marks can be boxed, circled, or plain.
Crescendo/decrescendo marks.
Rolls, ornaments, fermatas, accents.
Measure repeats.
Ties, slurs, phrase marks, octave marks, piano pedal marks, etc. Ties, slurs, and phrase marks can be solid, dotted, or dashed.
Suport for figured bass, analysis, and chords.
Optional MIDI file output. (Very useful for "proof-listening" to your songs to check for input mistakes!)
PostScript output for printing on any PostScript compatible output device. Can be used with Ghostscript.
All standard PostScript fonts supported, in 1 to 100 point size, including most common non-English characters.
Input is a text file, for easy portability between computer systems.
Macros and 'include' files.
General 'if' clauses that can be used to generate different outputs based on values of parameters.
Mup will determine how to lay out the music, but there are numerous user controls available to fine-tune the output to meet your specific needs.
Comprehensive User's Guide provided in both PostScript and HTML formats, including many examples.
Mup is available via ftp to try out for free. If you like it and want to keep it, the shareware registration is far lower than the cost of most music publication software.
What's New in This Release:
There is now a generalized 'if' clause' that is much more flexible and powerful than the simple ifdef and ifndef. These provide capabilities somewhat similar to the preprocessors for the C and C++ languages.
Complicated time signatures are now supported. This includes a numerator with two or more numbers added together, like 3+4 / 4, or two or more fractions added together, like 3/4 + 3/8. Alternating time signatures, such as when a piece continuously switches between 3/4 and 6/8, are also supported.
The beamstyle and timeunit parameter values associated with a time signature are now remembered, so that if you later change back to the same time signature, you don't have to also set the beamstyle and timeunit at the same time; the value used previously for that time signature will be restored automatically. (Note that if you have existing Mup files that rely on the old behavior, they may need small modifications, but that should be rare.)
It is now possible to force stem directionon voices 1 and 2 even when the other voice is not space.
Improvements have been made to how the angle for beams is calculated. The "best" angle for a beam is sometimes somewhat subjective, but in general, these changes will result in more cases where beams are horizontal or less sloped,
There are also additional ways you can control beams: A new slope interchord attribute lets you force a specific slope. The new stemshorten parameter lets you determine how much a chord's stem is allowed to be shortened when it is beamed. And the existing len chord attribute can now be set for just one end of a beamed set of chords as an alternative to setting it at both ends.
The HTML version of the Mup User's Guide now includes 'next page' and 'previous page' links on each page.
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