Mup

Usage

Enclose Mup fragment with [mup] and [/mup] pair.

Official Documentation

On Arkkra Enterprises web site. There are a bunch of links at the bottom, one can check out Mup User’s Guide for viewing on web browser (especially its introductory page to get started), or choose to download PostScript version for offline viewing.

Besides user’s guide, there is a Quick Reference (in PostScript form) for brief documentation on various keywords and section names, and some links to sample files.

Other external documentation

  • Charles Cave has written a review (better call it a quick tutorial) about Mup, with a sample song and introduction to some related utilities.

Please tell me through email if any other external document and/or tutorial about Mup is available. I’ll update this page accordingly.

Getting started

Mup score is divided into at least 2 main sections: score and music. score section contains various attributes of the score, like page margin, time signature and so on, while music section is the real content.

When default value is used (single staff with time signature 4/4 in C major), mup score can be as simple as (courtesy of Mup User Guide from Arkkra):

[mup]
music
1: 4e; 4d; 2c;
bar
[/mup]

Some explanation first:

  • The section name (music) must be entered manually.
  • The ‘1:’ means the first staff. Similarly, ‘2:’ and ‘3:’ means second and third staff (if applicable), and so on.
  • Each note is separated by semicolon (;) and note length is placed in front of pitch value.
  • The ‘bar’ keyword at the end of each bar is mandatory.

Now another fragment better for demonstration purpose:

[mup]
score
key = g major
clef = bass
music
1: 4g#; f; 4.e&; 8d;
bar
1: 2c; r;
endbar
[/mup]

Some points noteworthy:

  • Key signature belongs to score section, so section name must be entered manually, before music section.
  • Sharp and flat are represented by ‘#’ and ‘&’ respectively.
  • Beware that flat and sharp are determined visually (unlike Lilypond): what you type is what you get, despite of any key signature!
  • Rest is denoted by ‘r’.
  • As a shorthand, note length and/or pitch can be omitted. Notice the omission of note length before ‘f#’ and ‘r’, which means reusing the same length from previous note.
  • In ‘4.e&‘, ‘4.’ means dotted crotchet. Add more dots for double-dotted or triple-dotted notes. One just need to make sure the sum of length of notes must add up to a whole bar.
  • There are many types of bar in Mup as well. ‘endbar‘ is one, meaning end of the piece.

View some more examples in action.