<-- previous page Table of Contents Index next page -->

## Phrase marks

While it may often be more convenient to specify phrase marks using "ph" and "eph" in the music input, you can also use the phrase statement.

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 or endtime to make the phrase start or end on a grace note. This is done by giving a negative number in parentheses, specifying how many grace notes to back up. 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.

<-- previous page Table of Contents Index next page -->