Muse as released does *not* use the "shortest note wins" rule. In fact it's pretty restrictive which can make it a pain for keyboard users. At the moment I'm doing a major rewrite (called Muse2) which is aimed at 1. Choral singers (better control over playback - done) 2. Keyboard players (live Midi in and all this polyphony stuff) 3. Singer songwriters (better lyrics stuff)
plus a host of smaller things. In fixing the restrictions on within-staff, within-voice polyphony - and in particular in trying to type in various keyboard parts (The Messiah being the biggest) I found that the rule that seemed to work was "shortest note wins". So that is the rule used within the body of Muse2. I chose it because it seemed to work. The worst that can happen is that you have to pad out one of the unnamed "voices" with a rest. i.e. [D4G]zFE D4. I can tolerate a different rule for ABC input and output from that within the body of Muse2. Output is easy I could just sort the chords to be shortest-first. Input is a little trickier, I'd have to invent that z. But I'm not particularly convinced that it's a good idea. I do have some sympathy with the "first note is the melody" idea - and we can't have both. I had a few complaints (actually very few) about the severe restriction in Muse (Muse-1 that is). It insisted that all notes within a chord be the same length and required that you either essentially ignored when the notes ended (as apparently Bach did because his prelude No.1 is written out as all quavers but he used to hold all the notes down when he played it) or else write it all out with ties (which can look pretty bad on the page). Laurie To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
