M-Tx is a music-from-text language designed to look as much as possible
like printed music. To give you an idea of what that means, here is some
typical input code (users of M-Tx 0.30 may skip to "What's New?"):
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Title: Net soos ek is
Composer: Charlotte Elliott
Style: SATB
Sharps: 2
Meter: 3/4
Space: 9
%% w190m
@+5 b4 b b | b2d | a4 a a | a2d | d4 e- f | g2 e4 | d2d of |]
L: Net soos ek is, net soos ek is, O Lam van God, ek kom.
d4s g f | e2d | e4 f e | d2d | d4 dr d | d2 c4 | d2d |]
@^+5 rp | b4 e d | c2d | a4 d c | ( b2d | b2 ) g4 | f2d |]
LT: Net soos ek is, O Lam van God, ek kom.
a4 a a | g2d | g4 g g | f2d | b4- g+ f | e2 a4- | d2d ofd |]
L: Net soos ek is, net soos ek is, O Lam van God, ek kom.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Notes:
1. Lines describing title, composer, sharps and meter are
self-explanatory, I hope.
2. "Style: SATB" means "four-voice choral music on two staves."
3. "%% w190m" means "Issue PMX command 'w190m' here" (which means
"Set the piece to a width of 190mm.")
4. "Space: 9" means "Use 9 interlines of extra space between the staves."
5. Line boundaries are meaningful. You can see the lines for soprano,
alto, tenor and bass from top to bottom, interspersed by lyrics
associated with the alto, tenor and bass voice lines.
6. Notes and ornaments are written in the PMX language developed by
Don Simons.
7. ( ... ) are notes under a slur.
8. In general each syllable of lyrics is aligned with a note from its
associated voice. A group of notes that are slurred together only
uses one syllable of lyrics.
9. "@^+5" means "set this line of lyrics above the stave and 5 internotes
higher than usual."
10. This piece has been typed neatly, with notes aligned and bar lines
put in, to look like real music, but you need not actually be so
painstaking.
If you would like to see how this looks, you can download M-Tx 0.40 from
http://www.gmd.de/Misc/Music/musixtex/software/mtx
(or if you prefer FTP)
ftp://ftp.gmd.de/music/musixtex/software/mtx
This song is in netsoos.gif or netsoos.ps.gz.
To make your own scores, you will need README.040 and mtx040.zip,
and depending on your printer either mtx040lj.zip or mtx040ps.zip.
The latter two are optional, since mtx040.dvi is in mtx040.zip (but it
does use MusiXTeX fonts).
To run M-Tx, you need MusiXTeX 0.80 or later, PMX 1.3.8 (the current
version) and musixlyr 1.1 (the current version). By kind permission of
Rainer Dunker the file musixlyr.tex (but not the documentation, which
is strongly recommended) is included in mtx040.zip. These materials
are all available from the above-mentioned archive.
What's new?
A. Support for some old and new PMX features:
1. Breves (double-notes) allowed, e.g. c9.
2. Slash-formatted meter change word recognized, e.g. m1/4/0/0
instead of mo400.
3. Your own instrument names in the preamble, e.g.
Name: Violin Cello
(one name per instrument, not per stave or per voice)
Default font is \twelvebf, but you can override it as long
as you use no blanks, e.g. \it{Soprano~1}
No need to say -n if you use this option.
4. Your own value for \fracindent instead of the default 0
(or if option -n is in effect, 0.12), e.g.
Indent: 0.20
5. You can have more than one continuo instrument and it need
not be last.
B. Requests from [EMAIL PROTECTED] list users:
1. The return code is now the line number at which the error was
diagnosed (which may not be the same as the one where it
actually is).
2. Rests also pull a word from the uptext line. My apologies
to those whose existing scores compensated for this bug in
0.30, and who will now need to put in a few little snakes.
3. Start and end crescendo ( resp. decrescendo ) on the uptext line
with < and <. ( resp. > and >. ).
4. Barless music like psalm tunes: use e.g.
Meter: 0/2
Bars/line: 1
to indicate that each music paragraph should be a line by
its own. The preprocessor will calculate the duration, check
that it is a multiple of the counting unit (in this example,
a half-note) and that all voices have the same length. It
will then generate a blind meter change for PMX to use.
5. If your request has not been acceded to, I may have forgotten it
rather than rejected it. Email the list and let's all discuss it.
C. Things I needed for my own scores and therefore put in.
1. You can change lyrics paragraphs in mid-line, e.g.
f4 e {common} d f e2n e8 e4d
switches to a paragraph marked {common} after the first two notes.
I needed it for switching off lyrics in mid-bar using {}.
2. You can use tonic-solfa name letters d r m f s l t
instead of a b c d e f g. Some of these conflict with PMX
commands: in that case use e.g. "r instead of r to get a rest.
3. Multi-bar rests.
4. Sticky attributes on notes and rests.
D. Bug fixes (too many to mention)
Happy music typesetting!
Dirk Laurie
