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<head>
<title>UK TeX FAQ -- question label music</title>
</head><body>
<h3>Typesetting music in TeX</h3>
<p/>In the early days, a simple music package called MuTeX was
written by Angelika Schofer and Andrea Steinbach, which demonstrated
that music typesetting was possible; the package was very limited, and is
hardly ever used nowadays.  Daniel Taupin took up the baton, and
developed MusicTeX, which allows the typesetting of polyphonic and
other multiple-stave music; MusicTeX remains available, but is most
definitely no longer recommended.
<p/>MusicTeX has been superseded by a further development called
MusiXTeX, which is a three-pass system (with a processor program
that computes values for the element spacing in the music, and sorts
out spaces and ties (which MusicTeX does &#8220;woodenly&#8221; &#8212; playing
from a MusicTeX-typeset page is entirely possible, but the look of
the slurs is very unsatisfying).  Thus MusixTeX achieves finer
control than is possible with the unmodified TeX-based mechanism
that MusicTeX uses.
<p/>The original author of MusixTeX, Andreas Egler, withdrew from
development of the package; he has a further package OpusTeX (not
on CTAN) which is focused on typesetting Gregorian chant and
the like.
<p/>Daniel Taupin forked his development of MusiXTeX, and his is the
only version currently maintained (by Daniel&#8217;s successors, since
Daniel died).
<p/>Input to MusiXTeX is tricky stuff, and Don Simons&#8217; preprocessor
<i>pmx</i> is the preferred method of creating input for Taupin&#8217;s
version.  <i>Pmx</i> greatly eases use of MusiXTeX, but it
doesn&#8217;t support the full range of MusiXTeX&#8217;s facilities directly;
however, it does allow in-line MusiXTeX code in <i>pmx</i>
sources.
<p/>Dirk Laurie&#8217;s <i>M-Tx</i> allows preparation of music with lyrics;
it operates &#8220;on top of&#8221; <i>pmx</i>
<p/>Another simple notation is supported by <i>abc2mtex</i>; this is a
package designed to notate tunes stored in an ASCII format
(<code>abc</code> notation). It was designed primarily for folk and traditional
tunes of Western European origin (such as Irish, English and Scottish)
which can be written on one stave in standard classical notation, and
creates input intended for MusicTeX.  However, it should be
extendable to many other types of music.
<p/>Digital music fans can typeset notation for their efforts by using
<i>midi2tex</i>, which translates MIDI data files into
MusicTeX source code.
<p/>There is a mailing list (<i>TeX-music@icking-music-archive.org</i>)
for discussion of typesetting music in TeX; it mostly covers
MusiXTeX and related systems.  To subscribe, use
<a href="http://icking-music-archive.org/mailman/listinfo/tex-music/">http://icking-music-archive.org/mailman/listinfo/tex-music/</a>
<p/>An alternative (free) means of embedding music examples into (La)TeX
documents is <a href="http://www.lilypond.org">Lilypond</a>.  Lilypond is
(at heart) a batch music typesetting system with plain text input that
does most of its work without TeX.  Lilypond&#8217;s input syntax is far
less cryptic than is MusiXTeX&#8217;s, and it handles much more stuff
automatically, yielding the same or better quality with less effort.
Lilypond can also produce basic MIDI output.
<dl>
<dt><tt><i>abc2mtex</i></tt><dd><a href="http://mirror.ctan.org/support/abc2mtex">support/abc2mtex</a>
<dt><tt><i>M-Tx</i></tt><dd><a href="http://mirror.ctan.org/support/mtx.zip">support/mtx</a> (or <a href="http://mirror.ctan.org/support/mtx/">browse the directory</a>)
<dt><tt><i>midi2tex</i></tt><dd><a href="http://mirror.ctan.org/support/midi2tex.zip">support/midi2tex</a> (or <a href="http://mirror.ctan.org/support/midi2tex/">browse the directory</a>)
<dt><tt><i>musictex</i></tt><dd><a href="http://mirror.ctan.org/macros/musictex.zip">macros/musictex</a> (or <a href="http://mirror.ctan.org/macros/musictex/">browse the directory</a>); <a href="http://mirror.ctan.org/help/Catalogue/entries/musictex.html">catalogue entry</a>

<dt><tt><i>musixtex (Taupin&#8217;s version)</i></tt><dd><a href="http://mirror.ctan.org/macros/musixtex.zip">macros/musixtex</a> (or <a href="http://mirror.ctan.org/macros/musixtex/">browse the directory</a>); <a href="http://mirror.ctan.org/help/Catalogue/entries/musixtex.html">catalogue entry</a>
<dt><tt><i>musixtex (Egler&#8217;s version)</i></tt><dd><a href="http://mirror.ctan.org/obsolete/macros/musixtex/egler.zip">obsolete/macros/musixtex/egler</a> (or <a href="http://mirror.ctan.org/obsolete/macros/musixtex/egler/">browse the directory</a>)
<dt><tt><i>mutex</i></tt><dd><a href="http://mirror.ctan.org/macros/mtex.zip">macros/mtex</a> (or <a href="http://mirror.ctan.org/macros/mtex/">browse the directory</a>)
<dt><tt><i>pmx</i></tt><dd><a href="http://mirror.ctan.org/support/pmx.zip">support/pmx</a> (or <a href="http://mirror.ctan.org/support/pmx/">browse the directory</a>)
</dl>
<p/><p>This question on the Web: <a href="http://www.tex.ac.uk/cgi-bin/texfaq2html?label=music">http://www.tex.ac.uk/cgi-bin/texfaq2html?label=music</a>
</body>