I learned to enter tunes by studying the tunes, and using the templates, found in the file stuart.zip, which you can download from here.
Quite honestly, I still don't know exactly what a lot of the coding in the templates does. The nice thing about using templates is, you don't have to understand everything so long as it works.
This is the part where I pretty much exhausted my supply of Bible words before I figured it out. Maybe it's just me, but I couldn't find a rational explanation of this part anywhere. You have a bar of music that looks like this;
And here is the coding to produce that bar
\def\bareleven{\notes\dble\bcst cc3{\be\grg}{\bap\grd}\bc\etn\grg\bstst ec4\bep{\bf\dble}\bep\ba\enotes\xbarre}
Specifically, the first note grouping is representedy by;
\dble\bcst cc3{\be\grg}{\bap\grd}\bc
Here's how it works;
\dble is the e doubling. \bcst The b represents the fact that these are notes on a bar, "cst" indicates the time value of each note in the sequence.
Then there is a space, followed by
cc3 which sets the slope and length of the bar. cc sets the bar at no slope; compare the result with ec in the second note grouping. You should be fairly safe using the names of the two lowest notes on the bar.
3 indicates that the bar is long enough to accomodate 3 melody notes. It has to agree with the note definitions given in the \bcst part, or all Hell will break loose.
{\be\grg} Two points here. First, \be represents an e note on the bar (\bap, the next note, is a dotted a on the bar.) Don't worry about the time value, that's already set.
Second, and important because this is counterintuitive, the whole bit within the braces represents an e melody note followed by a g gracenote. You tend to think "g gracenote on low a", but if you write it as {\grg\bap}, TEX will throw a hissy fit.
Notes not followed by a gracenote are not enclosed in braces.
Triplets are written as a variation on beamed notes. The format is \bccc ge3{\triolet H\bg}\bf\be, Which will be printed as
Changing the Capital "H" will shift the "3" up or down. Gracenotes can be included by bracketing them with the previous melody mote. This seems to shift the "3" off centre, which I guess just goes to show you that the program isn't perfect after all.
Ties, of course, occur when a note is carried across the beat. Not something that's typical of bagpipe music, which just makes it all the more annoying when you have to figure out how to do it. I've ony used it about three times, once being God Bless America - not exactly a real bagpipe tune.
The basic coding is \itenu 2g\psk\qle\psk\se\tten 2, which will produce
Change the "g" after the first "2" to match the tied note.
Tying beamed notes requires bracketing the beamed code, as in this example;
\dblg\bcc bb2\bg{\itenu 2b\bb\psk\etn\psk\tten 2}\bcc bb2{\bb\dblg}\bg, which produces this result
The tunes (GIF images)
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