New open-source, client-side ABC to Notation Converter

[eskin]

Hi y'all,

For many years I was using the mandolintab.net online ABC converter for most of my ABC transcription needs. If I ever sent out a PDF of a tune, it was probably generated using that site.

A few months ago that website went down. The guy who runs it is nowhere to be found.

I decided that the world needed a robust ABC-to-notation conversion program that was completely free, open source, ran completely self-contained in the browser, with no need to rely on anyone else's server. While there are dedicated programs like EasyABC that are very sophisticated, I wanted something I could run from anywhere in any web browser.

I wanted to build a converter that could produce a wide variety of outputs, including standard notation, notation plus note names, mandolin and guitar tab (both standard and DADGAD), even whistle fingering tab.

After a manic week, and lot and lots of incremental updates, it's really working well:

http://michaeleskin.com/abctools/abctools.html

There is an Instructions link at the top of the page that explains how to use it.

A few demo videos:

https://youtu.be/vWoDCb3-n2M

https://youtu.be/A_arBse7u5Q

https://youtu.be/jr1EC4l7RgQ

The project source code is available at:

https://github.com/seisiuneer/abctools

and is available for anyone to modify, or just download and run on your own system, no server required. The code is completely self contained, written in HTML + Javascript + CSS and run completely in your browser. It even works on iPhones and iPads.

It's very fast. I've been able to export the PDF for my 52 tune B/C box book in less than 2 minutes. I would say probably 100 tunes at one time would be the max I'd throw at it.

It's primarily focused on traditional Irish music as far as the sorts of testing I've done with it, but it should be able to deal with most fairly straightforward ABC like you'd grab from thesession.org and other sites. There may be more exotic features of ABC it doesn't support, I'm limited by the capabilities of the underlying open-source libraries I used to create it.

Please let anyone else who might find it useful know about the tool!

If you run into any nasty issues, please let me know. It works best on Chrome and Firefox, but has occasional rendering issues (mostly with ornamentation) on Safari.

See you around the session!

Michael

[Moof]

Thank you for this, it looks like a fantastic resource. Couldn't get it to work on Firefox on my Mac (haven't explored whether it's just settings causing a conflict—quite likely), but it leapt straight into action on Chrome.

Great that it produces tabs, too, for those of us who're a bit rusty on staff notation.

[kinsho]

Many thanks.

[eskin]

Now generates shareable links for tunes sets as well as QR codes, for example:

Here's a share link with 8 tunes:

The Blackhaired Lass - Austin Tierney’s - The Hare’s Paw - The Porthole of Kelp - The Fox On The Town - The Repeal Of The Union - The Luck Penny - The New York Jig

http://michaeleskin.com/abctools/abctoo ... rmat=noten

Here’s the resulting QR code (again, eight tunes):

https://flic.kr/p/2ogCZPA

Single tune QR codes are also much simpler:

For example:

Mayor Harrison’s Fedora

https://flic.kr/p/2ogyzpU

[eskin]

Tunebook with 12 jigs in whistle tab format preloaded to edit and print in my ABC utility:

Banish Misfortune - Behind the Haystack - Bill Hart's Jig - The Black Rogue - The Blackthorn Stick - The Blarney Pilgrim - Bryan O'Lynn - Caliope House - The Castle Jig - Sean Ryan's Jig - Cathleen Hehir's - Christmas Day in the Morning - The Old Favourite"

QR Code:

https://flic.kr/p/2ogH1Yo

Direct URL link:

http://michaeleskin.com/abctools/abctoo ... at=whistle

[eskin]

Here's how you can the ABC Transcription tool to your iOS device launch screen as a web app shortcut icon:

https://youtu.be/pYlv3fmQMws

[eskin]

Dramatically sped up the time it takes to export very large (>50 page) tune books on my ABC Transcription Tool.

I'm seeing this sort of performance now on my M1 Mac for all browsers I've tried:

12-tune tunebook export to PDF: 17 seconds
104-tune tunebook export to PDF: 2 minutes 20 seconds.

Here's a screen capture from my M1 Mac running Firefox of a 12-tune PDF export in multiple formats (notation, mandolin tab, note name tab):

https://youtu.be/fKRo9nwie1Y

And a full 104-tune PDF export:

https://youtu.be/Tbd3uTOSuno

[eskin]

My web-based tool is able to convert ABC to Standard notation with optional:

Note names tab

Mandolin tab

Guitar tab (both Standard EADGBE and DADGAD)

Whistle Fingering tab

The tool is also capable of transposing tunes up or down, and filtering our ABC annotations, text, and chord indications.

It can also generate Share URLs in text form and even QR code images you can scan with your phone to share tune sets.

These links and QR codes launch the tool on your browser and load the tune set directly from data encoded in the link or QR code.

This demo on my iPad shows importing an ABC tune set from iCloud Drive, walks through the different notation and tab options, generates a QR code to share, and finally generates a PDF file of the tune set.

My ABC Transcription Tool is available at:

http://michaeleskin.com/abctools/abctools.html

GitHub Repo:

https://github.com/seisiuneer/abctools

Demo video:

https://youtu.be/OvwSQj47Y7o

[eskin]

One more demo of the latest code:

https://youtu.be/R8Ygnml4meE

[clarinetwhistler]

Very cool! Thank you for doing this.