I decided against a real poll but I wanted to know who uses ABC format to learn new tunes?
I just started using it this week and it’s GREAT. There are thousands upon thousands of tunes out there and plenty of players.
I use abc2midi to convert them then I can load them in a midi player, cut and paste new tracks, change instruments and optimization and like magic I’ve got a whole jam.
It also helps my timing since playing along with the players doesn’t stop for foul ups.
For some inexplicable reason, I put off learning it until recently. I love it! I use it mainly to get sheet music. In my real life I work in publishing, and the publisher in me gets a big kick out of seeing such a professional looking output after I feed the abc’s into a converter. I use this one:
http://www.concertina.net/tunes_convert.html
Carol
What a great site! Thanks
I use it all the time but I toss the midi files generated by abc4mac. I just get the print output. The way that its played automatically does nothing to help understand the tune but may be a distraction to me.
But I have been a musician for years and years and can sort of see what the tunes goes like by seeing the notes so…for beginners it might help.
You didnt say which OS you use, but for MAC users here is a tip: Barfly is fast and simple for rendering, copying and transposing tunes. But often when you output via YAPS (which renders the file into Postscript for Distilling with Acrobat Distiller), the result has the tunes squeezed very close together.
I drag my Barfly-generated tune over the top of the abc4MAC icon and it renders the postscript in a more readable fashion, leaving more space between tunes. But sometimes there is something missing and it won’t function, in which case I default to YAPS.
And here is another endorsement of Henrik Norbeck for your source of abc tunes. His are the cleanest files and SEEM to reflect the versions of tunes being played today, not just copied out of an old book or something. Rolls and triplets are always shown and many of the files have variations attached. In the title area info, the artist is also given which helps. This can help because tunes often have various names. For example, Tommy People’s Reel (of which there must be a few, I swear) is in the Norbeck collection under that name, as well as a few others (Jenny Nettles, e.g.). But its attributed to Altan (and often gives the Album title too), so you know that that particular TPR is the one you are looking for.
I found ABC about a year ago and I now have about 10,000 tunes amassed, of course with all the duplicates, It’s more like 4-5,000. I use BarFly and love hearing the tune and printing it out. I have been transcribing alot of tunes as well which helps me learn them really well.
I’ve also written a few tunes, I can sketch one out whipe sitting in an airport (which I am constantly) and get home and enter the text into the program and BOOM there it is.
ABC Rules!!!
Timmy
Anyone have a quickie tutorial on writing in ABC? I love how compactly it stores the written music, but I’d like to be able to jot it down myself sometimes, not just look up a tune.
Here is the ABC home page. This site contains everything you could want to know about ABC. There is also a link to an ABC tutorial.