ABC?

Whistle
1

I always see posts referring to “ABC”. What is it?

2

ABC is a music notation system which uses ascii characters instead of standard music notation. As text files, abc files are easily transmitted through e-mail and take up very little space on one’s hard drive. For me, abc notation is the most efficient means of sharing tunes through the internet. There are huge collections of tunes on various web sites and various software tools which can play abc files as midi or display and print them out as standard music notation. This is a great resource for the isolated musician.

More information about ABC can be found at

http://www.gre.ac.uk/~c.walshaw/abc

I’m sure more folks will be weighing in with more specific comments about abc notation.

3

Ok, so ABC breaks down a score and turns it into an ascii…Sounds efficiant. My next obvious question would be then what is the best software to turn it onto notes or is it decipherable?

Im still somewhat new to all of this :slight_smile:

4

“Ok, so ABC breaks down a score and turns it into an ascii…Sounds efficiant. My next obvious question would be then what is the best software to turn it onto notes or is it decipherable?”

Rather, the ascii text is the ABC. Here’s an example from the Henrik Norbeck collection:

X:99
T:Steampacket, The
R:reel
N:See also #660, #659.
D:Johnny Doran
Z:id:hn-reel-219
M:C|
L:1/8
K:G
AG~G2 AGFD|AG~G2 Addc|AG~G2 AGFD|FEFG ABcA:|!
dg~g2 aggf|dgge fdcA|dg~g2 aggf|d^cde fd=cA|!
dg~g2 ag (3efg|a2ag f2fg|afge fde^c|d2eg fdcA||

Actually, with enough practice one can sight read abc notation as easily as standard music notation.

You have to write these out by hand if you’re starting from scratch. which I do when transcribing a tune from a recording. But as I mentioned earlier, whole collections of these files exist which are available for free by folks who have already done the work ( God bless’em!).

I like to use Henrik Norbeck’s ABCMUS program for playing the abc files as midi. I use Jim Vint’s ABC2Win for converting ABC files to standard music notation. Norbeck also has a great collection of Irish music abc files which a lot of people have latched on to. Both of these programs ( ABCMUS and ABC2WIN) are shareware which can be downloaded for free ( some features disabled).

I believe the Walshaw web site lists a whole lot of other abc related programs and collection sites besides the ones I’ve mentioned. I hope this helps a bit.

5

There’s also a program at Concertina.net that will convert ABC to notation or to a midi file. If you only have to do conversions once in a while, that may be the way to go. Here’s the link:

http://www.concertina.net/tunes_convert.html

Redwolf