ABC notation power users roll call

The Weekenders · Post by **The Weekenders** » Thu Oct 18, 2007 10:22 am

I got a free copy of Finale for a contracting job I had, so when things get beyond a tune, I use that. I was pretty good at ABC for a while, but found that changing operating systems and printer drivers messed things up.

It's still a great way to nab a version of a tune, though, and the amount of stuff online is incredible. Norbeck is a deity as far as I am concerned in that domain...

If you want quick dots of any session or common tune, I'll take Norbeck over printed sheet music any day...

But of course, we NEVER use sheets with Irtrad. And I'm just a lurker, too.

djm · Post by **djm** » Thu Oct 18, 2007 11:14 am

fyffer wrote:Disclaimer: I am a computer programmer by trade, so I'm comfortable doing 'command shell' kinda stuff, and writing ABC "music" that looks like gobbledy-gook. YMMV, but for people more comfortable using GUI-based programs (or completely un-comfortable with command-line programs), ABC may seem a bit daunting.

I am not altogether unfamiliar with programming or command line, as I use it every day (my favourite editor is still vi), but I am looking to actually make an abc file sound like the music I am trying to capture. I am not interested in sheet music the way you are, so I don't care what it looks like in transcript nearly so much as I am that I should be able to play it back and hear the music I want.

Thx anyway,

djm

Caroluna · Post by **Caroluna** » Thu Oct 18, 2007 11:31 am

Fyffer wrote: I consider myself a "Super-Power user" of ABC music notation.
I don't think there is any score (in standard "Western" musical notation) that I can't render. ... If this thread generates the interest I think it might, I'll post some of the stuff I've done.

What I want is for you to send your knowledge to me this way.

"I know ABC! "
"Show me."

fearfaoin · Post by **fearfaoin** » Thu Oct 18, 2007 11:33 am

fyffer wrote:
fearfaoin wrote:Did you ever ask him why he left out the mezzo-piano
dynamic? I have to stick it in as a custom decoration everytime...
Hmm. I just tried it, and it works. I just used !mp!, and it came out fine. I'm using version 5.2.3 right now.

You're right. Had to upgrade the version I have at work.

sbfluter · Post by **sbfluter** » Thu Oct 18, 2007 11:37 am

Real power users would just type 1s and 0s.

fyffer · Post by **fyffer** » Thu Oct 18, 2007 11:55 am

djm wrote:
fyffer wrote:Disclaimer: I am a computer programmer by trade, so I'm comfortable doing 'command shell' kinda stuff, and writing ABC "music" that looks like gobbledy-gook. YMMV, but for people more comfortable using GUI-based programs (or completely un-comfortable with command-line programs), ABC may seem a bit daunting.
I am not altogether unfamiliar with programming or command line, as I use it every day (my favourite editor is still vi), but I am looking to actually make an abc file sound like the music I am trying to capture. I am not interested in sheet music the way you are, so I don't care what it looks like in transcript nearly so much as I am that I should be able to play it back and hear the music I want.

Thx anyway,

djm

Unfortunately, IMO, the abc2midi program is no where near as powerful as abcm2ps, and does not implement many (if any) of the ABC add-ons, such as the glissando. If someone were to grab onto it with the vigor that Jef Moine has, it could be as powerful, but of course we'd still be limited to cheesy midi sounds. Often, I find that in order to make acceptable sheet music and sound files, I have to make two separate abc source files. It's a drag, but sometimes necessary to create acceptable results.

djm · Post by **djm** » Thu Oct 18, 2007 1:09 pm

I haven't tried abc2midi or abcm2ps. I have abcmus, abc2win, and abcNavigator. They are all pretty lame. I sorely miss my Atari 1024 with Creator/Notator.

djm

beowulf573 · Post by **beowulf573** » Thu Oct 18, 2007 2:58 pm

Caroluna wrote: "I know ABC! "
"Show me."

Whoa.

HDSarah · Post by **HDSarah** » Tue Oct 23, 2007 9:38 am

I don't use ABC a lot, but it comes in very handy sometimes. It is a great way to transcribe a simple melody and send it by email to a friend, which I believe was the initial intent of ABC notation. I don't read music directly from abc, although I know some people do. I don't have any music-printing programs; I just use the concertina.net converter (at http://www.concertina.net/tunes_convert.html ) to turn it into standard notation. That site also has a midi player, so I can double-check my abc notation by listening to the tune.

Caj · Post by **Caj** » Tue Oct 23, 2007 10:27 am

I wrote some simple commands in C, called abcflat and abcfat, for Unix text processing of ABC files.

Abcflat simply takes an ABC file and squeezes each tune onto a single line. Abcfat reverses it to get back the original. Abcfat can renumber the tunes as it lays them out, and abcflat can add fields to the front for sorting. This lets me do all sorts of fancy selection from the command line, towit:

cat *.abc | abcflat | grep -i "K:d" | abcfat -r > allmyDmajortunes.abc

Or

abcflat -T file.abc | sort -k 1,1 | abcfat -r > tunesInAlphabeticalOrder.abc

At one point I altered the source to abc2ps so that it accepts abc from standard input, burping PS in standard output, allowing such as:

cat *.abc | abcflat | grep -i "K:edor" | abcfat -r | abc2ps = > eDorianChunes.ps

...but now I can't find that version. I'll have to do it again.

Caj

fearfaoin · Post by **fearfaoin** » Tue Oct 23, 2007 11:13 am

Caj wrote:At one point I altered the source to abc2ps so that it accepts abc from standard input, burping PS in standard output, allowing such as:

cat *.abc | abcflat | grep -i "K:edor" | abcfat -r | abc2ps = > eDorianChunes.ps

...but now I can't find that version. I'll have to do it again.

abcm2ps can do that...

cat *.abc | abcm2ps - -O- | ps2pdf - all_tunes.pdf

The first - means accept from stdin and the -O- means output PS to stdout.

Caj · Post by **Caj** » Tue Oct 23, 2007 11:35 am

fearfaoin wrote:
Caj wrote:At one point I altered the source to abc2ps so that it accepts abc from standard input, burping PS in standard output, allowing such as:

cat *.abc | abcflat | grep -i "K:edor" | abcfat -r | abc2ps = > eDorianChunes.ps

...but now I can't find that version. I'll have to do it again.
abcm2ps can do that...

cat *.abc | abcm2ps - -O- | ps2pdf - all_tunes.pdf

The first - means accept from stdin and the -O- means output PS to stdout.

Thanks.

Had I known that it would have saved me a lot of work, replacing hundreds of printfs with fprintfs.

Caj

falkbeer · Post by **falkbeer** » Tue Oct 23, 2007 1:58 pm

ABC is an excellent and very useful tool if you want too put down a simple tune or look at tune collections from the net. But, at a certain point it´s just a waste of time to use the ABC system. The system is just to limited and slow to work with if you for instance are writing down a string quartet by Beethoven, a guitar transcription of a Bach Cello suite or an piano sonata by Beethoven. In those cases it´s just silly to continue with ABC and not with a full fledged notation program like Sibelius.

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ABC notation power users roll call

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