What happened with folkinfo.org?

[robehickman]

Went to the site to use the abc converter and it just says 'Folkinfo has closed.
'. Anyone know what happened?

[Steve Bliven]

From a discussion on another list...
Posted by: "Jon Freeman"
Date: Tue Dec 4, 2012 9:42 pm ((PST))

"I've closed the folk abc converter (and most of the rest of folkinfo)
tonight. There may be some here with links to it that need to be removed."

There has been some follow-up about some of the material possibly being hosted on another site but nothing formal announced.

Best wishes.

Steve

[megapop]

Thanks Steve, I've been wondering about that, too.

[Sirchronique]

............

Nooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


I used that converter all the time!

Are there any other converters that have most of the same features as that one? The reason I liked that converter was because of some of the features that other converters do not have...

This is a severe loss for me! I wish they would make a converter wtih all those features in a downloadable format!

[fearfaoin]

Are there any other converters that have most of the same features as that one? The reason I liked that converter was because of some of the features that other converters do not have...

This is a severe loss for me! I wish they would make a converter wtih all those features in a downloadable format!

What features are we even talking about?
I don't know if I'd ever been to that site.

[joshua7b]

I don't know of any software that does everything that the ABC converter did, but I have spent some time looking at options.

While there are other programs out there, the two programs that I think are best are EasyABC (http://www.nilsliberg.se/ksp/easyabc/ ) and ABCexplorer (http://stalikez.info/abc/abcex.php). Both of these programs are free. I have both of these installed on my computer and use one or the other depending on what exactly I want to do with ABC at the time.

EasyABC does a better job of displaying on screen and producing PDFs. It also does a good job of transposing music to whatever key you would like. It has the ability to import .MXL files (Music XML), which you can download from http://www.wikifonia.org/, for example, and converting them to ABC.

ABCexplorer has a lot more bells and whistles, especially for inputting ABC and playing the music back. For instance, it allows you to punch in a tune via an on-screen piano keyboard and lets you easily change what Midi instrument to play a song with. You can also easily strip out grace notes, or accompaniment chords from a song. If you are into having tabs for your whistle, that is only one click away. Whatever you do though, don't use it to transpose music. It has the ability to do it (theoretically), but it never works for me. Most of the time, it transposes the first couple of lines of music ok and then makes the rest of the song blank.


As far as websites go,
The ABC Convert-A-Matic at http://www.concertina.net/tunes_convert.html does an excellent job of converting ABC notation to picture, Pdf and Midi files.

If you want to transpose, there is http://www.8ung.at/abctransposer/ that seems to do a good job, but it will only give you back the transposed ABC, and no picture of the music.

Well, Best of luck to you all.
Josh

[Sirchronique]

I used it a lot to assist me with my Octave Mandolin. I really liked the feature where it could convert ABC notation into Mandolin tabs (same tuning as octave mandolin) , or Mandola tabs (same as octave mandolin with capo on 5th fret).

I always try to learn tunes by ear, as there is a lot that tabs do not always convey, not to mention that I am aware that what is written is just the bones of the tune. However, I really enjoyed being able to make tabs that easily so I can glance at them when first learning a tune to get a good starting point, or to give me an idea of what to do when I get to a point in a tune where I'm confused as to what to do. Of course I modify it as I'm learning it this way to most closely match how I've heard the tune. I can really manage without it, but I guess it made the whole process of learning a tune a lot faster than if I'm just learning from a video of somebody playing. I still learn to play it the way I've heard it, but the tabs give me hints that eliminated the searching process and helped me get closer to what I'm hearing faster.

I searched for ABC software that can convert to mandolin or mandola tabs, with no luck.

Edit: I skimmed over what is written above and missed the part about something displaying tabs, but I'll give that a look to see if that does mandolin tabs too. I didn't come across that in my initial search. Thanks!

[joshua7b]

The ABC Convertor is up on a different site now. It appears that the people at Folkinfo have given their code to mandolintab.net.
You can now find the ABC Convertor at http://mandolintab.net/abcconverter.php

Josh

[MTGuru]

Thank you, Josh.

[cboody]

And the database is at:

http://www.joe-offer.com/folkinfo/index.html

[Sirchronique]

Thanks, Joshua7b! It makes me very happy to know it's still up and online!