Mark Hall wrote:



>I am a new user to abc starting work for a project and I was wondering

whether it was possible (and who I needed permission from) to get

underneath the interface of abc applications (e.g. abc2win, abc2midi,

muse, ABC convert-a-matic, tabeldit, ABC Navigator) to develop them

further by improving and adding new features?<



You can get the source code for some of the command line programs. Try

http://abc.sourceforge.net/abcMIDI/ to start with.



The convert-o-matic runs abc2midi and abc2ps for its abc conversions.



Jon

Suitable applications for my needs (mostly abcm2ps and occasionally

abcmidi when I'm trying to write harmonies) on my choice of platform

(Linux again), good quality output, easy to learn, sufficiently

flexible for my needs, shallow learning curve, easy to remember (I

frequently go months without using it and then have to typeset a

medley in two days).  And an extremely helpful and friendly mailing

list ;)



Cheers,

Calum

1) It is easy to email.

2) For simple tunes (that is, everything I need) it is simple.

3) It is the easiest system that can be written on a bar napkin (try

figuring out if the dot that ripped the napkin was on a line or a space!)

4) I seem to have an unusual way of writing down tunes that doesn't fit

with any WYSIWYG editor: if I have music paper, I scribble all the dots

for the pitches. Then I go back and put in the bar lines. Then I go back

and put in the rhythms. All the traditional notation systems I've seen

make you put in the rhythm of a note when you enter it.





--

Paul Rosen

--- Life is a musical, every once in a while

        the plot stops and you start singing and dancing ---

http://plumjammusic.com/

http://cdbaby.com/cd/plumjam

http://www.paulrosen.net

On 27 Mar 2007, at 04:02, Paul Rosen wrote:



> 1) It is easy to email.

> 2) For simple tunes (that is, everything I need) it is simple.

> 3) It is the easiest system that can be written on a bar napkin (try

> figuring out if the dot that ripped the napkin was on a line or a

> space!)

> 4) I seem to have an unusual way of writing down tunes that doesn't fit

> with any WYSIWYG editor: if I have music paper, I scribble all the dots

> for the pitches. Then I go back and put in the bar lines. Then I go

> back

> and put in the rhythms. All the traditional notation systems I've seen

> make you put in the rhythm of a note when you enter it.



Yes!  I do that too, at least when I'm transcribing a tune out of my

head.



Another reason to like abc is that it's quick to enter compared with a

point-and-click editor, at least if you can touch-type.



abc is really a product of the Internet.  Because it's text you can

email tunes to anyone, or post them to text-only usenet groups and

mailing lists, and anyone can read it.  If you need software it's all

free or cheap shareware.



Phil Taylor

Why I like ABC?



- It is an open and transparent format, readable by human beings and

several pieces of software;



- It is simple, compact, and easy to learn;



- ABC can be written in the body of e-mail messages;



- I can combine hundreds of tunes in a single file and recombine them as

wish with ABC tools;



- There are very good free (libre) software for ABC (I don't use

proprietary software);



- ABC programs are very small and fast;



- abcm2ps does pretty nice scores, usually without need of any manual

adjustings;



- Additional elements like annotations, guitar chords, grace notes, ties

and slurs are associated to notes, bars, rests or spaces -- that way,

they are correctly placed even when the layout is changed (unlike many

GUI-based programs).



- abcm2ps allows a lot of customisation and control of the output;



- I can write extensions to abcm2ps for complex and uncommon notation

(tablatures, special staves, special note heads, instrument-specific

notation, microtonalism, polimetrical/politonal music, etc.);



- abc2midi and abcm2ps can do many interesting things, like microtonal

music (in a way that is not supported by nearly any other music

software) and harmonic/rhythmic accompainment;



- There are ABC programs for any plataforms and OSes (PC, Mac, Palm,

pencil and paper...);



- I can use ABC to obtain PDF and MIDI in the web, without installing

any specific program;



- I can edit my music with virtually any text editor;



- There are very good text editors for ABC (jed, emacs, vi, flabc...);



- Several ABC programs run via command line, my preferred way to do most

tasks with a computer;



- Command-line ABC programs can be used in bash scripts and makefiles,

for automatic tasks (combining/transposing parts and pieces, compiling

songbooks, preprocessing, etc.);



- There are programs with graphical interface which support ABC;



- I can use abcm2ps to prepare complex documents with musical examples,

text, figures, etc. (I use it even for non-musical documents);



- I can insert ABC directly inside LaTeX documents (abc.sty, available

from CTAN);



- Being a text-based notation, ABC is very suitable for computer-aided

composition/analysis;



- There are numberous pieces of (traditional) music in ABC format around

the net;



- ABC is fun to use.





I use (mainly) abcm2ps, abc2midi, emacs with abc-mode by Matthew K.

Junker, abctool, microabc, tkabc and runabc, on a Debian GNU+Linux OS.



I have written microabc, abcm2ps Portuguese documentation, abcm2ps

extensions, tkabc interface translation, as well as a lot of mail

messages to Jef Moine and Seymour Shlien regarding to feature requests,

suggestions, comments and bug reports.



Cheers,

Hudson

There has already been a lot of testimony expressed here regarding the

merits of abc as a musical notation, provided mostly from a personal

viewpoint. Perhaps, though, a few more words could be added considering

the question from a wider perspective, considering both the intrinsic

advantages of the notation (as compared with alternatives) and the

practical, situational advantages that the use of abc offers the

contemporary user.



First, it has to be noted that the simple fact that music written in

abc is expressed as a string of standard text characters, to be found

on any keyboard, is of tremendous importance — no special environment

or device or software is needed to enter or display an abc

transcription. As has been noted, a useful bit of abc can be (and, I am

sure, often has been) scrawled on a cocktail napkin for future

reference. Transcriptions expressed in abc can be compactly stored and

cheaply transmitted, with assurance that the content can be read

unambiguously at the receiving end. Stored abc transcriptions can be

easily edited, searched and indexed with standard text-oriented

utilities. Because abc piggybacks on the text-based infrastructure of

our literate society we can be sure that the abc we write today will

still be intelligible hundreds of years from now (assuming of course

that there is still anyone around to read it).



Further qualities of abc that argue for its continued use (some of

which have already been noted in earlier posts) are:



* abc provides a natural, readable translation of traditional music

notation. The correspondence between the graphic elements used to

portray a score via "dots" and the symbols chosen in abc to correspond

to these elements is direct and intuitive. A musical bar is represented

by a character that looks like a bar; there are very few, if any,

arbitrary choices of characters to represent a musical idea in abc.

Anyone who can read standard musical notation and is comfortable with

the naming of pitches with alphabetic characters can immediately grasp

the correspondence. It is even reported to be possible, with practice,

to be able to visually apprehend a written-out abc transcription to the

point of being able to directly play off the music it represents

(though probably few individuals are likely to ever get that

practiced!).



* abc is concise. The critical information about a tune setting is

noted immediately, in just a few lines. The details of an actual line

of music can be captured with extreme economy, in mere seconds.



* abc is capable. As the idea of abc has grown and spread over the last

thirty-odd years, ever-more-refined ideas have been worked into the

basic concept, to the point where (as is attested to by the

correspondence on this list) notational challenges that it was surely

never dreamed that abc might ever need to meet have been incorporated

into the understood range of the notation. Another way of putting this

is to say that abc is extensible, capable of growing to meet

newly-perceived needs.



* This is possible only because abc is an open notation — no-one owns

abc. Any user can do whatever he or she wishes with the notation; the

only test of what modifications or additions to the understanding of

abc may occur is public acceptance.



* abc has been accepted. Unlike other music notation systems that have

never gained more than local, marginal use, there is at this point no

question about whether abc will take a permanent place in the set of

notational tools our society uses to store and carry forward our

accumulated cultural heritage. No longer just the parochial plaything

of a small community of enthusiasts, abc has become widely enough known

and used to serve as the basis for major public projects that would

never have been undertaken without its availability, and it is becoming

increasingly important for anyone involved with the distribution of

bodies of transcribed music (especially copyright-free bodies of music)

to pay attention to abc.



* abc is supported. As others posting here have noted, there is a very

wide range of excellent software utilities available to anyone wishing

to work with abc transcriptions, in almost any current operating system

environment. This has been true for a long time, of course, but the

fact that vigorous development in this respect continues and that

support for the abc user has been extended to at least one open

internet utility is highly significant. It is really inconceivable at

this point that abc will be left an "orphan", as has happened to so

many other beautiful schemes that have appeared to great fanfare, only

to fade away again, over the several decades now since the computer

revolution started shaking our society.



In short, it appears that you can at this point safely put at least a

reasonable number of your eggs into the abc basket.



	 /RWWT

Quoting RWW Taylor <rwwt@...>:



> It is even reported to be possible, with practice,

> to be able to visually apprehend a written-out abc transcription to the

> point of being able to directly play off the music it represents

> (though probably few individuals are likely to ever get that

> practiced!).



Oh, I do. When I learn a tune, I often take it down in ABC as I'm listening to

it, then, when I have my instruments handy, work it up off the ABC.



Jerome Colburn

jcolburn at soltec dot net

Somthing that may not be totally obvious but is nonetheless important,

abc, being text tokens, is easily open to analysis through common

text-processing tools (you don't have to be an expert MIDI-protocol

programmer to write abc analysis or abc generator software) and can

be stored, searched and retreived with common database tools.



just try putting your MIDI or Cakewalk files into a spreadsheet :)



--

Gary Lawrence Murphy <garym at teledyn.com> =============================

www.teledyn.com - blog.teledyn.com - justus.teledyn.com - sbp.teledyn.com

======================= The present moment is a powerful goddess (Goethe)

I've been trying out ABCEdit and I like it much better now that it types

   out what I type in.   I do have another question.  When I press F1, it

plays the tune and I can play along with it, but it stops after one time

through the tune.  How can I get it to repeat so I can practice with it

and not go to a jam and stop once through the tune to press the F1 key?





Here is FLowers of Edinburgh





X: 48

T:Flowers of Edinburgh

R:Reel

O:Scotland

O:Ireland

M:2/4

L:1/16

K:G

"G"GE|D2DE G2GA|BGBd cBAG|"D7"FGFE DEFG|ABAF E2GE|

"G"D2DE G2GA|"G"BABd "C"efge|"D7"dcBA GFGA|"G"B2G2 G2:|

|:"G"Bd|"G"g2gf gbag|"D7"f2fe fagf|"C"edef gfed|"Em"B2e2 e2ge|

"G"dBGB d2dd|"C"edef "Am"g2fe|"D7"dcBA GFGA|"G"B2G2 G2:|

On 6 Apr 2007, at 16:24, Jim C wrote:



>

> I've been trying out ABCEdit and I like it much better now that it

> types

>   out what I type in.   I do have another question.  When I press F1,

> it

> plays the tune and I can play along with it, but it stops after one

> time

> through the tune.  How can I get it to repeat so I can practice with it

> and not go to a jam and stop once through the tune to press the F1 key?



I know that abcEdit uses abc2midi to generate a midi file, but I don't

know what program it uses to play that file.  That's where you need a

loop setting to make the tune repeat easily.  Another option might be

to use the Part fields to specify a repeating playing order like this:



X: 48

T:Flowers of Edinburgh

R:Reel

O:Scotland

O:Ireland

M:2/4

L:1/16

P:A16 % Play it 16 times!

K:G

P:A

"G"GE|D2DE G2GA|BGBd cBAG|"D7"FGFE DEFG|ABAF E2GE|

"G"D2DE G2GA|"G"BABd "C"efge|"D7"dcBA GFGA|"G"B2G2 G2:|

|:"G"Bd|"G"g2gf gbag|"D7"f2fe fagf|"C"edef gfed|"Em"B2e2 e2ge|

"G"dBGB d2dd|"C"edef "Am"g2fe|"D7"dcBA GFGA|"G"B2G2 G2:|





Phil Taylor