Links and Resources
Exploring ABC
ABC is a language designed to notate tunes in text format. It is elegant
in its simplicity, easy to learn and an incredibly useful tool for
folk musicians.
Not ready to learn abc? Check out the Concertina.net
Online abc Converter or the FolkInfo
Online Converter where
abc notation can be translated online to midi, JPEG and PDF sheet
music.
Links to get you started on abc notation and software:
Notes from the 2/1/04 abc workshop are here in
pdf format.
Chris Walshaw's ABC Home
Page
The abc Music Project a
collection of resources for abc users.
How to interpret abc music notation a
tutorial by Steve Mansfield
The abc standard V1.6 The standard currently in use
The abc standard V2.0 The draft of the next version. Contains great information
for the advanced user.
abc examples This
page contains a whole series of abc examples starting from notes, beams,
etc right through to some fairly complex tunes.
Online tools for abc:
John
Chamber's ABC Tune Finder is an index of most tunes in abc
on the web.
ABC
Format Music Sites page o' links
ABC Convert-A-Matic at
Concertina.net
An online tool to convert ABC into sheet music and midi files.
Folk
Info Online abc Converter
Converts to sheetmusic and midi and
transposes, too!
ABC Transposer
This tool can transpose tunes in the ABC-format.
ABassC
Norman Schmidt's online ABC converter. This program converts ABC notation
to Numbered musical notation and to normal music and sound.
Tunes, Tips
and other Good Stuff
Resources,
Dance Compositions, Indices, and the like
Charlie Seelig's amazing links page for contra dance musicians.
Tune
collections on the Internet a big ol' list o' links of tunes in
gif, jpg, pdf, tif and abc format
Software for Macintosh
Abc4mac
Home Page
Wil Macaulay has written some ABC software for the mac. As well as abc4mac
for Macintosh OS 9 which converts abc tunes into postscript and midi files,
he has written an application called Skink for
OS X which is a handy way of editing and playing back abc tunes. Unfortunately,
Skink doesn't allow the exporting of postscript and midi files that abc4mac
does.
BarFly
A shareware integrated ABC editor/player/viewer for the Macintosh - now also
available in Carbon for OS X.
Five Line Skink homepage
New home page for Five Line Skink - an abc editor/player/and music notation
display. Written in Java, it runs on Mac OSX, Linux, and Windows. Free
(as in beer) - donations gratefully accepted.
Melody
Assistant
If you want a program that takes in abc files amongst many others, displays
them, plays them and prints them but can also be used to edit or write the
music from scratch then Melody Assistant does this. It also produces tab
for string instruments and harmonica. If you want accordion tab then the
upmarket Harmony Assistant is what you want. They are available as downloads
in trial versions with no time limit, when you pay you can save files. Melody
Assistant is $20 but free for the trial version, well worth a look.
Software for Windows
Abc Navigator
Abc Navigator is a freeware program for Windows for handling music notation
files in ABC format.
Abcedit
- Joop Coolegem
[Freeware] Abc application - text editor, music display, midi playback.
Converts abc files to pdf & can be printed with Adobe.
Freeware.
AbcMus 2.0
AbcMus is a program for tunebooks in ABC format, created by Henrik Norbeck.
AbcMus 2.0 runs under Windows 95, 98, NT4, ME, 2000 and XP.
Five Line Skink homepage
New home page for Five Line Skink - an abc editor/player/and music notation
display. Written in Java, it runs on Mac OSX, Linux, and Windows. Free
(as in beer) - donations gratefully accepted.
iabc
Windows graphical application for
editing music using the ABC music notation language. Not as developed
as Barfly, but still useful.
Melody
Assistant
If you want a program that takes in abc files amongst many others, displays
them, plays them and prints them but can also be used to edit or write the
music from scratch then Melody Assistant does this. It also produces tab
for string instruments and harmonica. If you want accordion tab then the
upmarket Harmony Assistant is what you want. They are available as downloads
in trial versions with no time limit, when you pay you can save files. Melody
Assistant is $20 but free for the trial version, well worth a look.
Muse
Muse is shareware for Windows platforms that will not only turn ABC into
sheet music, but lets you "drag and drop" musical symbols
from a menu onto a staff and then let you save the resulting sheet
music as ABC and/or a midi file. It will also write tablature for
guitar, banjo, mandolin and other instruments based on your sheet
music.
Other Excellent Tools
for Musicians
Audacity
An excellent Open Souce (read: legally free) sound processing program. In
addition to numerous sound effects processing capabilities and the ability
to cut-and-paste sound clips, it can slow down any MP3 file by pretty much
any amount you want without losing pitch.
Audio Converter
A free and well-featured utility for converting between most audio formats.
It is from http://www.softwarepile.com/ who
also provide a respectable number of other free software utilities.
Media Convert
Seems to convert every conceivable digital format. All you have to do is
upload a file to the website. No need to install software! Free as well.
The Amazing Slowdowner from Roni
Music
Not exactly for ABC's, but an essential tool for slowing down a tune that
is being played at supersonic speed. Reasonably priced and available for
PC and Mac.
SlowGold
More software that lets you slow tunes down. There is also a free demo available
for downloading
Want to help? Please email me with suggestions, additions, corrections and
tunes in abc format. Thanks!
|
SPUDS TUNES
