Abc music notation - questions I get asked a lot
A supplement to the abc tutorial by Steve Mansfield
Last revised : 21/03/2014
I'm very happy for people to email me with their queries about abc notation, and can usually offer some help, or often point them at another website that can answer their query better than I can. You can contact me via the Contact menu item or by clicking on this link . I can't guarantee to get back to you immediately.
However some questions seem to come up fairly regularly by email, and so I've put this page together to try to answer some of them.
1. In abc, how do I notate ...
2. I think I've got a great idea for an improvement to abc - what should I do?
First of all, please don't make the mistake that many people have made over the years and assume that it's in any way my abc system. The abc system was invented by Chris Walshaw, taken up enthusiastically by many people over the years, and is now used all over the world for notating all sorts of music. Chris Walshaw has stepped back from active participation in developing abc, but his abc site http://www.abcnotation.org.uk is still a treasure trove of information and useful resources.
I wrote a tutorial in the year 2000 for a friend, they liked it and passed it on, I fleshed it out and put it on my website, and ever since many people (5 or 600 a week seems to be the long-term average) use it every week to learn or look up abc syntax.
Secondly, check that your suggestion will not break all the hundreds of thousands of tunes that already exist on the Internet in abc format. Over the years I've had a couple of people email me suggesting that it would 'make more sense' if uppercase letters were the upper octave and lowercase letters the lower octave, for example: which may be arguable, but stands precisely 0% chance of being adopted.
So after doing your research if you really, really think you have something worth pursuing, don't email me about it - join the abcusers mailing list by sending an email to abcusers AT argyle DOT wisemagic DOT com and then put your suggestion up for debate there. You will then get a comprehensive (if possibly somewhat robust) assessment of your suggestion by people who have used abc for years.
3. I think I've found a mistake in your tutorial!
That wouldn't suprise me - although I've read it many times, and tens of thousands of other people have used it, the odd glitch still terns up. Please email me with exact details and I'll have a look, and if it is a mistake, thank you very much for pointing it out.
Please note that smart-arsed, pedantic and/or deliberately vexatious emails get reproduced on my blog or on this page. The editor's decision is final!
4. I'm running a workshop / teaching programme / etc, can I use your tutorial as course materials?
Please email me first, although in nearly all circumstances the answer will be yes. We can discuss exact usage when you email, and I also like to know what's happening to my work. In just some examples it has been used to give a blind person in Stockport extra tunes for their piano accordion, in a fiddle workshop in Canada, and on a music school in Australia.
5. What abc software do you recommend?
The short answer is 'I don't'.
Let me try to explain. I'm a software developer by profession, and so like to think I have some understanding of the way that people interact with computers in a variety of ways depending upon previous experience, confidence, and their expectations of what a piece of software will do for them. Personal preference is also a factor: what I would find a useful feature, someone else would regard as an irritating glitch, and conversely what I find an irritating and unusable design choice, someone else will see as perfectly logical.
People want to interact with abc in many different ways - I very rarely use MIDI playback to listen to tunes I've grabbed off of someone else's abc, for example, so if a software package didn't have MIDI playback that wouldn't bother me; but you might regard that as essential. There are simple text editors provided as standard with just about every operating system, and that's all you need to write an abc file. Some people want a single bit of software that will meet all their abc processing needs, whilst someone else will be happier with a collection of small tools, each one of which does a specific job (creating standard line-and-dot sheet music, for example) with a good degree of fine control.
One of the great strengths of the abc file format is that it is open to inspection (it is, after all, a plain text file) and is comparitively easy to understand, and this has resulted in a vast number of different programmes accessing, using, and editing abc files. But that also creates a problem, in that, if you are new to the format, there is no one univerally agreed right way to start.
So, having said all that ...
I currently use a combination of EasyAbc and TextPad. In the past I have used AbcExplorer, various flavours of abc2ps, and I first started on abc2Win. Your mileage may vary considerably.
Chris Walshaw's site offers a guide to currently-available software.
Please note: I do not and indeed can not provide any support on any of the above software packages. Any queries, bug reports, suggestions for improvements, or complaints must go to the software authors. I know no more about how they work than you do.