Someone recently recommended ABC Navigator as a well-featured ABC program. It certainly looks good, but not immediately intuitive. And I haven’t seen a help file or tutorial. Before I spend too much time on it, I’d like answers to these questions:
is there something else that’s better that I should be using instead?
is there a help file or tutorial that I haven’t been able to find?
has anyone else cracked it and is happy to share its secrets?
should a few of us band together to write a basic manual?
Personally, although I have it on my computer, I don’t use ABC Navigator. Its interface is annoyingly ugly and its workings seem awkward to me. The lack of space on the split screen is unhelpful and the sections don’t manipulate well. It also doesn’t cope well with anything beyond pretty basic use of the ABC notation, so far as I have seen - i.e. when I import notations into it I usually have to edit their format extensively to get the right standard notation out of it. When I have tried to use it, I invariably seem to get stuck in it and haven’t become familiar with its quirks. It annoys me.
I am not a big or advanced ABC user, but I find it (ABC) very handy for speedily generating good quality dots and for its online resources. I use it as a tool for standard notation, not as an end in itself. I mostly use ABC2win, ABCedit and ABCMus - the latter for playback, the first for entering material and the middle one for generating the dots. I usually have to do some tweaking of the typing format between these three, but don’t get the problems I do with Navigator. The one thing Navigator seems to offer which looks useful but I haven’t explored is the facility to build sets etc. I just do this more manually and case by case in the other programs and in any case tend to save images of the dots as Word documents or PNGs or PDFs as my to-use-for-real resources.
One day i found out how to change the instrument playing the tunes in ABC navigator. I didnt like the instrument i changed it to (was supposed to be whistle, didnt sound at all like a whistle) so i tried to change it back to the original instrument, and even after hours of trying to find out how to do that, i was never able to. I ended up having to uninstall it and reinstall it to get it back to the original midi instrument.
If you have a PDA (pocket computer), you could try a great little programme called TunePal (shareware, $10). Really handy when you’re at a session and can’t remember how a particular tune starts. Or am I the only one with a goldfish-like memory?
I’d love to have something like that for my Palm. All the abc-software for that platform is rather useless.
Back to the big machines. On my PC (which is old and stil runs Win98) I mostly use ABCNavigator. I find it features the easiest interface to work with. The set-function is nice but works only to generate midi with the stated number of repeats for each tune. Would be handy in deed to print just from that screen. Otherwise I like the dots ABCedit generates much more. They look smoother and more refined. But apart from that this app is not very intuitive.
On my new mcbook I use BarFly. BTW it is the only ABC-app for that platform. Some things work less straightforward and the dots are not that nice. But it works.
I use BarFly and like it a lot - in fact, I just popped for the shareware fee… One thing that’s real nice in the registered version is the ability to export pdf files that have multiple tunes.
It takes a little getting used to (it hates lines ending with ! for example), but I think Wil MacCaulay deserves a Nobel prize for making it available to tradkind.
There’s a version for Mac and one for Windows/Unix. You will need Java on your machine to run it.
The best part about it is the notation is huge - a boon to old eyes like mine!
My needs are probably the opposite of Jem’s - I’m not particulalry interested in the dots, although I can use them if needed to work through a particularly horny bit. I’m looking to the ABC system for its play-a-long-to-learn capacity, as I find I can assimilate stuff much better by ear than eye.
Having been playing for well over thirty years in a strong session scene, I know thousands of tunes, but only if someone else starts them! I find the number of tunes I can remember both the name and how it goes is very small, and now that I’m one of the only two players in this area, I need to get my act together!
What I’d really like is an incipit system, like Breathnach demonstrated to me back in '74. He had a pair of library catalog cards for each tune, one filed by name, the other filed by incipit. The incipit is just the bare notes of the first two bars written out in numbers. When he collected a tune, he’d work out its incipit, and look it up in his system to see if he had it already under a different name, or had a varient of it. He used numbers so that the same tune in a different key would still come up with the same incipit. These days it would be so easy to do.
I’d like something a little different - a file with every tune filed by name and beside it the first two bars written out in ABC. And the ability to refile it in ABC order. So if I remember the tune I can look up the name of it. And if I remember the name, I can remind myself how it starts. Anyone offer such a thing?
Thanks to others with solutions for Mac’s and portable devices, I’m running Vista on a PC (essentially the same as XP but fussier and with more bugs!).
Terry, I know exactly what you mean about the tunes you know, but only if someone else starts them. Three or four notes and you’re in, but will you remember it tomorrow morning to play alone at home? Like hell! I also don’t do too well with titles. And I agree about the titles and first two bars thing as a reference - preferably a quick and easy reference. Over the years I’ve often thought about trying to do one, witht he first bar or so in standard dots, but the task is so huge and daunting (not much less so using ABC) that I’ve never gotten around to it. Since I got a bit computerate and became aware of ABC I’ve thought about it more seriously several times, but the collation and recall of material is just too big a task to start on unless one had some serious free time! I bet you know three or four or ten times as many tunes as I do too…
Like all database type things, if you compile it systematically from an early stage, no problem and even re-formatting isn’t too awful. Once you’ve got it running, making additions tolerably regularly isn’t a headache, but get behind (like I am just now with my accounts!) and it looks horrible again! I do think ABC would be a good way to do this and would use it thus myself if I had the time to go though my archives of set lists and sheet music and session recordings… But not in ABC Navigator. I think ABC2Win is probably the best software I’ve used for simply entering stuff and filing it, followed by ABCedit. I had a quick look at the one Cathy recommended, and it looks quite nice, but I haven’t actually tried it out.
Of course, any of these you really need to enter the whole tune and there’s no quick way to access just the first two bars of the notation, so manipulating them once entered wouldn’t be too good if you want an incipit ready reckoner! or that, typing an alphabetical list of titles in spreadsheet and then doing the incipit in ABC in the next column would probably be quicker and easier and easier to handle afterwards. I suppose one could put links to whole ABCs and midis etc. in subsequent columns as well as extra info like set combinations and so on.
The set building in ABC navigator is pretty much worthless to me. Simple is good. If you want simplicity, it works pretty good. If you want a reel to sound a reel and a jig to sound like a jig, you’re sol. The tune sortation function is probably it’s best feature. I’m in the process of looking for a new player myself. Something where I can customize the playback settings. Something where I can have a little more swing, or a little more accenting. Something where you can just set the midi playback for each tune type. A jig with one set of parameters, reels with another, etc. I don’t suppose something like that and that has a good filing and printing system exists.
I just forgot to mention AbcMus by Henri Norbek. It focuses on the abc (that means the text version of the tune), provides play-along capacity but it does not show dots etc.
It’s shareware though (21USD), some functions only work after registering.
You’ll find it on: http://www.norbeck.nu/abcmus/index.html
It has something like the function you search for. E.g. it lets you create cheat-sheets with title and the first two bars of the tune.
BTW Henrik has listed the abc’s he’s collected and you can search by the first two bars e.g..
You can do snippets of tunes in it and run them all out together, you can have it play back snippets for you, etc., etc. – it really is the most elegant little abc manager I’ve found, and much more stable than BarFly.
Honest, for real, I swear … by the Great and Mighty Skink.
Too late, Cathy, I’ve committed to ABC Navigator. Indeed, I’ve been in communication with the author (JP Martin) and am putting together a user guide as I go, which will be made available when finished. It’s proving a fascinating voyage of discovery - the thing is loaded with features - and where I have seen criticisms of some aspects of it, it always seems that the criticism in unfounded - it’s just the lack of a guide that is letting it down.
It’s ability to handle very large files effortlessly, the fully integrated midi functions and the set lists and ability to export midi files of sets (for band members that don’t have an ABC program) are very attractive features.
Well, that’s good news – I’m glad it’s working out for you, Terry. And your efforts will definitely benefit those who follow. Thank you, and maybe they should call the guide you come up with “ABC Pathfinder” in your honor? Godspeed, Navigator Chartmaker!
ABC Nav has held me up from actually learning ABC. Does its thing very well, albeit with the odd quirk. Terry - tell JP to get rid of that irritating message asking if you actually want to quit.
What you’re looking for sounds like quite the chore. Maybe someone could transcribe all of Breandan’s cards. Sounds like government grant work. Or you could take an index like Norbek’s and cut out all of the transcription except the incipt, file them by their starting notes.
Or - you could load all these ABCs into a PalmPilot or the like and search for the notes in a word processing program…lotta work for a title.
Someone mentioned being able to look up titles on your iPod. Those are ID3 tags; I have them for all of my MP3s, they’re available for most CDs from sources like freedb. Makes searching for a title easy, at least, if you have enough CDs. You might look for a ITM fan with lots of recordings on their hard drive; it’s a simple matter to buy an external hard drive and swap all of these files around (albeit you’re not making the artists any money).
I had exactly the same problem, and it took a while before I could use it correctly.
All that you have to know is that an abc file is a collection of abc tunes.
The main toolbar is for abc FILES, and the small one is to add abc TUNES to your FILE.
For instance, you create an abc file called Irish tunes, and then, after opening it, you create a first tune “Silver Spear”, then a second one, “Maid Behind The Bar”; then you save each tune, and you get a single file.
