(PS. no need to explain the fundamentals of reading standard notation. I’m well aquainted with it. There seem to be many who like to give more information that is neccisary. I have my own private theories as to why this is).
http://staffweb.cms.gre.ac.uk/~c.walshaw/abc/abc-draft.txt
In a nutshell, the Letters are used to represent notes. Capital letters are used for the lower octaves, and lowercase letters for the upper octave. If a number follows the letter, then that note is held for the base note length times that number. For example: if the base note length is a quarter note, then D2 is a lower-octave D held for 2 beats. You can tell the base note length by the fraction after the “L:” tag at the beginning of the tune.
This is the first 7 lines of “Tar Road to Sligo”
X: 1
T: Tar Road To Sligo
M: 6/8
L: 1/8
R: jig
K: Dmaj
|fdB Bcd|ecA BAG|FGA ABc|dcd ef2|
“X:1” means this is the first song in the file. Every song must have a different X: tag.
“T:” is the title of the tune.
“M:” is the meter (Here, 6/8)
“L:” is the base note length (Here, an eighth note)
“R:” is the rhythm
“K:” is the key (Here, D major)
Then we start with the notes. Every measure starts with a vertical bar “|”.
In between the vertical bars are the notes in that measure.
Furthermore, here’s some software that converts ABC into regular music notation.
http://staffweb.cms.gre.ac.uk/~c.walshaw/abc/#software
I use Skink because it is Java based, and very simple.
That song has a lot F naturals for being in D major.
How do you notate sharps and flats?
No, when you tell it the key is Dmajor, it assumes all F’s and C’s are sharp.
The “K: Dmaj” is a key signature, so you don’t have to make all the F’s and
C’s accidentals…
If you want an Fnat in this tune, you’d have to expressly signify it with the
“=” sign, like this: “=f2”
A friend was telling me about her friend who’s some kind of expert on ABC. Gary Taylor? A physicist of some sort. There’s a great tutor online somewheres. I bet you just need to print some tunes out and stare at the things for long enough and it’ll be as easy as the dots.
I like ABCNavigator 2 for the conversion stuff.
I like the interface for ABCNavigator 2, but it is not able to recognize a lot of performance stuff like tied notes across measures (-), trills (
), slides/glissando (J, :sl:), etc.
Although it doesn’t print standard notation, AbcMus has a very comprehensive Help menu with all the ABC notation explained. I find myself writing ABC in AbcMus, and then copy/pasting it into one of the other programs that does standard notation, like the Tune-o-tron: http://www.concertina.net/tunes_convert.html, which also gives you a midi file.
djm