I’ve found some songs that i really like, but i’m having trouble playing them because they’re in the key of either f or c (and go lower than my d whistle can play) I was just wondering if anyone knows these tunes, has them in the key of g or d, or knows of any freeware the might transpose them? The names are The Green Wood, The Pretty Red Girl (or An Cailin Deas Ruadh), and The Rose of Cloonoe. I’ve looked on JC’s and so far no luck.
Thanks in advance,
Katie
Alcona, I just had a similar situation. I found a version of Green Wood on JC’s, and it was in the key of F…there may well be an easier way, but this works…
Download WIN2ABC (Google for it…very handy program and easy to use).
Go to JC’s and open the ABC of the tune, using your handy new WIN2ABC
EDIT the abc
If you’re changing key of F to key of G, simply take the highest note (for example, an f) and make it one higher (example g). Go down the scale note by note, changing e to f, d to e, c to d, B to c, A to B. . . .
OR
Print out staff paper (you can find it online). Call up the tune in JC, and copy it by hand, moving everything up one position (a line becomes the next higher space).
OR
take a deep breath. This isn’t going to be nearly as hard as it sounds. Call up the tune in JC, and play a note above what you see. It takes a little bit of practice to do this, but once you do the mental swap it works nicely. In this way you can read F and play G, read C and play D, and by playing a note LOWER than what you see, you can read A and play G, E and play D…etc.
This does fine for me, usually (albeit, slowly)…unless there are accidentals thrown in to confuse the issue. Also, I can’t swap back and forth between play-what-you-see and play-a-note-higher or play-a-note-lower.
Good luck!
I did this for Timour the Tatar, and it took about 5 minutes to straighten it out in the new key. There is prbably some software available to do it also, but this worked for me.
It’s quite easy to transpose these tunes yourself. Arm yourself with some blank music manuscript and follow these simple directions.
For tunes in the key of C, raise each note one line or space and play F# and C#. You are now in the key of D, probably the most common key for Irish whistles and flute. The F# is built into a D whistle and is played as follows XXX XOO. The C# is usually (but not always) fingered OOO OXX You may have to experiment using your ear.
For tunes in the key of F, again raise each note one line or space and again play F#. However, the C must be C natural and can be played as OXX OOO. This puts you in the key of G, again very common for the whistle.
Hope this helps.
Dave McRitchie
Toronto, Canada
ABC Tools has a transposition utility if you are using ABC.
Thank you everyone for such a quick reply. It really helped 
. I went with #3 Tyghress 
.It really is easier than it sounds. If any one is interested in thes songs, I’m posting them here. http://webpages.charter.net/cooleyclan/3f9f636ed3415.pdf
http://webpages.charter.net/cooleyclan/3f9f65ca45bf2.pdf
http://webpages.charter.net/cooleyclan/3f9f6763975f0.pdf
Thanks again,
Katie
Hi All:
I just wrote a Java program to automatically transpose a music score in ABC using one of the whistles Eb, C, Bb, A, G to be pretended to be played on whistle D. If you have any music score to be transposed, let my program tries it to see if it works for you.
dkychang: can we get your Java program?
Hi All:
My Java program is ready for your asking. Currently I have only Eb, C, Bb, A and G whistle besides the standard D whistle. If you want my program to work on any other whistles, just let me know. I have a lot of free time until the end of this year. Your feedback is very welcomed. I hope this program can be useful and bug-free by the end of this year if I can get input from you.
I already sent emmline the files.
For transposing ABC, I recommend James Allright’s ABC2MIDI program. It’s actually a set of three or four command line programs - abc2midi outputs midi files from abc, midi2abc converts midi files (simple ones) to abc, and abc2abc does transposition and reformatting of abc files.
James has stopped supporting the program, but somebody else picked it up and is maintaining it (it’s open source). You can find it here http://ifdo.pugmarks.com/~seymour/runabc/top.html. I’m not too sure how stable this version is as I notice it was just uploaded today. I’d been using the package for years. When I downloaded a newer version a few weeks ago it had a couple of significant bugs in the abc2midi portion. I swatted those plus added some enhancements, so my copy has already drifted away from the “official” copy (one of the common problems with open source software).
Once you’ve transposed the abc you can print it, including whistle tablature, using my own open source program, jaabc2ps – an adaptation of the original abc2ps program that’s been around for many years.
That reminds me, just last month I did a couple of bug fixes to jaabc2ps, the first time I’ve updated it in a couple of years. I had to update it because of changes in Ghostview, the free program it relies on to display and print the postscript scores it produces. I still need to upload the changes though.
In any case, you can find jaabc2ps at http://www.guitarnut.com/abc/index.html
Cool!
Thanks for implementing the text commands. I’ve been wanting that forever. Hmm, maybe it’s time to switch to this version; i’ve been using abcm2ps forever.
Yer welcome. I made that version of the program back in 2000 or 2001 so the text stuff has been implemented since then. In fact (snaps suspenders auspiciously) I was one of the main proponents of the text formatting and initially proposed the additional syntax that lets you position the text but that was back when I actually had time to participate in the abc users community at sourceforge.
I know I’ve mentioned the availability of jaabc2ps for whistle tablature here in this forum a time or two but it’s been a while, I guess. For one thing I’m not that much into blowing my own horn (only my own whistle) and for another, I really don’t have time to support the program and everytime I mention it in a public forum I usually end up getting a dozen or so e-mails saying “how do I…”
Hopefully this weekend I’ll have time to zip up a new distribution with the recent changes and upload it. I’ll post a note here when I do.
There aren’t any huge advances in the new version.
The only changes I can think of off the top of my head are:
-
I fixed it so modern (i.e. latest version of Ghostview) ghostscript processors won’t issue page count warnings.
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I fixed a minor bug that would sometimes put a stem on a whole note (the note body was correct but it would have this silly-arsed stem stuck on it making it look almost like a half note).
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I think I finally swatted an extremely obscure bug that would occasionally cause a program crash when multi-voice music contained embedded time signature changes.
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I seem to remember swatting a bug that sometimes caused oddball things at the end of staves in multi-voice music if one voice had fewer symbols than another. However, this was an extremely obscure bug and I don’t remember for sure if I took the time to swat it or just put it on my TODO list.