New “Open ABC in External Tools” feature in my ABC Transcription Tools

Whistle
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Collaborating with Robert Hickman (Pure Ocarinas) and Paul Rosen (developer of abcjs), I’ve added support for sending ABC tunes directly from my tool to other ABC software tools.

There is a new “Open ABC in External Tools” dialog available by clicking the new share icon at the top right of the Player or the Sharing Controls dialog.

Currently there are two supported external ABC tools:

Pure Ocarinas Phrase-by-phrase ABC tune practice tool

Robert Hickman’s powerful tune practice tool that plays the tune phrase-by-phrase and evaluates your playing before proceeding to the next phrase.

abcjs quick editor

Paul Rosen’s reference abcjs editor that is useful for sanity checking any issues found with a tune when using the ABC Transcription Tools.

If the ABC for a tune has an issue in the abcjs quick editor, then the problem is most likely with abcjs itself.

If a tune has an issue in the ABC Transcription Tools but not the abcjs quick editor, then it is an issue with the ABC Transcription Tools.

If this dialog is opened from the Player, you can open the currently displayed tune in the external tool.

If this dialog is opened from the Sharing Controls dialog, you can open all the tunes in the editor in the external tool.

In both cases, if the URL created for the external tool is over 8100 characters, you will be alerted that the link is too long to open.

If you are an ABC software developer interested in being able to have my tool send ABC directly to your tool and having your tool added to the list of available external ABC tools, contact me for a link to sample code available to help facilitate building tool integrations via a common share link structure.

Demo video

Note: After talking with Robert Hickman I’ve abandoned the previous URL parameter based system I first tried for doing integrations with other tools in favor of this much more powerful and easily expanded system. Use of the &ocarina URL param will no longer work.

“Open ABC in External Tools” is available in version:

3061_121225_1630

or later.

The version number is displayed at the bottom left of the “Settings” dialog in the standard editor.

If your version starts with a number less than 3061, click the version number to do a manual update of the tool then do a hard refresh of the page.

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If you know that you’ll never want to use the “Open ABC in External Tool” option from the Player, in new version 3064_121325_0500 there is a new option on the Player Settings that will let you hide the icon at the upper right of the Player.

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Here’s a demo video showing how to initially setup the Pure Ocarinas “Phrase-by-phrase ABC tune practice tool” the first time you launch it from the “Open ABC in External Tool” dialog.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qvWfAIlqp-Q

This video is now also in the latest version of the User Guide.

Robert has made many improvements to the tool to fix bugs and streamline the initial user experience. If you’ve used it before, please try the latest version.

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If you use interactive PDF tunebooks created with the ABC Transcription Tools, there is a new option available in the tool’s Player to open any tune in the Pure Ocarinas “Phrase by phrase ABC practice tool”.

This a powerful training tool developed by Robert Hickman at Pure Ocarinas that plays each phrase in the tune, listens to your playing, evaluates your pitch and timing accuracy, and if you play with sufficient accuracy, moves on to the next phrase. If you make too many mistakes in pitch or timing, it will repeat the phrase until you get it right.

When you click on a tune in any PDF tunebook (or tunebook website) and the tune opens in the Player, you will see a new share icon at the top right of the Player dialog.

Click the share icon and then select “Pure Ocarinas Phrase by phrase ABC practice tool” from the dialog that comes up.

The tune will immediately launch in the Pure Ocarinas practice tool in a new browser tab.

There is some very simple first-time setup you will need to do when first using the “Phrase by phrase ABC practice tool”, this video shows what to do:

Here are direct links to all the tools mentioned in the video:

My interactive PDF tunebooks and tunebook websites:

Phrase by phrase ABC practice tool

Scale Exercise Generator

Interval Exercise Generator

Melodic Figure Practice

Chromatic Tuner

Pitch Graph Tuner

Demo video

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In version 3084_122125_0600 you can also Shift-click the Phrase Builder button to restore the original tune into the Tune Trainer.

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New demo video showing the new “Phrase Builder” feature in the “Tune Trainer” for practicing tunes from interactive PDF tunebooks phrase-by-phrase: