I'd never heard of anyone using ABC the way Johnny J describes Irish harp teachers doing, but it occurred to me there is a precedent. The oldest music notation we have is clay tablets in Sumerian cuneiform from about 3000 years ago. They seem to be instructional notes about how to play the harp or lyre, and the notation is letter-based, much like ABC. Seems to have worked for them. The extra feature they figured out that the Irish haven't yet got round to is that if you bake your class notes in an oven they last longer.
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