I've done a lot of reading in the last few days about classical Persian music, which I won't attempt to condense for the moment.

Fortunately I'm not attempting to play the music at the moment, just finding a source of the notation. For those with an interest I've located a French site which provides some revisions to the Freeware packages of abcm2ps and abc2midi which seem to provide quite elegant and simple solutions to the notation of quarter notes using some (unofficial) variations to the abc Notation Standard.

That site is http://anamnese.online.fr/iran/persian_music.html There are also some PDF pages of modes and notation examples. This site takes a bit of experimentation in order to navigate.

I know that abc-users has wresteled with this subject in the recent past (which I largely ignored) and have written to them for a source of music.

If I get the chance to investigate the abc freeware modifications I'll drop a report on the ABC Notation Permathread. This will only be worthwhile if there's a large enough body of Persian music using the unofficial vriations to the abc Notation Standard. More anon.

Regards, John