Glad to see you're back, Chris. I used your old site many times. Wikipedia says that you're the one who originally developed ABC notation - I hadn't known that.

-Joe Offer-

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Thread #63210   Message #1025225
Posted By: GUEST,Jon
26-Sep-03 - 02:17 PM
Thread Name: Tune Req: ABC Files and how to read them?
Subject: RE: Tune Req: ABC Files and how to read them?

Here you go Mark, on the origins and original designs of abc (from Phil Taylor, found in the abcusers archive):

[..]Chris Walshaw invented abc when he was on holiday in
France, encountered some French musicians with interesting tunes, and
lacked manuscript paper to write them down. So he just wrote the names
of the notes along with a multiplier for the length as necessary, and a
bit of header information required to read the rest. Later, faced with
a pile of scraps of paper with tunes written in text he wrote the first
version of abc2mtex as a way of converting this material to conventional
musical notation.[...].