Tech: ABC to sheetmusic/midi

Subject: Tech: ABC to sheetmusic/midi
From: Davetnova
Date: 04 Nov 02 - 03:28 AM

Here is a lovely online utility that was posted on the Co-mando mailing list. By entering a piece of music in ABc this will instantaly convert it to both a playable MIDI file and good quality printable PDF sheetmusic. Online ABC convertor

Subject: RE: Tech: ABC to sheetmusic/midi
From:
Date: 04 Nov 02 - 10:55 AM

Thanks Dave. You might add it to the Mudcat Links up above.

Subject: RE: Tech: ABC to sheetmusic/midi
From: nutty
Date: 04 Nov 02 - 02:14 PM

Thanks Dave ..... what a great little program ......just what I was looking for. Now I can play all the tunes that people put on Mudcat in ABC.

Subject: RE: Tech: ABC to sheetmusic/midi
From: CapriUni
Date: 24 Jan 05 - 03:08 PM

I Lurve the Tune-O-Tron (the online program linked to, above), and have, ever since I found out about it, included a link to it whenever I post a song to Mudcat.

I particularly like the fact that it recognizes the fields for lyrics, allowing words to be shown both lining up under the dots (with a 'w:' field) and as printed verses below the staves (with 'W:').

I use Noteworthy Composer when writing songs, but that program only prints the lyrics under the dots... which is rather hard to read when you have a song with lots of verses.

As a matter of fact, I just downloaded the shareware version of ABC2Win, hoping for the same capability, but was disapointed to discover that it doessn't know what to do with lyrics. When I include any lyrics fields, it thinks I'm trying to slur my notes, and gives me all sorts of dire warnings about exeding limitations, and such.

Is there a downloadable version of whatever program Tune-o-tron uses? Because it is nifty!

Thanks!

Subject: RE: Tech: ABC to sheetmusic/midi
From: GUEST,Jon
Date: 24 Jan 05 - 03:50 PM

Yes Capri-Uni. Last time I read, he was using abc2midi and abcm2ps both of which are freely available.

abc2ps is a little dated and has a few errors in its handling of w: as compared to the 1.7 abc draft. I would reccommend using abcm2ps instead. You will probably also need Ghostscript installed.

Go to Steve Mansfields tutorial for instructions on a Windows setup. I think you will find all the links you need for the software there.

If you are looking for an abc program with some graphical interface for Windows, the Java based Skink is quite a good one that should be easy to set up. You won't get the same quality of printed output as is possible with the gs/abcm2ps combination though and some of us do end up using more than one abc program.

As for abc2win, there is a lot of stuff around written on it but it is best avoided for new abcs.

Subject: RE: Tech: ABC to sheetmusic/midi
From: Snuffy
Date: 24 Jan 05 - 04:19 PM

abc2win is fine for W:, but it simply doesn't recgnise w:.

if you don't know what a command line interface is and how to use it, you might struggle with abc2midi and abcm2ps. They are by and for (musical) computer techies in academia, not ordinary windows-using folkies.

Subject: RE: Tech: ABC to sheetmusic/midi
From: Bev and Jerry
Date: 24 Jan 05 - 05:08 PM

Thanks a bunch, Dave. We've been looking for just such a tool. ABCtoMIDI has never worked for us but this is great. Within the last two weeks we had occasion to take a tune in ABC from Mudcat and convert it to sheet music using Noteworthy and our eyes and fingers. This would have made it much easier.

Bev and Jerry

Subject: RE: Tech: ABC to sheetmusic/midi
From: GUEST,Jon
Date: 24 Jan 05 - 05:08 PM

"They are by and for (musical) computer techies in academia, not ordinary windows-using folkies."

Well snuffy, as someone who dropped out of his A levels, more or less got kicked off an engineering course, dropped out of 1 ond in computing, and twice (other circumstances rather than desire) at hnc level and have no qualifications other than O-Levels, I guess I'm highly qualified as an academic user! ;-)

That said, yes, using a command line does tend to be difficult for people only or mostly used to point and click. I largely put myself into the mostly used to category BTW although I did at least have the "fortune" of using CP/M and DOS before encountering a graphical environment.

Subject: RE: Tech: ABC to sheetmusic/midi
From: GUEST,pavane
Date: 25 Jan 05 - 11:13 AM

My program HARMONY will do all of that, including W: and w: lyrics, and no need for a command line. It will also add chords to the tune for you.

And editing the tune is getting easier all the time. But it is only for Windows users, I am afraid, due to it being written in VB.

http://www.greenhedges.com

Subject: RE: Tech: ABC to sheetmusic/midi
From: CapriUni
Date: 26 Jan 05 - 10:37 AM

It will also add chords to the tune for you.

Oooh! That's something I'd like to learn...Seeing (and hearing)examples may be just what I need...

:::Toddles off to see it:::

Subject: RE: Tech: ABC to sheetmusic/midi
From: GUEST,pavane
Date: 26 Jan 05 - 11:41 AM

Let me know what you think of it.

I am busy working on the next version, which will have further improvements to the edit facilities, including moving or copying an existing note by dragging it. Drag icons will also be used, to make drag & drop more meaningful.

There will also be more items in the toolbox, including (I hope) key and time signatures.

Subject: RE: Tech: ABC to sheetmusic/midi
From: GUEST,MMario
Date: 26 Jan 05 - 11:45 AM

Bev and Jerry - Do you have abc2nwc? a third party program (free download) that converts back and forth between abc and NWC.

to just get the sheet music the concertina .net site is great - but to manipulate I still like to pull into NWC.

Subject: RE: Tech: ABC to sheetmusic/midi
From: Bev and Jerry
Date: 26 Jan 05 - 02:37 PM

No, we don't but we found it and will download it soon. Thanks.

Bev and Jerry

Subject: RE: Tech: ABC to sheetmusic/midi
From: Bev and Jerry
Date: 26 Jan 05 - 07:09 PM

OK. So we've downloaded abc2nwc. There's an abc file posted on a Mudcat thread. How do we save it so it can be opened by abc2nwc? Nothing we do seems to work.

Bev and Jerry

Subject: RE: Tech: ABC to sheetmusic/midi
From: GUEST
Date: 26 Jan 05 - 11:35 PM

Bev and Jerry, copy the ABC text - commencing with the X: line and paste it into Notepad, or similar. Save the file as TEXT and name your file with an ABC extension, eg Girl With Purple Hair.abc.

Just make sure that the X: line is the very first line and that there are NO blank lines in your text file. The ABC convention is that a blank line denotes the end of a file.

In the downloadable version of the DT you can easily save an ABC version of the song as an ABC file. Why not just import a MIDI into NWC you ask? 'Cos with the ABC version you'll get aligned lyrics - for the first verse and/or chorus anyway. You then have a large number of choices about how to manipulate the tune, be it ABC programs or NWC.

Here's an example of a random song from the DT:

X:1
T:Broom O'er the Cowdenknowes
C:
M:2/2
L:1/8
Q:160
K:G
D6 E2 |D6 D2 |D C3 B, A,3 |G,6 D2 |
w: Oh, the broom, the bon-ny bon-ny broom, The
G6 G A |(B2 A2) (G2 F2) |(E8 |F8) |
w: broom o'er the Cow-_ den-_ knowes!_
G4 G A3 |B4 B2 A2 |G6 C2 |D8 |C4 C2 C2 |
w: Fain would I be in the North Coun-try, Herd-ing her
D4 (C B,3) |A,8 |
w: fath-ers_ ewes.

Regards, John

Subject: RE: Tech: ABC to sheetmusic/midi
From: Bev and Jerry
Date: 27 Jan 05 - 02:15 AM

We repeat, nothing we do seeems to work. We copied the file in your post to notepad and saved it according to your instructions but abc2nwc cannot open it. We saved it as Bonny Broom.abc and as Bonny Broom.abc.txt. No luck.

Anyone know what we're doing wrong?

Bev and Jerry

Subject: RE: Tech: ABC to sheetmusic/midi
From: GUEST,pavane
Date: 27 Jan 05 - 05:46 AM

Using the wrong program, maybe?

Subject: RE: Tech: ABC to sheetmusic/midi
From:
Date: 27 Jan 05 - 03:09 PM

Umm, do you have to delete the leading spaces first?

Subject: RE: Tech: ABC to sheetmusic/midi
From:
Date: 27 Jan 05 - 03:12 PM

If there are any, for instance.

Subject: RE: Tech: ABC to sheetmusic/midi
From: Bev and Jerry
Date: 28 Jan 05 - 12:35 AM

We found out what was wrong. When the program installed, it created a shortcut on the desktop to abc2nwc.zip, not to abc2nwc. So, we were trying to unzip files which were not compressed.

When we deleted that shortcut and created one to abc2nwc, everything worked fine.

Bev and Jerry

Subject: RE: Tech: ABC to sheetmusic/midi
From: CapriUni
Date: 29 Jan 05 - 01:46 PM

Pavane: Let me know what you think of it.

It's generally nifty, except I can't get the play tune feature to work (is that because it's unregistered?). And when I include the W: fields, I can't figure out how to put blank lines between the verses.

Any ideas on what I'm doing wrong?

Subject: RE: Tech: ABC to sheetmusic/midi
From: Snuffy
Date: 30 Jan 05 - 07:33 AM

W:last line of verse
W:
W:first line of next verse


Does that work?

Subject: RE: Tech: ABC to sheetmusic/midi
From: GUEST,Jon
Date: 30 Jan 05 - 07:57 AM

Yep Snuffy. That's what we do with all our abc that uses W:

A blank line is the end of an abc and an abc programs might expect to see a line starting X: (a new abc) in the text before taking any notice of any text following a blank line.

Subject: RE: Tech: ABC to sheetmusic/midi
From: GUEST,Jon
Date: 30 Jan 05 - 08:24 AM

Oh and once again while here,,, I have checked concrtina.net (here) and see that he still points to using abc2ps and links to a page where the lastet version is 1998 and changes link below is a dead link.

While I don't want to be miserable on this, the fact is there is no standard on abc and w: (1.7 draft/ abc+ and the hopeful abc 2.0). There are differences, even slight ones in the way abc is handled with w: (lyrics under grace notes is one abc2ps gets wrong) and I am involved with a site that attempts to use the more up to date programs.

In terms of attempting to provide abc that in the future I'd hope all current abc programs will be able to read consistantly, Mudcat is (or Mudcatters are) decidedly unhelpful in suggesting people should use dated software. The only way I see foward is accepting and encouraging a "standard standard".

Subject: RE: Tech: ABC to sheetmusic/midi
From: CapriUni
Date: 30 Jan 05 - 12:22 PM

Snuffy, that's what I tried, and the verses still had no spaces between them. I ended up typing:

W:Verse line
W:=
W:Next verse line.

But that's not very clean.

Oh, Pavane, where are you?!

Subject: RE: Tech: ABC to sheetmusic/midi
From: pavane
Date: 30 Jan 05 - 05:11 PM

I am here...

I will look into your problems.
I don't understand you not being able to play, unless maybe you haven't configured a Midi Out device. Harmony writes a MIDI file, then calls the Windows MIDI control to play it. If it writes the file OK, then the problem is in your Windows configuration. Try Export to MIDI, and then feed the file to Windows Media player.

PS you will be impressed by the next version, 3.3.8, in which you can move or copy notes by dragging existing ones from the score. Available soo, watch this space.

Subject: RE: Tech: ABC to sheetmusic/midi
From: pavane
Date: 31 Jan 05 - 04:13 AM

I don't think the abc definition has any method for specifying blank lines within the lyrics section. Perhaps something could be added to abc 2.0.

I will look at the code for HARMONY and, if necessary, update it to allow W: to specify a blank line.

Subject: RE: Tech: ABC to sheetmusic/midi
From: CapriUni
Date: 31 Jan 05 - 05:37 PM

Thanks, Pavane!

I love the interplay that the Internet allows... don't you?

Subject: RE: Tech: ABC to sheetmusic/midi
From: pavane
Date: 01 Feb 05 - 02:31 AM

I am having problems with PLAY myself now - I have bought a laptop with Windows XP, and for some reason the MultiMedia control isn't giving any sound, even though the same program works OK on Windows 98.

I CAN export to a MIDI file and play that using the Media Player, so it isn't the hardware. And I believe that other people use it on XP OK, so it must just be something in the machine configuration. Maybe I need to install a driver of some kind. Also, I don't know if MIDI Mapper is available, this is the default in the code.

I will let you know if I find out what's wrong.

Subject: RE: Tech: ABC to sheetmusic/midi
From: John in Brisbane
Date: 01 Feb 05 - 03:13 AM

On the subject of concertina.net - which we weren't - has anyone tried listening to the MIDI of an ABC which includes "guitar chords". I hadn't realised that the ABC Convert-A-Matic actually plays accompaniment. I've just posted the following ABC to another thread and to my ear the '7ths' with which I lavished it don't sound as if they're 1-3-5-7. Is this my imaginitus?

Feel free to criticise my arrangement as a separate issue - it's the sound of the generated chords that's my current concern.

Regards, John

X:1
T:The Bull's Despair
M:3/4
L:1/32
Q:1/4=135
K:C
G8|"C"e8d8c8|"F"d8c8A8|"C"G8E16-|E8z8G8|e8d8c8|
w:They say I'm a champ-i-on bull, sir, My genes are the
"D7"c8B8c8|"G"d24-|"G7"d8z8   G8|"C"e8d8c8|"F"d8c8A8|
w:best ones to sow,   My broth-ers all got the un
"C"G4G4E16-|"A7"E8z8    G4G4|"D7"A8d8c8|"G7"B8A8B8|"C"c24-|c16|
w:kind-est cut, But with pride I still swing to and fro.
W:
W:        The Bull's Despair
W:        
W:        They say I'm a champion bull, sir,
W:        My genes are the best ones to sow,
W:        My brothers all got
W:        The unkindest cut
W:        But with pride I still swing to and fro.
W:        
W:        My grandfather told me of his exploits,
W:        Of springtimes the natural way,
W:        He and his mates
W:        Would rush through the gates
W:        And see how many cows they could lay.
W:        
W:        Now, I've fathered some thousands of calves, sir,
W:        Yet I've not seen a flesh and blood heifer,
W:        For me, it's a vet
W:        With a latex pipette
W:        In a fibreglass cow, that they proffer.
W:        
W:        Darwin showd us behaviour's passed down, sir,
W:        We seek romance to help us beget,
W:        If this practice adheres
W:        For some thousands of years
W:        Bulls will lust for the most dextrous vet!

Subject: RE: Tech: ABC to sheetmusic/midi
From: pavane
Date: 01 Feb 05 - 04:31 AM

Does it let you download the actual MIDI file?
If so, I have software which could examine it and report on what chords it actually plays.

See the download for "Find MIDI chords" at my site http://www.greenhedges.com

Subject: RE: Tech: ABC to sheetmusic/midi
From: GUEST
Date: 01 Feb 05 - 05:23 AM

John. to my ears, the chords are not 7ths.

I'm having problems with that abc btw or at least a copy/paste of it.

Convert-o-matic yeilds: No image available -- there's probably a error in the ABC source causing the conversion to fail.

Our site (which doesn't play chords) on a page I sometimes use for testing it does render an image but gives loads of warnings which I don't understand as the seem to point to backshlashes - characters that simply do not exist in your abc.

Skink crashes when I play the melody.

I'll try to get to the bottom of it when I wake up but at the moment, the only thing I have found which I would question is   which appears in a lot of places in the source.

Subject: RE: Tech: ABC to sheetmusic/midi
From: John in Brisbane
Date: 01 Feb 05 - 07:39 AM

Thanks Pavane, an excellent suggestion. I downloaded the MIDI - which is very easy to do - and printed the score. When I eyeballed the dots it was pretty easy to see that the 7th pattern is 1-3-5-#7, in other words a Major Seventh. I've just registered as a user and will let them know.

Hi GUEST - I did try Convert A Matic before I posted to ensure that it worked OK. And it did apart from the bodgy chords in the MIDI. Are you copying and pasting direct from screen (the recommended method) or did you copy from the Source HTML on this page (full of ABC unfriendly characters?

I used ABCMUS as my test-bed when I prepared the ABC as it's quite pedantic about crappy syntax. No problems there. I'll re-check the notation 'cos it's hard to appreciate errors in my own work.

Regards, John

Subject: RE: Tech: ABC to sheetmusic/midi
From: GUEST,Jon
Date: 01 Feb 05 - 10:14 AM

Sorry I forgot to put a name to my last post John. I'm just tallking about a straight copy-paste going wrong for me.

I have since tried the same op (which is a copy/paste from what we see here - view/source was an attempt to see what might be wrong) on IE6 on Win2K pro and that works OK but what I was using before (Firefox on Suse 9.2 Linux) still fails. I could be wrong but do suspect the difference boils down to something like a difference in the way non-visual things get carried into the clipboard rather than an error in your production of the abc.

Subject: RE: Tech: ABC to sheetmusic/midi
From: GUEST
Date: 05 Feb 05 - 09:41 AM

I've had some discussion with the 'owner' of the Concertina.net site about bum chords in the MIDI accompaniment and will report further after I investigate some way to fix it - or simply accept that it's not perfect, but still a great free utility.

Regards, John