concertina.net: ABC to midi/sheet music converter

Subject: Great ABC to midi/sheet music converter
From: GUEST,Jim
Date: 28 Feb 02 - 04:28 AM

This site was posted in another thread, but it was buried way down so many people probably didn't see it. Hope it's OK to post it again.

www.concertina.net/tunes_convert.html

offers a really good and easy online way to convert abc tunes to midi or PDF scores. (No need to download any software)

Jim

Subject: RE: Great ABC to midi/sheet music converter
From: GUEST
Date: 28 Feb 02 - 07:41 AM

That's real handy.

Thanks

Subject: RE: Great ABC to midi/sheet music converter
From: GUEST,pavane
Date: 28 Feb 02 - 07:54 AM

Have you tried my program HARMONY? It does a great deal more, including adding chords, transposing, assigning instruments. (but you have to download it - sorry)

The new version (almost ready!) will have many new features, including abc Lyrics, Songwright export, create a round from any tune, stereo placement of sound within the MIDI file, echo effect, etc.

It also creates Concertina and Melodeon tablature.

It can be found at my web site www.greenhedges.com

Subject: RE: Great ABC to midi/sheet music converter
From: GUEST
Date: 24 Jun 11 - 08:54 PM

I am having trouble with the concertina abc to midi site. It doesn't recognize the abc input that I have pasted. Not sure what the problem is. I even copied some abc files from "official" sources.

Matt

Subject: RE: Great ABC to midi/sheet music converter
From: Joe Offer
Date: 24 Jun 11 - 09:04 PM

Hi, Matt -
I've noticed a couple things that will make it so the concertina.net converter won't work:

• You MUST have an X:(plus any number) line as the first line in everything you submit. If that's missing, X:1 will work just fine
• Lines can't start with a blank space

You'll find lots of ABC tunes to experiment with at http://abcnotation.com/.

Holler if you still have trouble.

-Joe-

Subject: RE: concertina.net: ABC to midi/sheet music converter
From: Geoff the Duck
Date: 25 Jun 11 - 05:27 AM

Matt -

An alternative ABC to dots/MIDI converter can be found ate http://www.folkinfo.org/

The converter also allows you to transpose into different keys.

Quack!
GtD

Subject: RE: concertina.net: ABC to midi/sheet music converter
From: Artful Codger
Date: 25 Jun 11 - 06:33 AM

The Concertina.net converter has many annoying limitations. In general, the converter at folkinfo.org works better--especially if you have embedded guitar chords.

Subject: RE: concertina.net: ABC to midi/sheet music converter
From: GUEST,leeneia
Date: 25 Jun 11 - 07:23 AM

thanks for the info

Subject: RE: concertina.net: ABC to midi/sheet music converter
From: Peter the Squeezer
Date: 25 Jun 11 - 03:46 PM

I find the one at folkinfo.org suits me better

Subject: RE: concertina.net: ABC to midi/sheet music converter
From: GUEST,Jon
Date: 25 Jun 11 - 06:50 PM

especially if you have embedded guitar chords.

I suspect that will be due to different abcm2ps versions in use. folkinfo is usually within one or two releases of the current stable version and is up to date at the moment.

I'm actually using 2 versions of abcm2ps at the moment as I've added experimental support for the svg (scalable vector graphics) format which only exists in the development version. I'm not sure what other features the development versions may add but there is a chance that the svg link will (for better or for worse) produce different output on the score to the png/pdf.

Subject: RE: concertina.net: ABC to midi/sheet music converter
From: Artful Codger
Date: 26 Jun 11 - 06:11 AM

Actually, I encounter chord problems more often with the MIDI rendering. For instance, the Concertina.net converter treats 7th chords (like A7) as major 7th (Amaj7 or AM7) chords instead of as dominant chords (minor 7th). Mind boggling.

I also find that Folkinfo's converter better handles layout, voices, repeats and part ordering. In fact, I'm quite impressed with what the converter CAN handle. One just has to experiment a bit to figure out which "extended" features one can use.

Subject: RE: concertina.net: ABC to midi/sheet music converter
From: GUEST,Jon
Date: 26 Jun 11 - 08:47 AM

Again, I would think that would be a version difference (in this case abc2midi). I've just updated ours to version 2.61 June 6 2011 and the development abcmp2s (for svg) to 6.3.8. At the moment, we are up to date with all the command line utilities we use.

Subject: RE: concertina.net: ABC to midi/sheet music converter
From: Artful Codger
Date: 26 Jun 11 - 07:17 PM

I suspect the chord misinterpretation isn't due to a faulty version, but rather to some misguided site customization, a redefinition of the default rule. Did you EVER encounter the problem with any previous version of abc2midi? Would any self-respecting programmer release a chord interpreter that munges the 2nd or 3rd most common type of chord?

Subject: RE: concertina.net: ABC to midi/sheet music converter
From: GUEST,Jon
Date: 27 Jun 11 - 12:25 AM

I'd not spotted it but that would not mean it was not there. You would probably need to wade through this to find if there was a bug that was fixed although that only goes back to 2003 (abcmidi is older than that and has had a change of author/maintainer). I'd doubt there is a simple switch to do customise this behaviour but I could be wrong...

Subject: RE: concertina.net: ABC to midi/sheet music converter
From: Artful Codger
Date: 27 Jun 11 - 11:21 PM

New chord suffix recognition and existing suffix reinterpretation can be defined with the "%%MIDI chordname" directive. For example, for the augmented 5th (X5+), you could define:
        %%MIDI chordname 5+ 0 4 8 12
The numbers after the suffix specify semitones above the root, which need not appear in the chord, hence the zero here. (I believe "5+" is already recognized, and this example simply duplicates the existing rule.) This could also be used to define specific patterns for inversions, as in the Roman system encountered in classical music theory texts. I haven't tried this directive, nor do I know if one can specify negative numbers in order to get bass notes below the root note that would ordinarily be used.

Since there is no equivalent directive (I know of) to specify a custom rendering for a particular chord (like E5+, varying from how you'd want other 5+ chords to sound), if you need this kind of customization, you'd have to redefine the pattern each time you wanted a different pattern or spacing for other chords of the same type. Of course, the bass note can be specified independently using a "/" expression after the chord name. There are other directives if you want to change the strum pattern (for instance, to have solid chords or arpeggiation, or adjust to a shifting meter).

Of course, the "chordname" directive might not be supported in whatever version of abc2midi C.net is using, but it might be worth seeing if adding this line cures the 7th anomaly--I'm too lazy, since Folkinfo does the right thing already--:
        %%MIDI chordname 7 0 4 7 10

Subject: RE: concertina.net: ABC to midi/sheet music converter
From: GUEST,Grishka
Date: 28 Jun 11 - 11:12 AM

I tried it out, with several fancy interval compositions. No avail, concertina always lets us hear a major seventh chord, whereas the abc2midi on my own computer does what it's told. (I did not know about this function before.)

Well, concertina players have their own old and subtle traditions. It seems that's where Jazz musicians got their maj7 from.

Subject: RE: concertina.net: ABC to midi/sheet music converter
From: GUEST,Jon
Date: 28 Jun 11 - 01:16 PM

Might as well note it here...

Folkinfo might be a bit unreliable for the next couple of days and there will be some downtime. It's been affected by a thunder storm about 2pm this afternoon.

My monitor is randomly failing to switch display modes which makes it a bit hard to try to fix things and there is something horribly wrong with the motherboard (sometimes it reports no SATA drives, sometime no graphics, sometimes beep and refuses to start because of a faulty [non existent] floppy drive, etc). It's running now but it's anybody's guess if and when it would be willing to reboot another time.

Anyway, I've ordered the bits (missing the cut off for Wed delivery by 5 minutes...) and I hope to sort it out on Thursday.