To Thread - Forum Home

The Mudcat Café TM
https://mudcat.org/thread.cfm?threadid=162112
13 messages

Online Abc To Mp3?

21 May 17 - 11:29 AM (#3856333)
Subject: Online Abc To Mp3?
From: GUEST

Does anyone have any online abc to mp3 converters? Please tell me.


21 May 17 - 11:35 AM (#3856336)
Subject: RE: Online Abc To Mp3?
From: Mr Red

If you don't have much recording I would advocate Audacity - it useful anyway for editing and tweaking. If you have an app for playing ABC already.

If you have a smart phone you have an audio recorder which is useful for grabbing a tune at a session or club. Edit in Audacity.

I use it for converting cassette tapes to CD. Basically start recording, play the music, and top and tail, or remove glitches.

It does need Lamenc.dll for MP3 export.


22 May 17 - 02:29 AM (#3856450)
Subject: RE: Online Abc To Mp3?
From: Joe Offer

Interesting question, Kevin. Once upon a time, the goal would be to convert ABC to MIDI, and there were many such converters that worked quite well. But MIDI has become a less-common format, so now people are thinking they want to make MP3 miles, since MP3 is the most common music format.

You can't convert ABC or MIDI directly into an MP3, so you have to make the ABC or MIDI play music first, and then record the sound onto an MP3.

So, you take any converter that will play ABC or MIDI as audible music, and then record that music with something like Audacity.

I transcribed MIDI files for the bass parts for our choir one Christmas, and then found that nobody had a way to play the MIDI files. I could play them as sample ringtones on my phone or with Windows Media Player on my computer, but those were the only ways. So, I used Audacity to make MP3 files that I could email to the choir.

-Joe-


22 May 17 - 03:41 AM (#3856460)
Subject: RE: Online Abc To Mp3?
From: GUEST,Jon

You can do midi to mp3 a bit more directly. Eg. on Linux with the timidity software synth and lame installed, something like this should work:

$ timidity infile.mid -Ow -o - | lame - out.mp3

(That said, depending on the piece, I might well opt to record to Audacity from my PC as the connected Yamaha keyboard produces better playback results than anything I've managed using timidity or fluidsynth.)

From the point of view of the former folkino abc converter (and presumably mandolintab), it would be quite possible to follow the abc->midi conversion with a command line midi->mp3 conversion to give (from the users view) a direct abc->midi but I suspect processing time, cpu use and larger download files would all present problems.


22 May 17 - 03:44 AM (#3856461)
Subject: RE: Online Abc To Mp3?
From: Will Fly

For capturing sound from my computer I use a freebie called Audio Hijack - very good. I also use Audacity - but for other things.


22 May 17 - 03:46 AM (#3856462)
Subject: RE: Online Abc To Mp3?
From: GUEST,Jon

"direct abc->midi "

Should have been abc->mp3


22 May 17 - 04:32 AM (#3856472)
Subject: RE: Online Abc To Mp3?
From: GUEST,brakn

I use Audacity - a small lead from the headphone socket to the mic socket.


22 May 17 - 04:43 AM (#3856473)
Subject: RE: Online Abc To Mp3?
From: GUEST,Jon

One comment on processing time. The timidity example I gave should be a lot quicker than playing/recording. One midi file I've just been using wit reports a playing time of 158 seconds. Typical timidy/lame runs for that are timing at around 5 seconds on this PC.


22 May 17 - 04:47 AM (#3856474)
Subject: RE: Online Abc To Mp3?
From: Jack Campin

BarFly does ABC to AIFF, which is higher quality than MP3 with no lossy intermediate steps involved. Audacity will then convert AIFF to MP3 (which is where all the loss of quality will come in).

Presumably other software will have ways of directly outputting a lossless audio format like FLAC, OGG or WAV?


22 May 17 - 05:06 AM (#3856476)
Subject: RE: Online Abc To Mp3?
From: GUEST,Jon

I can't say there isn't Jack but I can't think off hand of other abc software like that.

I think the main area of sound quality is more likely to be in the "synth". I don't know how Phil worked his but for the midi route you are always at the mercy of this component (and with programs like timidity you can spend a wile trying to find reasonable sound fonts - I think I settled on Merlin Gold???). Timidity will do midi->wav - that was just piped to lame in the previous example. Something like this for a wav:

$ timidity infile.mid -Ow -o out.wav


22 May 17 - 05:30 AM (#3856481)
Subject: RE: Online Abc To Mp3?
From: Mr Red

I have asked Mr ABC but AFAIK he may not be aware of all aspects of ABC. He is a busy man musically.
ways to discuss at abcnotation.com


22 May 17 - 05:57 AM (#3856487)
Subject: RE: Online Abc To Mp3?
From: Mr Red

In Audacity there should not be a need to link "PC audio out" to mic - there is a drop-down selection of sources for recording and I find there is always one that works. It may have a funny name, eg on Lenovo it offers only "Speakers (Conexant)" which suffice. Unless I have something like my USB mic dongle connected or the mouse/telephone doovery!

Failing that there is always the audio dialog accessed from the speaker icon, look for "mixer" to switch things on, but Win 7 has reduced the possibilities since even Vista.


22 May 17 - 12:59 PM (#3856578)
Subject: RE: Online Abc To Mp3?
From: GUEST

There may still be a few computer sound cards that don't offer the Speakers/What your hear/stereo mix for recording option.

If using it (or the lead from headphones to mic) you need to turn off as many system sounds as possible (e.g. mouse clicks) and things like arriving emails.