ABC Transcription Tools 1.0 Released

I can finally declare that I’m complete with this 1.0 version of the tool and can get back to my regularly scheduled life. I have another thread here on the ongoing development effort, this post is just to put a stake in the ground and declare it complete. I’ll only be planning on making bug fixes going forward at this point.

ABC Transcription Tools is a free, web-based, open-source tool based on abcjs for converting music in ABC format to standard notation and tablature (with optional capo offset for stringed instruments).

This converter can generate standard music notation from ABC files, show note names along with notation, and also create tablature for mandolin, bouzouki, mandola, standard guitar, DADGAD guitar, or whistle.

It can also transpose ABC up or down in semitone increments.

It can generate PDF files (Letter or A4 size) in tune-per-page or multiple-tunes-per-page formats with many options for page numbers, headers and footers, and even adding a QR code at the end.

You can also generate Share URLs and QR codes to open the tool with tune sets and tool settings pre-loaded.

The full ABC for the tunes and tab settings along with the tool settings are encoded in URL parameters on the Share URL links.

I wrote this tool starting at the end of January 2023 after the popular mandolintab.net ABC converter site went down at the end of 2022 and has not come back.

I was completely reliant on that site for my lesson and session handouts and tune books, so decided to build an open-source ABC editor and PDF generator that was completely client-side.

It runs completely locally in your browser, not on someone else’s server.

You can even download the source from my GitHub repo and run it locally just by opening the abctools.html file.

ABC Transcription Tools website:

http://michaeleskin.com/abc

User Guide:

http://michaeleskin.com/abctools/userguide.html

Demonstration Video:

https://youtu.be/4kzXTcySKYc

play video

All about ABC Share URLs and QR codes:

https://youtu.be/I8KcG4swmUQ

play video

New PDF annotation features:

https://youtu.be/p8xWxOsqQ6A

play video

Using iOS desktop shortcuts to bookmark tune sets:

https://youtu.be/OvwSQj47Y7o

play video

Scanning a tune set QR code with your iOS device’s Camera app and saving an iOS desktop shortcut:

https://youtu.be/R8Ygnml4meE

play video

Thank you so much for your work on this software!

So, this happened… It was so easy to do, I had to add one last feature.

You can now play your ABC tunes when working with my ABC Transcription tool!

Clicking the new “Play” button will copy the ABC you are working on and open it in Paul Rosen’s “ABC Quick Editor”, which can play the tunes.

You can edit the tunes in the “ABC Quick Editor”, and when you are happy with them, copy and paste them back in my tool for additional editing.

It is very simple and quick to go back and forth between the two tools!

Have fun!

Demo video:
https://youtu.be/40VPLxvCL9s

play video

ABC Transcription Tool website:
http://michaeleskin.com/abc

User Guide:
http://michaeleskin.com/abctools/userguide.html

Neat! I look forward to playing around with this as soon as I find time! Thank you for your work and contribution!

Excellent piece of work - thank you

If you just want to transfer one tune for playback, select it first in the ABC before clicking “Play”.

Paul Rosen’s “ABC Quick Editor” only plays the first tune in it’s text editor… So you can either just bring over one tune, or bring over multiple and edit in his app to bring the tune you’re interested in to the top.

Some clarification:

By default, if there is no selection in the ABC editor, all of the tunes are copied and transferred for playback.

To play a specific tune, select the ABC in the editor for the one tune and then click “Play”.

The “ABC Quick Editor” only plays the first tune in it’s own ABC editor.

If you select more than one tune in the ABC editor (or send all of the tunes if there is no selection present), and click “Play”, you will need to edit the ABC in the “ABC Quick Editor” editor to bring the tune you’re interested in playing to the top.

My god this is luffflyyyyy
It goes by semitones when transposing up and down and it works with the chords. I was missing a lot mandolintab but this tool is even better. The music score is showing at the same time as the ABC notation.

THANKS A LOT MICHAEL!!

Change of plans… made it way easier to play a single tune.

Just click anywhere in the tune and then click play.

Here’s the description from the User Guide:

Play - Copies one or more ABC tunes to the clipboard and then opens them in Paul Rosen’s amazing abcjs Quick Editor tool for playback.

To play a specific tune, click once (don’t select) anywhere in the ABC for the tune and then click “Play”.

The tool will automatically find the tune you’ve clicked on and send it to the abcjs Quick Editor for playback.

If there is a text selection in the ABC area, whatever is selected will be sent.

You can use this to send more than one tune to the abcjs Quick Editor

The abcjs Quick Editor only plays the first tune in it’s own ABC editor.

If you select more than one tune in the ABC editor, and click “Play”, you will need to edit the ABC in the abcjs Quick Editor editor to bring the tune you are interested in playing to the top.

The abcjs Quick Editor can also export MIDI and audio files of tunes.

Once you are happy with the playback, copy the ABC from the "abcjs Quick Editor tool, then paste the edited ABC back into this tool for further editing.

If you single-clicked and played one tune, the entire tune will be selected when you come back to the tool from the abcjs Quick Editor.

This makes it simple to paste any changes you might have made and copied from the abcjs Quick Editor.

It’s now much easier to play tunes in my ABC Transcription Tools.

Now just click anywhere in your tune and the click the “Play” button.

The tool will find the tune and open it in the abcjs Quick Editor for playback.

It will also select the tune in the tool’s editor, so when you come back, it will be already selected if you made changes in the abcjs Quick Editor and want to paste them back.

You can still select multiple tunes if you want, and whatever you selected will be sent across to the abcjs Quick Editor when you click the “Play” button.

The abcjs Quick Editor will only play the first tune you bring over, so if you want to play multiple tunes, you’ll need to bring them to the top of the editor to play them.

Demo Video of the new “Click and Play” feature:

https://youtu.be/-JvOFaotgtY

play video

Very cool! I especially like the tin whistle tab. That is a nice addition.

At the weekend I was learning something I don’t know well by ear, and it struck me that the only thing missing from the tool is playback – and now you’ve added it. It’s by far the best resource I’ve come across, thank you for your work and generosity.

Such a fantastic tool and generous contribution to the music. Thanks so much for making this and for making it available to all of us.

Excellent stuff Michael, a great online resource - top work!

This is really great, thank you Michael!

This is a great resource--- thanks so much!

A great new usability feature for those of you editing larger sets of tunes.

You no longer need to go scrolling through the notation to find the tune you’re editing.

Now just click on it in the ABC.

The notation for the tune will instantly scroll to the top of the area below the ABC editor.

If you scroll the notation so that the tune you are working on goes out of view, and click the tune again in the ABC, it will scroll back into view.

The autoscrolling only happens when you click on a new tune or scroll the tune you are working on out of view and then click back on it.

This also works great with the new “Play” feature, just click anywhere on the tune, it will scroll into view, then click play to open the tune in the “abcjs Quick Editor” for playback.

Have fun!

Demo video:

https://youtu.be/2MZltlkdVD0

play video

This tune autoscroll on click feature only is available when running the tool on a desktop browser.

It was just a bit too messy and unusable on mobile devices with their pesky on-screen keyboards shifting the screen all over the place…

Will it print tunes/books with ‘Notes’ or ‘History’ fields? (which were options I used a lot on the Mandolin tool).

OK, looks like that’s covered by Hide/Show Annotations, great

Need more room to work on your tunes?

Just click the new “?” button:

You can also resize the text area (on desktop browsers), resize your window and use the display size options (click “Show Controls”) to maximize the notation visible under the ABC text box.

Of course, at any time you can click the zoom button at the top right to hide the editor and see your notation the full height of the window.

https://youtu.be/wsMa1Y7ACWk

play video

If you want to start with the top stuff hidden, just go to:

http://michaeleskin.com/abc?hide=1

The top bar show/hide status is also saved in Share URLs.

It’s simple to change the playback instrument for the ABC Transcription Tools.

Thank you to Paul Rosen, the developer of the abcjs library, for this tip:

https://youtu.be/i6oKpGzS2lo

play video

Finally did the work to make the tool responsive on wide-screen monitors, providing a dual-panel view when possible:

Demo video:

https://youtu.be/El30BGaTY40

play video

Replacement demo video for the responsive behavior:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3_g3xj6XOnY

play video

I’ve been trying this with the Foinn Seisiun 1 book of ABC tunes - 116 in total. It works great. Yup a bit of a pause as it injects the full ABC and parses. But very workable. The notation plus ABC underneath very helpful for a lot of folks.

I’ve been worried about how to manage Tunebook and abc collections for the long term - EasyABC app not likely supported into the future.

Super job. Appreciate the work gone into this.

Is there any setting %%parameter to layout 1 page per tune in landscape mode for printing? I like to maximise the page size for distance viewing.

No, I currently only support portrait mode PDFs, but that’s certainly something that could be added in the future or perhaps done with external tools,

Yeah, 116 tunes, even on a fast machine, will be pushing it for editing, but should be able to do PDF generation, albeit it might have a significant delay at first. I’ve generated PDF tunebooks with over 400 tunes in them with the tool, but there’s no way I could edit them in place.

Reduced the PDF size down by about half without sacrificing quality…

Based on gbyrne’s question, I made some changes this morning that should allow you to use your browser’s built-in print feature to print tunes in landscape mode.

It can’t guarantee that the tunes will fit on one page, but every tune will start on its own page.

Demo video:

https://youtu.be/6AlzAVNTRQA

play video

Massive tunebook (386 tunes) PDF torture test:

While I wouldn’t recommend trying to edit a 386 tune tunebook in the editor itself, you can certainly bring such a huge tunebook into the tool to print or export it to PDF using your browser’s native Print feature.

Demo video:

https://youtu.be/3-6Xa2iDjOs

play video

Lovely! Thanks.

If the 386 tunes in the last video wasn’t enough, I doubled it up to 772 for this test.

While I wouldn’t recommend trying to edit a 772 tune tunebook in the editor itself, you can certainly bring such a huge tunebook into the tool to print or export it to PDF using your browser’s native Print feature.

It will take a while to initially render the tunes, probably well over a minute, but be patient.

Took about one minute for Firefox on an M1 Mac to export the complete PDF.

Chrome or Firefox is recommended if you’re going to try this. Safari on Mac didn’t work as well.

Ultimate (772 tunes) PDF torture test:

https://youtu.be/i0RBbDASxqE

play video

Great! Thank you!

I figured out a way to minimize the re-rendering time by only re-rendering the one tune being edited on at any given time.

Of course, there are times when a full tunebook render is required, for example, when changing tablatures, or if a new tune is added or removed from the tunebook, or transposing the entire collection, changing global settings like line height, ABC filters, etc.

Now, other than the initial load and full render time for a large tunebook, the vast majority of the time, if you’re just modifying the ABC for a tune, it should be very fast dealing with any size tunebook. Again, there may be times it will have to re-render the whole thing, but that’s relatively rare.

If an operation is going to take a while, I now put up a spinner to let you know the tool is working.

More about working with larger tune sets…

The ABC Transcription Tools now redraws only the tune you are currently editing, so it’s much faster and more pleasant to work with large tune sets.

Previously it would redraw the entire set of tunes on each change which wasn’t much fun when you had more than 50 or so tunes loaded at one time. Not any more! When you first load a set of tunes, it will draw them all once, then after that, it will only redraw the ones you are actively changing.

There are still some cases where a complete redraw of all the tunes is required, for example when switching from standard notation to one of the tablature options, but for normal day-to-day editing, the new experience is much improved.

I hope you will enjoy it!

Try the ABC Transcription Tools here:

http://michaeleskin.com/abc

User Guide:

http://michaeleskin.com/abctools/userguide.html

Demo video:

https://youtu.be/Jl2HRoCiPRU

play video

New demo video for my ABC Transcription Tool with all the latest features!
(updated 6 March 2023)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eVOLh2Z-GDU

play video

ABC Transcription Tools is now (finally!) able to export PDF tunebooks with one tune-per-page or intelligently layout multiple tunes to fit on each page.

Demo Video:

https://youtu.be/jtiVzXB8xhQ

play video

Try the ABC Transcription Tools here:

http://michaeleskin.com/abc

User Guide:

http://michaeleskin.com/abctools/userguide.html

My ABC tool can now intelligently format the tunes to automatically fit multiple tunes on a page, and not split tunes between pages unless the tune is larger than one page.

In this video I push the tool to the limit, creating a PDF tunebook with 386 reels formatted with multiple tunes per page.

Demo video:

https://youtu.be/oulfpDWHejk

play video

Link on my Dropbox to the PDF tunebook that was generated:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/no9g58rcj99mt2l/Tunebook_Example_6Mar2023.pdf?dl=0

Made some performance improvements to the PDF generation so the tool can now do that same 386-tune export in half the time, 4 minutes instead of 8.

New widely requested feature:

Adding a tune index to exported PDF tunebooks.

To append a tune index to the end of your PDF tunebook listing each tune name and page number, simply add the following comment-based annotation anywhere in the ABC:

%addindex (your tune index title text goes here…)

Note that the tunebook index itself includes the PDF page header and footer but does not include page numbers so you can use it as a table of contents if required for a printed tunebook.

I’ve tested this with massive tunebooks with hundreds of tunes and multiple tunes per page. Looks very sold.

Before you ask, no, I can’t put the index at the front of the PDF.

I don’t know the page numbers for the tunes until after all the tunes have been laid out and the PDF for the tunes is fully generated.

You can always use a PDF editor program like Adobe Acrobat to move the tune index pages to the front. I specifically left the page numbers off the tunebook index pages to allow them to be used as table of contents pages instead.

Demo Video:

https://youtu.be/drtgh8_PRUY

play video

Try the ABC Transcription Tools here:

http://michaeleskin.com/abc

User Guide:

http://michaeleskin.com/abctools/userguide.html

Figured out how to add a table of contents to the PDF tunebooks as well as an index:

https://youtu.be/B1jJmxSQ36M

play video

Latest iPad demo:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8FHD1B9VcPs

play video

Thank you, it’s great to be able to add a ToC and index.

Recently I’ve been getting an odd glitch, though, which is different depending on whether I run the tool in Chrome or Safari.

I always select the option to generate whistle tabs. In Chrome, the first staff of the first tune has note numbers beneath it instead; the rest of the staves for that tune, and all the others in the book, have whistle tabs.

In Safari, the first staff has note numbers beneath it, the second has nothing at all, and all the rest have whistle tabs.

I don’t *think* the issue is a syntax error in the ABC code. I’ve been pasting in the same notation for that tune since I first started using your tool, but the error has only happened the last week or so. Also, if I swop the current first tune in the set for another one, exactly the same thing happens with the initial staves of that.

I’m using an M1 MacBook Pro, and the settings I’m choosing are one tune per page; A4 size; page numbers centre bottom; whistle tabs option. It’s not a major problem for me, but I thought I’d let you know.

That’s surreal, I’ve never seen anything like that, don’t even know how that could be possible.

Can you send me the ABC, please?

The tablature rendering is global for all the tunes, it’s impossible for there to be two different tablatures on the screen at the same time. Something very odd must be happening, I haven’t gotten any other reports of an issue like this.

Any chance you have a old version of the code, perhaps clear the cache for the browser and try again?

Any chance you can send along the ABC you are using? I’m guessing it’s messing up the renderer itself, so it’s got to be something in the ABC that abcjs inherently can’t deal with.

Found a typo in the main code file, please try it again WhistlingFionn!

Here’s the Safari PDF after the fix:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/gx05dhbdq7b1iqo/Drowsy_Maggie_Set_Whistle_Safari.pdf?dl=0

and here’s the Chrome version:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/7ori8lccm46bwln/Drowsy_Maggie_Set_Whistle_Chrome.pdf?dl=0

Please let me know if that’s different from what you get using:

%pageheader REELS

%addtoc Contents
%addindex Index

X: 1
T: Drowsy Maggie
R: reel
M: 4/4
L: 1/8
K: Dmaj
|:E2BE dEBE|E2BE AFDF|E2BE dEBE|1 BABc dAFD:|2 BABc dAFA||
d2fd B/c/d ec|defg afge|d2fd B/c/d ec|BABc dAFA|
d2fd B/c/d ec|defg afge|afge fdec|BABc dAFA||
dBfB dBfB|cAeA fAeA|dBfB dBfB|fef^g aecA|
dBfB dBfB|cAeA fAeA|defd B/c/d ec|BABc dAFD||

X: 1
T: Rolling In The Ryegrass
R: reel
M: 4/4
L: 1/8
K: Dmaj
|:A2AB AFDF|G2BG dGBG|ABAF DFAF|GBAG E2D2:|
|:ABde f2fd|g2ge fedB|ABde fefa|gfdf e2d2:|

Thanks for catching this! Hope the fix did the job.

All good now, thanks so much.

I only discovered it due to a stream of complaints from my niece about the material I was offering – I Am Not Learning Anything With Top B, And That Is Absolutely Final – so I had to keep remaking her tune book!

(To be fair to her, it is a hard note to hit in a reel on a low whistle, and plenty of 12-year-olds haven’t even grown mitts big enough to play one, so she’s doing pretty well after six months of playing.)

Thanks again, Michael.

I think there is an issue specifically with the whistle tab on some devices, the font takes some time to render, so I’m adding some code right now to deliberately allow the browser a bit more time on those staves if doing whistle tab. I’ve seen it drop the tab on the first line on a couple of iOS devices now that I’m trying some test cases.

Yep, all better now… Wasn’t a timing issue, it basically required “priming” the PDF rasterizer with the tin whistle font before actually using it. Specific to Safari and Mobile Safari.

So, now I run a few lines of notation through it to allow it to cache the whistle font before doing the actual PDF generation and all is good now.

Late to the discussion, I know, but Michael, that’s a really useful tool!

Thank you!

Thanks, Jim! Hoping it is stable and I can actually get back to my regularly scheduled life for a while.

For my fellow whistle-playing friends, I’ve extended the range of the whistle tab to now show suggested “folded” fingerings for notes below D. Also extended the upper range to a’, using suggested fingerings one octave lower.

Also have done a lot of work to speed up the whistle tab rendering and PDF tunebook generation when whistle tab is selected.

With the new extended range whistle tablature in place, here are some new example PDF tune books generated with the tool:

Tin Whistle Tablature Tunebook Examples

173 Jigs for Tin Whistle in D

https://www.icloud.com/iclouddrive/05eY0PRcJJ0r2LYxlZ7AFnijQ#173%5FJigs%5Ffor%5FTin%5FWhistle%5Fin%5FD%5F9Mar2023

386 Reels for Tin Whistle in D

https://www.icloud.com/iclouddrive/05e9iTje6-BX826KxZ7Sk75-w#386%5FReels%5Ffor%5FTin%5FWhistle%5Fin_%5FD%5F9Mar2023

Try the ABC Transcription Tools here:
http://michaeleskin.com/abc

User Guide:
http://michaeleskin.com/abctools/userguide.html

Very nice, Michael.

> For my fellow whistle-playing friends, I’ve extended the range of the whistle tab to now show suggested “folded” fingerings for notes below D. Also extended the upper range to a’, using suggested fingerings one octave lower. <

Thanks, this is a great idea – specially for those helping a young player get started. Looking up a piece off their own bat and finding they can’t play it as written can be a bit dispiriting, and this might encourage them to experiment with workarounds.

Added the ability to add a title page to a tunebook, so new tunebook links below:

These include a title page, table of contents, page headers/footers, and page numbers:

Tin Whistle Tablature Tunebook Examples

173 Jigs for Tin Whistle in D

https://www.icloud.com/iclouddrive/0292LGpPSsDOIH_LzKGOqDj6g#173%5FJigs%5Ffor%5FTin%5FWhistle%5FTP%5F9Mar2023

386 Reels for Tin Whistle in D

https://www.icloud.com/iclouddrive/065eDHjVqUjLyBjlapVkND_mA#386%5FReels%5Ffor%5FTin%5FWhistle%5FTP%5F9Mar2023

Three sets of my favorite “Sliabh Notes” polkas:

Standard Notation:

https://www.icloud.com/iclouddrive/0c3KvwEnYVoJ-GBuMhw37lx7A#Sliabh%5FNotes%5FPolkas

Mandolin:

https://www.icloud.com/iclouddrive/0cfF_x-R6JvusgJFka1RNZtpg#Sliabh%5FNotes%5FPolkas%5FMandolin

Whistle:

https://www.icloud.com/iclouddrive/07712zbtH8T08Ps5g-0kgtVrA#Sliabh%5FNotes%5FPolkas%5FWhistle

Or edit them yourself at:

http://michaeleskin.com/abctools/abctools.html?lzw=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-6vB8QG-ACoGghC0I0qgK4MpuuIAOLiWipIqEVHJ8jh1IjjhGKFVCJX4SaUrlAhgrgRIvFQtAyq8uKZbKmOPYLnlKiYXSqK1TxYC9eqRZaOqnESlKCAdbaAWOpeYXVNQMA+qgADEixfj+rCRgBqWxhlcxFWCkIQFKE4qPKUKQKgQ4ri1RWioiVJPZ9e6oh9X2lU1UpFc8gp2kVvJ-WVRXkji654laKOEujuLsHDCNNcjuKY9ixWQ9DVKnqgF7LKgu3YPth1HU6Z1JVG13Abd0oPSmJJDbwUJLqgOpIjq9K8zw-NSkuuEqeLAtC0J7IFcaaJnp1MJIphaqC-VmLK-D0rilAksa9N-HYUrPP6xi6Kq5twDeb53BbYs1OrOqaLGMYkAwAQUAQAl51-qzMbs-GFRczCBEWtKqpRyoXIx8W6rrANmmbmV1LmvHSoynHCcyktGyp02CDeJKB6l3lWZ9jwxta0bErOEeG5buwADa8y1-q9eatqDaV0gnVt88ec57HWf51OyepwPmqbRTTrU-QUBUBs+QIAYTRPszv6XSlIfpWH93ZTCEk-QTUJYqWKJsk1ObalSZ+GvjxOX9fHKolDqC42rSiIlXNYIA4W+kAtOaJKq33YP-JAgDgE5jRDfT+kM0Qwy2lTOYJAfJgmQMwFeAcWZXQPiBEEEclC5VLvzWkityFZn4g3GaFCVS5moSOLMTYxrrXWAeDh1cUzAy4hOShzDRasJ7lSfhQMhGIhYQA9hrDuEjgQseKY7AgA&format=noten&ssp=10&pdf=one&pn=br&fp=yes&name=Sliabh_Notes_Polkas

Ran 1320 tunes from the Henrik Norbeck collection through it and generated a PDF tunebook:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zVYw5h1VQA8

play video

Yes, I just now switched to all Times-Roman fonts in the tool notation and PDF generation. Looks a lot nicer.

Some prettier replacement versions of the “Sliabh Notes” polka sets:

Standard Notation:

https://www.icloud.com/iclouddrive/0e9Q9lMaeWH4y82RaJhFmjTxw#Sliabh%5FNotes%5FPolkas%5F10Mar2023

Mandolin:

https://www.icloud.com/iclouddrive/00fyzuVx06FcbT7ReVNw8pBMw#Sliabh%5FNotes%5FPolkas%5FMandolin%5F10Mar2023

Whistle:

https://www.icloud.com/iclouddrive/0f6xT44KqaucXLTBOFRSufT-Q#Sliabh%5FNotes%5FPolkas%5FWhistle%5F10Mar2023

Or edit them yourself at:

http://michaeleskin.com/abctools/abctools.html?lzw=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-6vB8QG-ACoGghC0I0qgK4MpuuIAOLiWipIqEVHJ8jh1IjjhGKFVCJX4SaUrlAhgrgRIvFQtAyq8uKZbKmOPYLnlKiYXSqK1TxYC9eqRZaOqnESlKCAdbaAWOpeYXVNQMA+qgADEixfj+rCRgBqWxhlcxFWCkIQFKE4qPKUKQKgQ4ri1RWioiVJPZ9e6oh9X2lU1UpFc8gp2kVvJ-WVRXkji654laKOEujuLsHDCNNcjuKY9ixWQ9DVKnqgF7LKgu3YPth1HU6Z1JVG13Abd0oPSmJJDbwUJLqgOpIjq9K8zw-NSkuuEqeLAtC0J7IFcaaJnp1MJIphaqC-VmLK-D0rilAksa9N-HYUrPP6xi6Kq5twDeb53BbYs1OrOqaLGMYkAwAQUAQAl51-qzMbs-GFRczCBEWtKqpRyoXIx8W6rrANmmbmV1LmvHSoynHCcyktGyp02CDeJKB6l3lWZ9jwxta0bErOEeG5buwADa8y1-q9eatqDaV0gnVt88ec57HWf51OyepwPmqbRTTrU-QUBUBs+QIAYTRPszv6XSlIfpWH93ZTCEk-QTUJYqWKJsk1ObalSZ+GvjxOX9fHKolDqC42rSiIlXNYIA4W+kAtOaJKq33YP-JAgDgE5jRDfT+kM0Qwy2lTOYJAfJgmQMwFeAcWZXQPiBEEEclC5VLvzWkityFZn4g3GaFCVS5moSOLMTYxrrXWAeDh1cUzAy4hOShzDRasJ7lSfhQMhGIhYQA9hrDuEjgQseKY7AgA&format=noten&ssp=0&pdf=multi&pn=br&fp=yes&name=Sliabh_Notes_Polkas

With the new extended range whistle tablature in place, here are some new example PDF tune books generated with the tool.

These have new typography, everything is using serif fonts, looks nicer.

These include a title page, table of contents, page headers/footers, and page numbers:

Tin Whistle Tablature Tunebook Examples

173 Jigs for Tin Whistle in D

https://www.icloud.com/iclouddrive/07aeAHkSyGfWGsNqzzEXIEn4w#173%5FJigs%5Ffor%5FWhistle%5F10Mar2023

386 Reels for Tin Whistle in D

https://www.icloud.com/iclouddrive/091kCw1PYHNs6qJAVdZA-QyiA#386%5FReels%5Ffor%5FWhistle%5F10Mar2023

Try the ABC Transcription Tools here:
http://michaeleskin.com/abc

User Guide:
http://michaeleskin.com/abctools/userguide.html

In my ABC Tools, if you really want to cram as much notation or tablature on the page, you can override some of the default spacing values in your ABC.

The Staff Spacing value in the Advanced Controls can be easily overridden by setting a %%staffsep value in the ABC just below the tune header.

This can be very useful particularly for getting as much tab notation on a single page as possible.

For the absolute minimum spacing between staffs, turn off the tab names, hide the tune annotations, and add the following just below the tune header:

%%staffsep 0

Try experimenting with different %%staffsep values until you get the result you want.

Setting the %%staffsep value manually too low may sometimes result in overlapping staff rendering.

To override the default space between the title and the first staff of music, you can add a custom %%musicspace value in the ABC just below the tune header, for example:

%%musicspace 10

Try experimenting with different %%musicspace values until you get the result you want.

Oh, this is very handy:

http://www.stephenmerrony.co.uk/uploads/ABCquickRefv0_6.pdf

Also the full ABC spec:

http://abcnotation.com/wiki/abc:standard:v2.1

Improved the transpose functionality so you can now transpose just one or many tunes:

https://youtu.be/b9BQEUb6XcI

play video

You can also now strip annotations, text, and chords from the ABC instead of just hiding/showing them:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NbbX1BHVtyo

play video

Just in time for your St. Patrick’s Day gigs!

PDF Tunebook export can now generate “tune incipits” that consist of only the first line of each tune in the tune book.

The incipits can be in standard notation or any of the available tablatures.

Demo video:
https://youtu.be/R7kC5jc0ziY

play video

Try the ABC Transcription Tools here:
http://michaeleskin.com/abc

User Guide:
http://michaeleskin.com/abctools/userguide.html

What a great idea, that will be really useful—thank you.

Just a quick query: is there a quick way to force the insertion of a blank page during the PDF rendering? It’s not important, only something that occurred to me whilst making up another whistle tab tune book. The notation’s bulky, so some tunes run over two pages; if you don’t get the pagination right, you can’t display the pages two-up on a screen. At the moment I just alter the order of the tunes to make sure a short one gets inserted first, but I did wonder if it’s an easy thing to do. (It’d be too uncommon a problem to justify any actual effort!)

If you need even more tunes on a page for the incipits, print the resulting PDF to another PDF and select 2 or 4 pages/page.

WhistlingFionn, please take a look at the User Guide, there are all kinds of ways to compress the music to take less space, both using features in the tool as well as ABC annotations. And yes, you can force a new page by putting

%%newpage

at the end of the tune after which you’d like a new page to start when using the automatic multiple-tunes-per-page features.

All of this is in excruciating detail in the User Guide:

http://michaeleskin.com/abctools/userguide.html

Send me some ABC that you’d like to see as tight as possible and I’ll post a share link to a version that is as compressed as possible.

Another new usability feature I just added, suggested by a poweruser after the incipits feature release, now if you click on the notation, the ABC for the tune will be scrolled into place in the ABC editor.

You might have to scroll a couple of lines up or down to get the full tune displayed, but it should either be right on or very, very close.

All autoscrolling features (click in ABC to autoscroll notation, click in notation to autoscroll ABC) are limited to desktop browsers. Mobile onscreen keyboards and automatic text area activation and window resizing don’t really play well with the autoscrolling system so I’ve disabled them on mobile. Sorry, it’s non-negotiable. 🙂

In theory this should be a benign change. If anyone sees any bizarro behavior, please let me know. Looks good in my testing on Firefox, Chrome, and Safari.

Example screenshot from a 2-up PDF:

https://flic.kr/p/2onHzBb

Example screenshot from a 4-up PDF:

https://flic.kr/p/2onHZtc

Again, these are the result of taking the PDF Tunebook with incipits my tool creates and then printing that PDF using either the browser’s own print feature (just drop the PDF on a tab) or from Adobe Acrobat or other PDF viewer.

Thanks so much for the “%%newpage ” info, Michael, that’s perfect.

It’s better for now to space a tune over two pages than to scrunch it up, from the point of view of readability for a relative beginner using a smallish laptop. Just being able to insert a blank sheet to make the pagination right will be fine until scanning the notation comes a bit more naturally to her.

You can’t split a tune in the middle with using %%newpage, only insert a page after the tune.

If you want to split a tune in the middle across two pages, then the only way would be to play with either the Staff Space value in the Advance Controls to space out the staffs over the page such that they would break across pages or add a %%staffsep value inline in the ABC to do the same thing and override the default values set by the tool. Details in the user guide.

Here’s an example, I’ve spaced the 8 staves of “Lark in the Morning” over two pages using the Staff Spacing setting in the Advanced controls. In this case, I’ve set it to 100 (default is 10).

If you click “Export PDF” on this you’ll get a two page version of the tune with four staves on each page:

http://michaeleskin.com/abctools/abctools.html?lzw=BoLgBAjAUAKuMAsCmYAyBDATgazASQDsxEUBZAe0wIEsCBzKAJXACtqHTwA2AegA4oqcBH5QA0uAAiAW3QsoAHxABBAGLKwa5QoBCAcR1gdAEx0Ktm9QoBmSY0dMKoFrboMOzxpNbDpbC00MTHRAnJS8fPyQFACNrSP8I30SdIMcoJKjY+OTougAmFGt84wU7NJCwkGMc22sbbzA6gNrvMtMPJxqfZrqwCIUCopL2itDFFWN7ayn26dnlKabZ8s7nJZnS1YGhppHV4NCwIA&format=noten&ssp=100&pdf=one&pn=none&fp=yes&name=lark_in_the_morning_two_pages

Here’s a better demo, when you Export this to PDF, the first version of Lark in the Morning has a manual %%staffsep 140 to space the staves out over two pages. The second version has a %%staffsep 50 which puts the entire tune on one page.

http://michaeleskin.com/abctools/abctools.html?lzw=BoLgBAjAUAKuMAsCmYAyBDATgazASQDsxEUBZAe0wIEsCBzKAJXACtqHTwA2AegA4oqcBH5QA0uAAiAW3QsoAUgUBnAC7oAZhuVIADpAAsABigAfEAEEAYhbDWLpgEIBxR2EcATR6ft2bpjSQPdy9TKF97J1cQ7w8kDTBNJFMvN09HEDDzOISk0wAjLUTAlPji5NSYsJzygqK8ugAmFA1Gj1MgtK9MsxAPIsCNALLBlIH4jq8qqH6E0cGwHNMmlrbJroysyw9gjR3J3f2LHbA99s7p48PzqaWV07WL9MywKChQSFh4ZDQsXEJiD8KFRaAxmGA2BxuKIhJBRBIwDI5IoVOotDp9ABWEzmCL+FwbHw2PwOQLBdJhPEOAlVGp5SrPLZ0kqFXIlZkVRyEmZlPKs2r3Vo3DY9bLjIYLUazU4TJ6hGbi4YJO7NB7CmKi7bXA6nI4nM7rS76-YXFWrdWMsBAA&format=noten&ssp=10&pdf=one&pn=none&fp=yes&name=lark_in_the_morning_spacing_demo

I improved the PDF save in the ABC tool for iOS and Android devices.

The default save routine in jsPDF used to replace the current tab with the PDF and people were confused what to do with it. Plus, if you did a browser back command you’d sometime lose your ABC work in-progress.

Now on mobile, the tool asks if you want to download it and then it ends up in your “Files” app downloads directory.

From there you can view the file right in Safari or do whatever you want with it, like export it to a PDF reader like GoodReader or share it.

> You can’t split a tune in the middle with using %%newpage, only insert a page after the tune. <

For us, it was more that in order to display them two-up, the notation for longer tunes needs to start on an odd-numbered page and then flow onto an even-numbered one.

Whether the beginning of a tune actually lands on an odd-numbered page depends on the number of pages coming before it, of course. For some reason my young niece is really picky about keeping them in alphabetical order at the moment, so if I add a new tune before one of the longer pieces, it knocks out the pagination. That’s where the ability to slip in a blank page comes in really handy.

OK, hopefully you’re able to get the results you need with tools available.

New Improved PDF Tunebook Incipits 23 Mar 2023

You can now get 4x as many tunes on each page when generating PDF Tunebooks with incipits

Demo Video

https://youtu.be/ik9ObQXlBLU

play video

Example tunebook with 386 reel incipits:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/vsuncn3fa8z6ukt/386_Reels_Incipits_Demo_23Mar2023.pdf?dl=0

Example PDF tunebook with 173 jig incipits:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/xo2ubxczqjigoew/173_Jigs_Incipits_Demo_23Mar2023.pdf?dl=0

Fix some issues found since the last post…

New Improved PDF Tunebook Incipits 23 Mar 2023

You can now get 4x as many tunes on each page when generating PDF Tunebooks with incipits

Demo Video

https://youtu.be/ik9ObQXlBLU

play video

Example PDF tunebook with 386 reel incipits:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/ib895e2qucntaxl/386_Reels_Incipits_Demo_23Mar2023.pdf?dl=0

Example PDF tunebook with 173 jig incipits:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/hji3b83ixw46axu/173_Jigs_Incipits_Demo_23Mar2023.pdf?dl=0

Example PDF tunebook with 173 jig incipits:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/hji3b83ixw46axu/173_Jigs_Incipits_Demo_23Mar2023.pdf?dl=0

Example PDF tunebook with 173 jig incipits (Whistle tab):

https://www.dropbox.com/s/pc8fzsv8rhsqz5a/173_Jigs_Incipits_Demo_23Mar2023_Whistle.pdf?dl=0

Example PDF tunebook with 173 jig incipits (Mandolin tab):

https://www.dropbox.com/s/ret9h0pqlpgamwc/173_Jigs_Incipits_Demo_23Mar2023_Mandolin.pdf?dl=0

Here’s a test of a tunebook with 1320 tune incipits:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/9m1a3osh5rdjn2t/1320_Tunes_Incipits_Demo_23Mar2023.pdf?dl=0

Michael Eskin - your incipits files are brilliant !!

I know some of you would prefer ABC text incipits…

Now available under the PDF Tunes/Page options:

https://youtu.be/OC5uFL2X6yQ

play video

Thumbs up, Michael!

Added a new

%addsortedindex (Your index title goes here)

option to generate PDF tunebooks with an index sorted by tune name:

https://flic.kr/p/2opRBhC

You can still use

%addindex (Your index title goes here)

to add an unsorted index (same as table of contents)

Now also have available:

%addsortedtoc (Your sorted table of contents title goes here)

Modified the sorting so that sorted table of contents and index pages move any initial “The ” in the tune names to the end before sorting:

So if you use:

%addsortedtoc (your table of contents title here)
or
%addsortedindex (your index title here)

you’ll get something that looks like:

https://flic.kr/p/2oq3HZd

Standard unsorted table of contents or index pages don’t do the pre-processing of the tune names, they just list them in page order.

So if you use:

%addtoc (your table of contents title here)
or
%addindex (your index title here)

You’ll get something that looks like:

https://flic.kr/p/2oq3ZSZ

Added a new PDF tunebook layout option to sort the ABC text incipits alphabetically by name. Works with the index and table of contents options as well.

I didn’t want to make the tune title-based sorting the default for text incipits. I can imagine cases where you might have several different styles of tunes in the same tunebook and forcing the sort by default would mix them all up, so you can choose what works best for your needs.

As long as I’m sorting all the things, added a new button that will sort all the tunes in the ABC area alphabetically by tune name.

For tunes that start with “The ”, the sort algorithm moves the “The” to the end before the sorting, but the resulting ABC doesn’t change.

If you hold down the Shift key while clicking the “Sort ABC” button, it will also treat “A ” and “An ” the same way as “The ”. Also explained in the user guide.

Just to say that I really appreciate the development of being asked to give a filename to the PDF file before it’s exported. I don’t know when you added it, but it’s so much better than a tune book automatically being named after the first entry.

A great little ABC hack from a friend, you can use the lyrics feature in ABC to easily put the note names below the notation using the ABC lyrics feature if want something more vertically compact than the note name tablature option in the tool.

This is something that probably could be automated in the future, but it’s pretty easy to do manually:

X: 1
T: The Kesh
R: Jig
M: 6/8
L: 1/8
K: Gmaj
D|: GAG GAB | ABA ABd | edd gdd | edB dBA |
w: D G A G G A B A B A A B d e d d g d d e d B d B A
GAG GAB | ABA ABd | edd gdB |1 AGF G2D :|2 AGF G2A||
w: G A G G A B A B A A B d e d d g d B A G F# G D A G F# G A
|: B2B dBd | ege dBA | BAB dBG | ABA AGA |
w: B B d B d e g e d B A B A B d B G A B A A G A
B2 B dBd | ege dBd | gfg aga |1 bgg g2A :|2 bgg g2D |]
w: B B d B d e g e d B d g f# g a g a b g g g A b g g g D

Basically the procedure is this:
For each line of the ABC, create a new line starting with w:
Paste the ABC from line above after the w:
Strip away all numbers, barlines, slashes, any { } grace notes, until you just have the raw letters.
Put a space between each letter.
That’s it.

Here’s a live version of the above example:

http://michaeleskin.com/abctools/abctools.html?lzw=BoLgBAjAUAKuMAsCmYDSSDOCoCVwCkBLAcygFlwA2AegA4oAZcCOqVcAcQFsBDAKygARAD6cAghzAcxAITDCwssYpkATeWCSr1xbRq1zVM5cKgB3cIKmLrk5XPs3H6lOp1g3mj2EM-FUaUlpOQUlFXUFLR0jeQhFDgAxKQAmKxBhZPikjmSxYVMLa2Ugmwc-ZWcvT2JvMskEgGJrK2KwRqKoUR9kwzV9YldjDWNeyVChiRNzcDlfXxQa13LluaLl1rEoGUzeiM0Bjz6FYgAzGp5iHliwACNiGuJcsHTMu4fU+QBdab9VlzBFrVvDUTk1zgCwFcbhCHjZobCaoIgA&format=noten&ssp=10&pdf=one&pn=none&fp=yes&name=kesh_lyrics_demo

Now available as an experimental automation feature in the app:

Injecting ABC Lyric-based Note Names (Experimental)

If you find the “Note Names” tab too tall, you can try holding down the shift key while clicking the “Note Names” tab selector.

This will inject an ABC lyrics line using the w: directive that will put the ABC note name under each note in the notation for all the tunes.

For example:
GAG GAB | ABA ABd | edd gdd | edB dBA |
w: G A G G A B A B A A B d e d d g d d e d B d B A

The injected ABC lyrics are literally the same as the ABC so has no idea about sharps or flats, just the note letters. You may have to fix those manually.

It is a destructive operation, so you might want to “Copy All” before trying this operation.

Also, it will in some circumstances mess up the notation formatting, so try it, if it works, great, hopefully it saves you some time compared to doing the work manually.

Note: This feature does not work on Firefox due to it not passing through shift-clicks on radio-button selector elements. Please use Chrome or Safari instead for this feature.

Latest “Power User” tips:

1) Injecting Note names under notation

2) Example PDF headers injection - So you don’t have to remember all the possible PDF header options for title pages, table of contents, index, etc.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RoPOXQAVbVE

play video

Just posted an invisible but significant change to the ABC Transcription tools behavior.

I’m now saving all the tool settings to browser local storage so you don’t have to reset the settings every time you use the tool.

It will now launch with the same settings you last used as far as tablature, PDF tunes/page, page number location, capo, line spacing, etc.

If you are opening the tool from a ShareURL or QR code, the values in the ShareURL override the default values from the browser local storage.

New “Power User” tip for those of you who use the playback feature and would prefer something nicer than the default piano sound used by the ABC Quick Editor.

You could have done this manually as described in the User Guide section on “Changing the instrument for playback” but I’ve added a simple way to automate it for you.

If you now Shift-click on the “Play” button, it will prompt you for a MIDI program number (offers some suggestions) and will then inject a:

%%MIDI program <your selected program number here>

directive into every tune. You can then save the ABC if you want to reuse the directives later.

https://youtu.be/CHvORF--Dhc

play video

Thank you!

Looks like Firefox pushed out an update this morning that, at least on Macs, completely messes up the output of abcjs. I’m seeing the same result on Paul Rosen’s reference decoder at:

https://editor.drawthedots.com/

For now, I suggest using Chrome instead.

PDF generation on Firefox seems fine, just the on-screen display is cutting out staff lines and note stems. I’ve sent an email to Paul to see if there might be a way to fix it on Firefox.

Firefox bug report:

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1827699

I haven’t tried your tool on it for a little while, but I did notice the ABC player I use, Rectangle Red, hasn’t been working on Firefox for a few days. Neither the player tool nor the staves load when you paste in some ABC. They’re fine on Safari and Chrome, though.

Rectangle Red also uses the same abcjs library that I use and is showing the same SVG rendering issue.

I use Firefox as my default browser, but of the “Big Three” without the big bucks with the likes of Google and Apple behind it, it seems to have more issues than the others.

In my “real” job, we’ve had all kinds of Firefox specific issues over the years that we’ve had to work around.

The first time you run the tool on Firefox 112, I’m putting up a warning about the issue. After that, I don’t bug you again.

Hopefully Firefox will fix the issue in a future release or Paul will come up with a optimal workaround.

Apparently a fix is on the way to the Firefox beta channel, and hopefully a future general release. Fingers crossed!

Firefox bug report:

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1827699

Some new features for those who have requested more control over the Table of Contents and Index page appearance in the PDF tunebooks generated by my ABC tool:

Table of Contents and Index Font Size and Line Spacing Overrides

You may override the top offset to title, offset from title to the index or table of contents entries, default tune name font sizes and line spacing, by adding the following comment-based annotations anywhere in your ABC:

Table of Contents offset and font overrides:

%toctopoffset (your top offset goes here) - 72 dpi offset from the page header for the top of the table of contents title. Default is 30.

%toctitleoffset (your title offset goes here) - 72 dpi offset from the title to the first entry in the table of contents. Default is 35.

%toctitlefontsize (your font size goes here) - Font size for the table of contents title. Default is 18.

%tocfontsize (your font size goes here) - Font size for tune names in the table of contents. Default is 13.

%toclinespacing (your line spacing goes here) - Line spacing for tune names in the table of contents. Default is 12.

Index offset and font overrides:

%indextopoffset (your top offset goes here) - 72 dpi offset from the page header for the top of the index title. Default is 30.

%indextitleoffset (your title offset goes here) - 72 dpi offset from the title to the first entry in the index. Default is 35.

%indextitlefontsize (your font size goes here) - Font size for the index title. Default is 18.

%indexfontsize (your font size goes here) - Font size for tune names in the index. Default is 13.

%indexlinespacing (your line spacing goes here) - Line spacing for tune names in the index. Default is 12.

As with all previously described annotation, only the first instance these annotations are processed, any additional instances are ignored.

Power User Tip:

Holding down the Shift key while clicking on the “PDF Tunes/Page” label will inject examples of all of the above PDF headers at the top of the ABC.

You can then remove the headers you don’t need and edit the others to meet your requirements.

I’ve also made the text incipits generation a bit more compact.

Looks like the Firefox 112 issue will be fixed soon, either by an update to abcjs and/or a new Firefox release! Stay tuned!

Paul Rosen issued an abcjs fix for Firefox 112, and I’ve updated my tools with his code and a few additional bug fixes and visual improvements.

Firefox 112.0.2 is out this morning and fixes the thin line issue for earlier versions of abcjs. I’ve updated my tool to remove the previous Firefox hack that Paul Rosen came up with to work around the 112.0 and 112.0.1 versions. Looks good now.

I’ve added a new feature to the ABC tool to allow you set the PDF quality and have some control over the PDF file size.

Just put this at the top of your ABC:

%pdfquality 0.5

and that will create a PDF about half the previous file size without sacrificing too much quality.

The default value is 0.75, which is less than before, the previous default was 1.0.

Here’s an example, you can paste this all into the tool to try:

%pdfquality 0.5

X: 1
T: The Blackwater
C: Matt Cranitch
R: polka
M: 2/4
L: 1/8
K: Dmaj
|:Fd Bd/B/|AF ED|A,B, DE|FE EF|
Ad Bd/B/|AF EF|DF A/B/A/F/|ED D>E:|
|:FA Bc|d2 Ad|fg/f/ ed|fe e2|
dc/d/ ed|BA FE|DF A/B/A/F/|ED D>E:|

You can play around with the pdfquality value until you find the sweet spot for your use.

You’ll need to refresh your browser and make sure you have the latest version.  If not, clear the cache and reload the page.

If you have the latest version and click “New ABC”, you should see the pdfquality value listed in the list of optional headers.

Link:

http://michaeleskin.com/abc

In my ABC Tools, I’ve added the ability to have the index page listings link to the tune pages if you add the following comment annotation at the top of the ABC:

%doindexpagelinks

There are some limitations.

First, this only works for tunebook index pages, not table of contents. It’s not a perfect solution, but it’s better than nothing.

Specifically, you can’t have a table of contents or sorted table of contents in the tunebook if you want index page links. Has to do with the page generation order for the table of contents messing with the internal document page numbering.

So, for example, if you put this at the top of your ABC collection in the editor, you’ll get a title page, the tunes, then an index page with links back to the pages for each of the tunes:

%addtitle Session Tune Book
%addsubtitle My Tunes
%addindex Index of Tunes
%doindexpagelinks

I’ve tested it with several large tunebooks, both one tune per page, multiple tunes per page, and with text and notation incipits.

Please try the latest version of the tool, make sure you’re loading the latest page by clearing cache, if you look at the page source for the main tool, you should see

<link href=“app.css?v=287” media=“all” rel=“stylesheet” type=“text/css”>

near the top of the file. If you see v=286, force a page reload.

Hope this is useful to you!

Try my ABC Tools at:

http://michaeleskin.com/abc

Index page links now work if there is also a TOC in the tunebook.

As described above there are only page links in the index, they are not available in a TOC.

In my ABC Tools, I’ve now completely reworked the Table of Contents and Index pages as well as their sorted versions so that they now link back to the tune pages if you click on the tune name or page number.

So, for example, if you put this at the top of your ABC collection in the editor, you’ll get a title page, a table of contents with links back to the pages for each of the tunes, the tunes, followed by an index with links back to the pages for each of the tunes:

%addtitle Session Tune Book
%addsubtitle My Tunes
%addtoc Table of Contents
%addindex Index of Tunes

I’ve tested it with several large tunebooks, both one tune per page, multiple tunes per page, and with text and notation incipits.

If for some reason you specifically don’t want the hyperlinks in the table of contents or index pages, you can add this annotation anywhere in the ABC:

%nopagelinks

Please try the latest version of the tool, make sure you’re loading the latest page by clearing cache, if you look at the page source for the main tool, you should see

<link href=“app.css?v=290” media=“all” rel=“stylesheet” type=“text/css”>

near the top of the file. If you see a lower value, like v=286, force a page reload.

Hope this is useful to you!

Full details at:

http://michaeleskin.com/abctools/userguide.html#adding_a_pdf_tunebook_table_of_contents_and_index

Try my ABC Tools at:

http://michaeleskin.com/abc

Use:

%addsortedindex <your index title here>

to get a sorted tunebook index

The linked index is a fantastic improvement, thank you. It’s about the only thing I thought was missing.

I’ve been making little tunebooks containing whichever handful of pieces I’m currently working on, to save me having to find them in the main collection. No need now! 😁

You’re most welcome! Happy to hear it is useful.

I really wanted to have this sort of linking, but didn’t figure out how to do it until just a couple of days ago. Turned out to be a lot more challenging that I anticipated, but glad it’s working now.

Demo video of the new PDF tunebook tune hyperlinks in the Table of Contents and Index pages:

https://youtu.be/4mxMUuem-2o

play video

ABC Transcription Tools Demo - How to use Adobe Acrobat to automatically convert any URLs in your PDF tunebooks to clickable hyperlinks:

https://youtu.be/_Mh9WwbpoAs

play video

Major new ABC Transcription Tools feature:

You may now add hyperlinks to your PDF tunebook title page title and subtitle, as well as page headers and page footers.

The new ABC comment-based directives are:

To add a title page to your PDF tunebook as a hyperlink, simply add the following comment-based annotation anywhere in the ABC:

%urladdtitle URL (your tunebook title text goes here…)

To add a smaller subtitle as a hyperlink below the title on the title page, simply add the following comment-based annotation anywhere in the ABC:

%urladdsubtitle URL (your tunebook title page subtitle text goes here…)

Examples:

%urladdtitle http://michaeleskin.com Tunebook Title with Hyperlink

%urladdsubtitle http://michaeleskin.com/abc Tunebook Subtitle with Hyperlink

If you’d like to link to a specific URL when users click in the PDF page header or footer, include either the following ABC comment-based annotations anywhere in your ABC:

%urlpageheader (URL) (your header text goes here…)

%urlpagefooter (URL) (your footer text goes here…)

Examples:

%urlpageheader http://michaeleskin.com/abc Click in this page header to visit my home page

%urlpagefooter http://michaeleskin.com/abc Click in this page footer to visit my home page

For the full list of available PDF tunebook directives, please check out the User Guide at:

http://michaeleskin.com/abctools/userguide.html

Demo video:

https://youtu.be/zh8qZhVwVek

play video

This was very messy to implement. Testing looks good, but if you run into anything that seems to be broken, please let me know.

Here’s the recording of this morning’s (10 Jun 2023) ABC Transcription Tools Webinar and Q&A on Zoom (90 minutes):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qKu1IcSjfEQ&vq=hd1080

play video

In my ABC Tools, you now have two new comment-based directives for PDF tunebooks that embed a link on each page of music back to either the index or the table of contents for quick navigation:

%addlinkbacktotoc
or
%addlinkbacktoindex

If either of these are present, I add a “<<” on the left side of each page of music that links back to either the table of contents or the index.

If both are present, the table of contents link takes precedence.

As previously the table of contents and index entries link back to the tunes, so now there are two-way links between the tunes and the table of contents or index.

Now you can have both links back to the table of contents and/or links forward to the index.

If %addlinkbacktotoc is present, I add a “<<” on the left side of each page of music that links back to the table of contents.

If %addlinkbacktoindex is present, I add a “>>” on the right side of each page of music that links to the index.

My ABC Transcription tool can now add hyperlinks to external websites to the tune notation in a PDF tunebook.

Tune hyperlinks are available for tune notation and tune incipits tunebooks, and are not available for ABC text incipit tunebooks.

When a hyperlink is present, touch the title of the tune and you will automatically launch the associated tune hyperlink.

To add a hyperlink to an external website in any tune, add the following comment-based annotation anywhere in the ABC for a specific tune:

%hyperlink URL

Examples:

%hyperlink http://michaeleskin.com

%hyperlink https://cnn.com

You may automatically add a hyperlink for every tune to the thesession.org search page for the tune title by adding the following comment-based annotation anywhere in the ABC file:

%addlinkstothesession

Any manually added tune hyperlinks take precedence over an automatically generated thesession.org hyperlink.

Demo video:

https://youtu.be/Na4XwOKYP4A

play video

Added a bunch of new PDF hyperlink features to my ABC Transcription Tools, including an new option to have either all the tunes or any specific tune in the PDF automatically link back to Paul Rosen’s ABCjs QuickEditor site for playback:

Here’s the section in the user guide:

The tool can add hyperlinks to external websites to the tune notation in a PDF tunebook.

Tune hyperlinks are available for tune notation and tune incipits tunebooks, and are not available for ABC text incipit tunebooks.

When a hyperlink is present, touch the title of the tune and you will automatically launch the associated tune hyperlink.

To add a hyperlink to an external website in any tune, add the following comment-based annotation anywhere in the ABC for a specific tune:

%hyperlink URL

Examples:

%hyperlink http://michaeleskin.com

%hyperlink https://cnn.com

To add a hyperlink to Paul Rosen’s ABC Quick Editor for playing a specific tune, add the following comment-based annotation anywhere in the ABC for a specific tune:

%add_playback_link

To add a hyperlink to a specific tune to the thesession.org search page for the tune title, add the following comment-based annotation anywhere in the ABC for a specific tune:

%add_link_to_thesession

Precedence order for multiple manually added hyperlinks on one specific tune is website hyperlinks take highest priority, then playback hyperlinks, then thesession.org hyperlinks.

Added playback or thesession.org hyperlinks to every tune:

You may automatically add a hyperlink for every tune to Paul Rosen’s ABC Quick Editor for playing the tune by adding the following comment-based annotation anywhere in the ABC file:

%add_all_playback_links

You may automatically add a hyperlink for every tune to the thesession.org search page for the tune title by adding the following comment-based annotation anywhere in the ABC file:

%add_all_links_to_thesession

%add_all_playback_links takes precedence for all tunes over %add_all_links_to_thesession

Any manually added tune hyperlinks, thesession.org hyperlinks, or playback hyperlinks take precedence over automatically generated thesession.org or playback hyperlinks.

Demo video for tune playback hyperlinks:

https://youtu.be/2VrltCluodY

play video

Update: Added the ability to add a MIDI program number to the playback hyperlinks.

Added a bunch of new PDF hyperlink features to my ABC Transcription Tools, including an new option to have either all the tunes or any specific tune in the PDF automatically link back to Paul Rosen’s ABCjs QuickEditor site for playback:

Here’s the section in the user guide:

Note: Since the demo video was made, I added the ability to have the tool automatically add a MIDI program number to the playback hyperlinks. Details below.

The tool can add hyperlinks to external websites to the tune notation in a PDF tunebook.

Tune hyperlinks are available for tune notation and tune incipits tunebooks, and are not available for ABC text incipit tunebooks.

When a hyperlink is present, touch the title of the tune and you will automatically launch the associated tune hyperlink.

To add a hyperlink to an external website in any tune, add the following comment-based annotation anywhere in the ABC for a specific tune:

%hyperlink URL

Examples:

%hyperlink http://michaeleskin.com

%hyperlink https://cnn.com

To add a hyperlink to Paul Rosen’s ABC Quick Editor for playing a specific tune with a specific General MIDI program number sound, add the following comment-based annotation anywhere in the ABC for a specific tune:

%add_playback_link MIDI_PROGRAM_NUMBER

The MIDI_PROGRAM_NUMBER is optional.

Some MIDI program numbers I recommend:

74 - Flute, 49 - Fiddle, 23 - Accordion, 25 - Guitar, or 0 - Piano

Example: To have a specific tune played with a fiddle sound

%add_playback_link 49

To add a hyperlink to a specific tune to the thesession.org search page for the tune title, add the following comment-based annotation anywhere in the ABC for a specific tune:

%add_link_to_thesession

Precedence order for multiple manually added hyperlinks on one specific tune is website hyperlinks take highest priority, then playback hyperlinks, then thesession.org hyperlinks.

Adding playback or thesession.org hyperlinks to every tune in a PDF tunebook:

You may automatically add a hyperlink for every tune to Paul Rosen’s ABC Quick Editor for playing the tune with a specific General MIDI program number sound by adding the following comment-based annotation anywhere in the ABC file:

%add_all_playback_links MIDI_PROGRAM_NUMBER

The MIDI_PROGRAM_NUMBER is optional.

Some MIDI program numbers I recommend:

74 - Flute, 49 - Fiddle, 23 - Accordion, 25 - Guitar, or 0 - Piano

Example: To have all tunes played with a flute sound

%add_all_playback_links 74

You may automatically add a hyperlink for every tune to the thesession.org search page for the tune title by adding the following comment-based annotation anywhere in the ABC file:

%add_all_links_to_thesession

%add_all_playback_links takes precedence for all tunes over %add_all_links_to_thesession

Any manually added tune hyperlinks, thesession.org hyperlinks, or playback hyperlinks take precedence over automatically generated thesession.org or playback hyperlinks.

Demo video:

https://youtu.be/2VrltCluodY

play video

New tune playback hyperlink demo video:

https://youtu.be/EcSknrJOxBE

play video

Now making it easier to create shortened ABC share URLs.

ABC Share URLs can get pretty long, particularly for large sets of tunes.

A third-party service like TinyURL can be used to shorten the ABC Share URLs.

Click “Shorten URL” to automatically copy the ABC Share URL to the clipboard and then launch TinyURL in another browser tab.

Paste the already copied ABC Share URL into the TinyURL “Enter long link” box and click “Shorten URL”.

You may have to agree to the TinyURL terms-of-service before you can shorten the URL.

Copy the shortened URL from TinyURL and paste it into emails or share it on social media.

For example, here is the “Sliabh Notes” polka set Share URL as a shortened URL:

https://tinyurl.com/5n9293yu


TinyURL also allows you to create and save a simple QR code for the shortened URL.


Note: Incorporating URL shortening directly into the tool itself would require having a server-side component to call the URL shortening service APIs.


This would go against my “no reliance on server-side code or third party services” requirement for this tool.


Demo video:


https://youtu.be/MZEsEPnr7Sk

play video

Also, you can now override the automatically generated ABC share URL used during PDF file QR Code generation:

%qrcode URL

where the URL is optional. If not present, it uses the ABC share link generated by the tool to create the QR code.

You can also now override the caption under the QR code in the PDF with the following directive:

%caption_for_qrcode type_your_qr_code_caption_here

If not present, it will use the auto-generated QR code based on the tune names in the tunebook.

QR codes and their captions in PDF tunebooks now also have clickable hyperlinks to the URL used to create the QR code.

In case anyone wants a PDF version of the ABC Transcription Tools User Guide:

http://michaeleskin.com/documents/abc_transcription_tools_user_guide_22jun2023.pdf

I went ahead and directly integrated TinyURL-based URL shortening into the tool.

Hopefully it won’t be abused and I won’t run out of free shortening sessions each month.

If they do run out, it will fall back to the manual TinyURL shortening assist system as I originally implemented.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UkC9GoI9qvE

play video

Power user tip for using a shortened URL to add a QR code to a PDF tunebook that has too many tunes to create a normal ABC Share URL QR code:

https://youtu.be/f8c8gPx6Q5I

play video

Keeping busy while recovering from my wisdom teeth extraction:

You can now play your ABC tunes from right inside the ABC Transcription Tools!

To play a specific tune, click anywhere in the ABC for the tune and then click “Play”.

The tool will automatically find the tune you’ve clicked on bring it up in a window for playback.

Using the playback controls at the bottom, you can enable looping, rewind to start, start/pause playback, click in the progress bar to seek, or change the tempo as a percentage.

Click “Close” to return to the ABC editor.

If you hold down the Shift key while clicking the Play button the tool will automatically find the tune you’ve clicked on and send it to Paul Rosen’s abcjs Quick Editor for playback:

If there is a text selection in the ABC area, whatever is selected will be sent.

You can use this to send more than one tune to the abcjs Quick Editor

The abcjs Quick Editor only plays the first tune in it’s own ABC editor.

If you select more than one tune in the ABC editor, and click “Play”, you will need to edit the ABC in the abcjs Quick Editor editor to bring the tune you are interested in playing to the top.

The abcjs Quick Editor can also export MIDI and audio files of tunes.

Once you are happy with the playback, copy the ABC from the "abcjs Quick Editor tool, then paste the edited ABC back into this tool for further editing.

If you single-clicked and played one tune, the entire tune will be selected when you come back to the tool from the abcjs Quick Editor.

This makes it simple to paste any changes you might have made and copied from the abcjs Quick Editor.

Selecting the Instrument for Playback

You may select which instrument sound the abcjs Quick Editor uses for playback of your tunes.

By default, the instrument used is a piano.

To choose the sound when played, add an additional line to your ABC right after any headers and before the ABC notes, for example for a flute sound:

%%MIDI program 74

To change the instrument used for playback, change the MIDI program # above to one of:

74 - Flute, 49 - Fiddle, 23 - Accordion, 25 - Guitar, or 0 - Piano

For example:

X: 1
T: The Kesh
R: Jig
M: 6/8
L: 1/8
K: Gmaj
%%MIDI program 74
D|: GAG GAB | ABA ABd | edd gdd | edB dBA |
GAG GAB | ABA ABd | edd gdB |1 AGF G2D :|2 AGF G2A||
|: B2B dBd | ege dBA | BAB dBG | ABA AGA |
B2 B dBd | ege dBd | gfg aga |1 bgg g2A :|2 bgg g2D |]

Any General MIDI (level 1) instrument number can be selected.

Visit https://www.midi.org/specifications-old/item/gm-level-1-sound-set for the full list of MIDI instruments and their program numbers.

Power User Tip:

To have the tool automatically inject a %%MIDI program directive for every tune with a specific MIDI instrument program number, hold down the Alt-key while clicking the “Play” button.

You will be prompted for a MIDI instrument program number to inject.

Demo video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bLV8XsYTIkc

play video

Playback supports both melody and chords:

Use

%%MIDI program <program_number>

for melody

and

%%MIDI chordprog <program_number>

for the chords.

The program numbers are General MIDI program numbers. There is a link to the General MIDI instrument list in the User Guide.

https://youtu.be/Mz-RQODjIGA

play video

New playback features are detailed in the latest PDF User Guide:

http://michaeleskin.com/documents/abc_transcription_tools_user_guide_26jun2023.pdf

More on the auto-injection of melody and chord MIDI program numbers feature:

https://youtu.be/N3oF5NLPJ_c

play video

Some very exciting news about my ABC Transcription Tools!

I’ve integrated the sample library from my iOS “Celtic Sound” MIDI Module app into the tool for use when playing tunes.

These are 44.1 KHz 16-bit samples of every note on the instruments.

They will be used in place of the default ABCjs samples if you select any of the following MIDI program numbers for playback:

Accordion: 21
Concertina: 23
Flute: 73
Whistle: 78
Uilleann Pipes: 127

Since there is no General MIDI program number specifically for Uilleann Pipes, and the default Bagpipes sound was pretty good, I’m using MIDI program #127 for the Uilleann Pipes. Normally it would just be a gunshot sound effect.

Demo video:

https://youtu.be/tNk1OQRXNUM

play video

The new Uilleann pipes soundfont (brought over from “Celtic Sounds”) includes two drone samples.

They are accessed via:
D,
and
D,,
in the ABC notation.

If you set up a two-voice ABC file, and fill the second voice with long D,, notes, you can get a drone under the melody. 24 counts is about the max for one drone note.

X: 1
%%MIDI program 127
T:Banish Misfortune
R:jig
M:6/8
K:Dmix
V:1 clef=treble
[V:1] e|fed cAG|AGd cAG|~F3 DED|~F3 GFG|
~A3 cAG|AGA cde|fed cAG|Ad^c d2:|
e|f2d d^cd|f2a agf|e2c cBc|ece gfe|
f2g agf|e2f gfe|fed cAG|Ad^c d2:|
e|f2g e2f|ded cdc|~A3 GAG|~F3 ded|
~A3 cAG|AGA cde|fed cAG|Ad^c d2:|
V:2 clef=treble middle=B,,
D,,24|
D,,24:|
|:D,,24|
D,,24:|
D,,24|
D,,24:|

Demo Video:

https://youtu.be/ethGtarDRc4

play video

The new flute and whistle soundfonts in my ABC Transcription Tools will now automatically “fold” notes lower than the range of the instrument up an octave when playing tunes.

Demo video:

https://youtu.be/o_Ij2u3XuPA

play video

After that video, I added the “folding” feature to the Uilleann pipes sound font as well.

Along with the other “Celtic Sounds” based instruments, I’ve added a Scottish Smallpipes (A) and Swedish Säckpipa to the ABC Transcription Tool’s soundfonts.

They are available on the following MIDI program numbers:

Scottish Smallpipes (A): 126

Säckpipa: 125

The Scottish Smallpipes samples are from an instrument tuned in A, but the note numbers mapped to D so that they have the same transposed MIDI note range as the flute or whistle.

The Säckpipa and Scottish Smallpipes (A) sounds will automatically “fold” notes above second octave D down an octave.

Demo video:

https://youtu.be/1XC40QD_TqM

play video

FYI, I changed the MIDI program injection dialog shortcuts:

Shift + click “Play” - Inject melody MIDI instrument program number into all the tunes

Alt + click “Play” - Inject chords/bass MIDI instrument program number into all the tunes

Power tip: Entering a negative number in either case will inject the same value for both the melody and the chords/bass MIDI instrument program numbers for all the tunes.

Shift + Alt + click “Play” - Will open the currently selected tune(s) in Paul Rosen’s ABC Quick Editor

Just added a Scottish Smallpipes in D on program 124!

I added a Melodica, including bass and chords, at MIDI program 123!

For my ABC Transcription Tools I’ve moved all my custom instruments to MIDI program numbers greater than 128.

This will allow for much easier addition of new instruments.

My accordion, flute, and whistle instruments all still use the standard MIDI program numbers.

Previously, the concertina was mapped to

23 - Tango Accordion.

It now resides at

133 - Concertina

Please check the chart below (also available in the tool) for the new instrument mapping.

http://michaeleskin.com/abctools/img/gm_extended.jpg

Quick tutorial showing how to construct an ABC file to simulate a set of Uilleann pipes with drones using the latest custom instruments in my ABC Transcription Tools:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wWMHR7G-e1g

play video

Here is the ABC shown in the video:

X: 1
T:The Blarney Pilgrim
R:jig
M:6/8
K:Dmix
Q:400
V:1 clef=treble
%%MIDI program 129 1
V:2 clef=bass middle=d,,
%%MIDI program 129 2
[V:1]
DED DEG|A2G ABc|BAG AGE|GEA GED|
DED DEG|A2G ABc|BAG AGE|GED D3:|
ded dBG|AGA BGE|ded dBG|ABA GBd|
g2e dBG|AGA BGE|B2G AGE|GED D3:|
ADD BDD|ADD ABc|BAG AGE|GEA GED|
ADD BDD|ADD ABc|BAG AGE|GED D3:|
[V:2]
!mp!(D,,12 D,,12)|
(D,,12 D,,12):|
(D,,12 D,,12)|
(D,,12 D,,12):|
(D,,12 D,,12)|
(D,,12 D,,12):|

Here’s a link to the ABC tools with the ABC already loaded:

https://tinyurl.com/4t66vwum

A similar configuration can be used for combining chanter and drones on Scottish Smallpipes (D) (130), Scottish Smallpipes (A) (131), and Säckpipa (132) custom instruments.

Try my ABC Transcription Tools:

http://michaeleskin.com/abc

User Guide:

http://michaeleskin.com/abctools/userguide.html

Here is demo of all the bagpipes available in my ABC Transcription Tools as of 1 July 2023:

Uilleann Pipes (shows Kirk Lynch and Crowley drones options)
%%MIDI program 129

Scottish Smallpipes (D)
%%MIDI program 130

Scottish Smallpipes (A)
%%MIDI program 131

Swedish Säckpipa (D)
%%MIDI program 132

Live demo of the editor with all the ABC for the demos pre-loaded:

https://tinyurl.com/ytczk4as

Demo video:

https://youtu.be/qrZKEkWn9QM

play video

Try my ABC Transcription Tools:

http://michaeleskin.com/abc

User Guide:

http://michaeleskin.com/abctools/userguide.html

Woaaahhh, Merci !
Thanks to You, Michael 🙂

I’ve added a new “Settings” option in my ABC Transcription Tools that brings up a dialog where you can select the default instrument programs to use when playing your tunes.

The settings are saved and restored every time you run the tool.

I’ve added my iOS/Android “Trapezoid” app Hammered Dulcimer instrument samples to my free ABC Transcription Tools.

Here’s a demo Demo Video playing “Da New Rigged Ship” and “Carolan’s Concerto”:

https://youtu.be/V8rnYbLW_9Q

play video

These samples were originally provided to me over a decade ago by Jesse Chappell for use in my iOS apps.

The new instrument can be accessed by adding:

%%MIDI program 15

after your ABC tune header and before the notes.

Here is an ABC Transcription Tools shortened share link with the two demo tunes preloaded and ready to be played:

https://tinyurl.com/5n7ztpcz

Try my ABC Transcription Tools:

http://michaeleskin.com/abc

User Guide:

http://michaeleskin.com/abctools/userguide.html

Here’s everything you can possibly want to know about selecting the playback instruments in my ABC Transcription Tools:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fufQFUISym4

play video

Danny Flynn suggested a set of standard Unicode symbols to use in ABC files for doing detailed box transcriptions.

You can use this as a starting point and then copy and paste the symbols into your transcriptions as you like:

https://tinyurl.com/3pe9jzh4

We often think of ABC as just an easy way to exchange single line traditional tunes, perhaps with some chords, but the ABC standard and ABC programming libraries like ABCjs are capable of so much more!

Here’s a demo using my ABC Tools to both render and play a three-part J.S. Bach sonata arranged for Pipe Organ:

https://youtu.be/NdX_pW6iF1I

play video

This is being done entirely by the browser, no other MIDI hardware involved.

Try it yourself!

Here is a ABC Transcription Tools shortened share link with the demo file already preloaded and ready to be played:

https://tinyurl.com/2s3wmk8b

Try my ABC Transcription Tools:

http://michaeleskin.com/abc

User Guide:

http://michaeleskin.com/abctools/userguide.html

If you enjoyed that, you’ll probably enjoy this one, another J.S. Bach piece, this one for Harpsichord:

https://tinyurl.com/5n7zf2ky

Spent my 4th of July working on enhancements to my ABC Transcription tools:

Ported the Cajun Accordion instrument over from my iOS apps

Added tooltips everywhere to make all the features discoverable.

Completely reorganized the users guide, with links back to the table of contents on every subtopic.

Now using a minified version of the main JS file, so initial load times should be faster.

I think these new features, particularly the new tooltips and manual are really going to make it a lot easier for new users.

My ABC Transcription Tools can now automatically generate tablature from ABC files for both B/C and C#/D tuned diatonic accordions!

Demo video:

https://youtu.be/2rduXDq1nLg

play video

Here are the details of the new box tablature options:

B/C - Shows standard notation and tablature for a 21-button B/C tuned diatonic accordion.

Notes on the C-row are indicated by numbers.

Notes on the B-row are indicated by numbers in circles.

Push is indicated with a down arrow.

Draw is indicated with an up arrow.

C#/D - Shows standard notation and tablature for a 21-button C#/D tuned diatonic accordion.

Notes on the D-row are indicated by numbers.

Notes on the C#-row are indicated by numbers in circles.

Push is indicated with a down arrow.

Draw is indicated with an up arrow.

Formatting your ABC for B/C and C#/D tablature:

Because the box tablature can be very dense, it is best used with only two or three measures per line of ABC.

Assumptions about the B/C and C#/D Box tablature solutions:

The tablature solution assumes that the “magic” notes (E and B on a B/C, F# and C# on a C#/D) that are available on both rows, will be played on the C-row on a B/C box and on the D-row on a C#/D box.

Use of the B/C and C#/D Box tablatures on a 23-button instrument:

If you are playing a 23-button instrument, you will need to shift your start position one button higher when playing.

Try my free ABC Transcription Tools:

http://michaeleskin.com/abc

User Guide:

http://michaeleskin.com/abctools/userguide.html

Cool! I noticed Folktab went down recently, great to see this added in.

Ooh, that’s an interesting exercise facilitated by the tech -- with the tablature alongside an easily-accessed “Transpose” button, we can cycle through the scales to more fully explore the fingerboard.

Ben, exactly!

I realized this morning that I had everything I needed to do this already, since it’s very similar to building the whistle tablature.

I know at notation render time the offsets of every note from some specific root note based on the instrument configuration.

Then it was simply a matter of figuring out how to represent the tab, and of course, all the actual coding and testing which took better part of a day. That plus documentation, demo videos, which take as long as the coding sometimes. 🙂

It really turned out nice, hope it’s useful.

I finally figured out how to set the initial page zoom to full page and layout to single-page view when you open one of the PDFs from my ABC tool in Adobe Acrobat. Fix is live.

If you have PDF tunebooks you created previously and want to fix the initial view, you can either re-generate them in the latest version of the ABC tool or use Adobe Acrobat to set the initial view in the document properties of the older PDFs.

Demonstration of the new “Add ABC Template” feature that you can now use to quickly add an example ABC tune, song with lyrics, or common useful PDF tunebook annotations to your ABC.

My wife Linda developed the new self-documenting “Song with Lyrics” ABC example template.

Demo Video:

https://youtu.be/uFP_RiFF4IQ

play video

Try my free ABC Transcription Tools:

http://michaeleskin.com/abc

Detailed user guide:

http://michaeleskin.com/abctools/userguide.html

If you are on a larger/high resolution screen you might notice that the full screen display of tunes and the tune player window is showing the tunes a bit larger.

The full screen tune size is now controlled by a new tool dialog setting:

Full screen tune display scaling (percentage): Sets the width in percentage of window width for the tune notation on the screen when viewing full screen. Default is 50%.

If you want the full-screen view of the tunes to be larger, change the value to 75% or higher.

If the resulting scaled width is less than 850 pixels the width will be set to 850 pixels. (the previous default width)

This value is saved in your browser and will be used the next time you run the tool.

This can be very useful if you are using partial screen capture tools for copying and pasting tunes into messages. If I’m discussing a tune setting with someone on Facebook Messenger, it’s how I send my tune images.

The tune player window now is always sized at 45% of the browser window width, but doesn’t go below 850 pixels (the previous default width). This will make it a bit bigger for those of you with larger screens.

Demo video of the full-screen tune scaling setting feature:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KagT-Aq8mY8

play video

Today added MusicXML import as an option to my ABC Transcription Tools.

Yeah, this MusicXML import feature is doubleplus good:

https://youtu.be/eFr06bX_IoI

play video

Try it yourself, here’s the tune preloaded into my player:

https://tinyurl.com/3hrf3r6u

You can now open a MusicXML file with the following extensions:

.xml
.musicxml
.mxl (!!!)

.mxl files should work for most cases. In testing I found the rare UTF-16 encoded .mxl that will fail to open.

This is so freaking cool!

Here’s one of the J.S. Bach Two-part Inventions, imported from MusicXML .mxl format, converted to ABC format, displayed and played in the tool using a harpsichord sound.

https://youtu.be/5sKkOfCOrK8

play video

Sound recorded just using the microphones in my monitor, no post processing of the audio.

New “Download as .WAV” Experimental Feature!

You can now download the audio of your ABC tunes as a .wav file.

Since this is an experimental feature, it is disabled by default.

To enable the feature, click the Settings button and you’ll find a new option called “Allow .wav download from the Player (experimental)”.

If you check that option, when you play any tune, you will see a new button at the bottom of the player. Click this button to save the audio of your tune as a .wav audio file.

This is an experimental feature. It may not always work or produce the perfect result, but so far it’s doing pretty well in testing.

Demo video:

https://youtu.be/vESIbNZBVtE

play video

Try my free ABC Transcription Tools:

http://michaeleskin.com/abc

Detailed user guide:

http://michaeleskin.com/abctools/userguide.html

More demos of the new experimental .wav export feature from the ABC Player in the tool, all using my custom instrument sound libraries.

Demo video:

https://youtu.be/b4YNn-GSo70

play video

You can now download the audio of your ABC tunes as a .wav file.

Since this is an experimental feature, it is disabled by default.

To enable the feature, click the Settings button and you’ll find a new option called “Allow .wav download from the Player (experimental)”.

If you check that option, when you play any tune, you will see a new button at the bottom of the player. Click this button to save the audio of your tune as a .wav audio file.

This is an experimental feature. It may not always work or produce the perfect result, but so far it’s doing pretty well in testing.

Try my free ABC Transcription Tools:

http://michaeleskin.com/abc

Detailed user guide:

http://michaeleskin.com/abctools/userguide.html

iPad Demo of the “Download as .WAV” feature:

https://youtu.be/4kgTLEW8LWY

play video

So, the bad news is I tested positive for COVID (first time for me) on August 29th after returning the previous weekend from a trip to the Pacific Northwest to visit friends and play sessions in Vashon Island, Bainbridge Island, Port Townsend, and Olympia, Washington.

I mostly likely picked it in transit back, even though I was masked on the flight other than to have a cup of coffee. I noticed a fair number of people were coughing both on the plane and when I wasn’t masked at the airport baggage claim.

Luckily, I got on Paxlovid immediately and after a couple of days of cycling high fevers, I’m doing great. No fever, virtually no symptoms. Almost feel normal, but will need to continue to isolate for at least three more days until I test negative.

The good news is that having to spend all my time now living and sleeping in my home office, I’ve had a lot of time to work on new features and improvements to the ABC Transcription Tools and documentation.

Today’s announcement is kind of a Holy Grail feature for me.

I’m now able to show the currently selected tablature when bringing up the Player:

https://youtu.be/JhGyrTAvem4

play video

This is particularly nice when autoplaying tunes from interactive PDF tunebooks with tablature, the player now comes up showing the tablature from the tunebook.

Here’s a demo showing how it works with the interactive PDF tunebooks created using the tool:

https://youtu.be/TLOQKXs_kZs

play video

The ABC tool is very handy, but really just wanted to say sorry you got sick, glad you’re feeling better, hope it has run its course. Be well.

Still have three more days minimum of isolation, but doing quite well since starting on the Paxlovid.

That’s a really useful feature ME. The Tool has become an indispensable part of my learning and recording tunes. Very many thanks for your time and generosity. Bí ag déanamh go maith - get well soon!

Pulled a nearly all-nighter and added .mp3 export to the tool’s Player panel. It already included .wav and MIDI export.

With all the new features I’ve been adding to the Player while in COVID isolation, I figured it was about time to put together a demo video:

Shows:

Scrolling notation area
.WAV export
.MP3 export
MIDI export
How to change the bitrate for the .MP3 export
How to switch to large player controls.

Demo video:
https://youtu.be/5lYtoxWnzFQ

play video

Well, this went from sublime to insane quickly. 🙂

You can now export all of your ABC tunes to individual .MP3 files at once by going to the “Advanced Controls” dialog and clicking “Save all Tunes as .MP3”.

The .MP3 files created will be exactly as if you had done the process manually and will respect any MIDI instruments, either in the ABC or default overrides you setup in the tool Settings dialog.

It’s a pretty complex operation, but in testing I’ve been able to do tunebook conversions of over 100 tunes with no issues. I’ve tested it on Chrome, Firefox, and Safari on my Mac.

Please let me know if you run into any issues.

On some browsers, like Chrome, the browser may ask you if it’s OK for the tool to download multiple files. Click “Allow”. If you accidentally tell it not to allow the downloads, if you reload the page and run the batch .MP3 conversion again, you’ll get another chance.

Have fun and let me know how it works for you!

Cheers and thanks,

Michael

Demo Video:
https://youtu.be/0uJYrELWrDU

play video

One of the things that annoys me about most ABC software is how stupidly difficult it is to mute specific voices when playing tunes, particularly melody voices.

For bass and chords, you could stick in %%MIDI bassvol and %%MIDI chordvol annotation, but it always seems like a lot of effort.

I’ve fixed all of that nonsense.

In my ABC tool, I have many custom MIDI instruments based on my iOS sound libraries.

Well today I added:

136 - Silence

Now, if you want to silence any voice in the player, just specify:

%%MIDI program 136
for that voice, or if you want to silence the bass/chords:

%%MIDI chordprog 136

Here’s a demo video:

https://youtu.be/jMpFHv7KWGc

play video

Of course, you can save the audio with the silenced voices as .WAV or .MP3 from the player.

This allows for the simple generation of backing tracks or “Music Minus One” style play-along tracks.

Have fun!

FYI, here’s the full list of my custom instruments:

These replace the default abcjs soundfonts:
15 Dulcimer
21 Accordion
73 Flute
78 Whistle

And these are custom programs that live above #128:
129 Uilleann pipes
130 Scottish Smallpipes (D)
131 Scottish Smallpipes (A)
132 Swedish Säckpipa
133 Concertina
134 Melodica
135 Cajun Accordion

Another muting demo video:

https://youtu.be/uV2hDJ3UKc8

play video

The Batch .MP3 Exporter in the ABC Transcription Tools now allows you to specify how many times the tune should be repeated in the file.

After adding some ABC tunes, click “Export all Tunes as MP3” in the “Advanced Controls” dialog to start the process.

You will now be prompted for a tune repeat count. Default is 1.

If you have ABC tunes with Bass and Chords, to create backing tracks for all the tunes in one operation, you can use the “Inject MIDI Melody” button in the “Advanced Controls” dialog to inject silence (program number 136) into all the tunes before the batch .MP3 export.

After you click “Export all Tunes as MP3”, enter 3 (can be any number you like) as the tune repeat count, and what you will end up with is individual .MP3 bass/chord backing tracks for all of your tunes, with the tune played three times through. The files will be the in Downloads directory for your browser.

I think this is pretty exciting, looking forward to seeing what y’all do with it!

Demo Video:

https://youtu.be/YQeuDJtfm2E

play video

Some details and requirements for the Batch .MP3 exporter from the User’s Guide:

Export all Tunes as .MP3 - Exports all the tunes in the ABC area as individual .mp3 files at the bitrate set in the Settings dialog.

You will be prompted for how many times you want each tune to repeat in the .MP3 file. Default is 1.

This can be very useful for creating longer “play-along” recordings of tunes.

For clean repeats, your tunes must not have extraneous pickup notes and must have proper and complete timing.

Important Requirement for 1st Part Repeats

If the 1st part of a tune has a :| repeat symbol at the end of it (or on a first ending), but not at the very start of the part, you will need to add the starting |: repeat bar symbol for this feature to work when generating a .MP3 file with more than one repetition through the tune.

The lack of a first repeat bar symbol in the ABC will make the first part of the tune on the second and repetitions appear to not repeat.

To Fix:

Add a |: repeat bar at the start of the tune and regenerate the .MP3 file.

If you have tunes with chords, you can quickly create a backing track playing continously multiple times through the tune:

1: Mute the melody for all the tunes by clicking the Inject MIDI Melody button in the Advanced Controls dialog and enter 136 as the MIDI program number.

2: Export all the tunes in the tunebook to .MP3 by clicking Export all Tunes as .MP3 in the Advanced Controls dialog, and when prompted enter the number of times through each tune.

Your browser may request permission to download multiple files.

During the batch export operation, click the export status dialog’s Cancel button to stop the export.

My batch .MP3 exporter feature now has an option to add a two-bar click track at the start of each tune.

This is perfect for creating backing tracks, particularly where you also have chords in the ABC..

To do this, you can mute the melody track for all tunes in the ABC by setting its MIDI program number to 136 (Silence) using the “Inject MIDI Melody” button on the “Advanced Controls” dialog before doing the batch .MP3 export. Then be sure to enable the two-bar click intro when batch exporting the .MP3 files.

The result is a backing track with a two-bar intro and only the bass/chords for the tune.


Demo video:

https://youtu.be/-wBRj8Z733I

play video

I’ve made it very simple to add two-bar click intros to your tunes if you’d like to actually have them in your tune ABC rather than have them auto-injected into the .MP3 files by the batch .MP3 exporter.

I added a new “Add Two-Bar Click Intro Template” button to the “Add” dialog that injects the same two-bar click track patterns I use for the batch .mp3 export system at the top of the ABC area.

You can then copy and paste them to the very start of your tune ABC (after headers, before existing note ABC)
based on the tune style. Be sure to delete them when you’re done:

Here’s what gets added:

%
% Two-bar click intro templates for common tune styles
%
% Copy and paste these into the start of your tunes before any repeats
%
% Delete the rest when you are done
%
% Reel two-bar click intro
V:1
V:2
%%MIDI program 128
^Cz3 ^Cz3|^Cz3 ^Cz3|
V:1
z8|z8|
% Jig two-bar click track intro
V:1
V:2
%%MIDI program 128
^Cz2 ^Cz2|^Cz2 ^Cz2|
V:1
z6|z6|
% Slide two-bar click track intro
V:1
V:2
%%MIDI program 128
^Cz2 ^Cz2 ^Cz2 ^Cz2|
V:1
z12|
% Slip Jig two-bar click track intro
V:1
V:2
%%MIDI program 128
^Cz2 ^Cz2 ^Cz2|^Cz2 ^Cz2 ^Cz2|
V:1
z9|z9|
% Polka two-bar click track intro
V:1
V:2
%%MIDI program 128
^Cz ^Cz|^Cz ^Cz|
V:1
z4|z4|
% Waltz two-bar click track intro
V:1
V:2
%%MIDI program 128
^Cz ^Cz ^Cz|^Cz ^Cz ^Cz|
V:1
z6|z6|

This is kind of a lunatic-fringe new feature, but all the pieces were already in place to do it after I released the .MP3 exporter with repeats and click intros.

Maybe some of you might find it useful:

New Feature: Inject Repeats and Two-Bar Click Intros - Allows you to increase the number of times through each tune by duplicating the ABC for the tune.

Additionally, you may optionally inject a two-bar style-appropriate click intro at the top of each tune.

You will be prompted for how many times you want each tune to repeat. Default is 1.

Check Inject a two-bar style-appropriate click intro before each tune to add a two-bar click intro at the start of each tune.

For clean repeats, your tunes must not have extraneous pickup notes and must have proper and complete timing.

Important Requirement for 1st Part Repeats

If the 1st part of a tune has a :| repeat symbol at the end of it (or on a first ending), but not at the very start of the part, you will need to add the starting |: repeat bar symbol for the ABC to play correctly if there is more than one repetition through the tune.

The lack of a first repeat bar symbol in the ABC will make the first part of the tune on the second and repetitions appear to not repeat.

To Fix:

Add a |: repeat bar at the start of the tune.

Note: This feature, much like the multiple repeat feature in the .MP3 exporter will break with tunes that have multiple voices, key changes, or other *: style annotation in the middle of the tune after the top header. It should work very well for most basic formatted single voice tunes like those from thesession or other traditional tune sources.

Demo video:

https://youtu.be/qwNHFsUYJyc

play video

Added the J. S. Bach BWV570 Fantasia for pipe organ to the “Add” dialog:

https://tinyurl.com/5cemp5kr

In the “Settings” dialog, you may now select between the three General MIDI soundfonts available for abcjs:

Fluid (default)
Musyng Kite
FatBoy

Details on these soundfonts at:

https://paulrosen.github.io/midi-js-soundfonts/

Demo video:
https://youtu.be/R0EFQ3THDic

play video

You can now specify which abcjs General MIDI soundfont to use for a specific tune by adding any of these three comment-based annotations in the ABC header for the tune:

%abcjs_soundfont fluid
%abcjs_soundfont musyng
%abcjs_soundfont fatboy

Each soundfont is a full General MIDI implementation, but has somewhat different sounds for each instrument.

If no %abcjs_soundfont soundfont is specified in a tune, the default soundfont chosen in the tool Settings is used.

It is not possible to change soundfonts within a tune.

If multiple instancs of %abcjs_soundfont are found in a tune, only the first one is used.

For more details on the soundfonts, visit: midi-js-soundfonts on GitHub

Note: For all soundfonts, my custom sampled instruments for dulcimer, accordion, flute, and whistle will override the soundfont sounds.

Demo video (iPad screen capture with audio) showing all the soundfont options in the context of the two J.S. Bach demos built into the tool:

https://youtu.be/p71ZkwtZB0M

play video

Midnight Blue with %abcjs_soundfont fatboy included:

https://tinyurl.com/3esjft6c

Star Wars Cantina theme with %abcjs_soundfont fatboy included:

https://tinyurl.com/a4w9ymy7

James Bond theme with %abcjs_soundfont fatboy included:

https://tinyurl.com/4curpxvs

Star Wars Imperial March with %abcjs_soundfont fatboy included:

https://tinyurl.com/2tmp7679

All of these are now included in the User Guide:

http://michaeleskin.com/abctools/userguide.html#example_tunes

Ha!

“I can finally declare that I’m complete with this 1.0 version of the tool and can get back to my regularly scheduled life. I have another thread here on the ongoing development effort, this post is just to put a stake in the ground and declare it complete. I’ll only be planning on making bug fixes going forward at this point.” - Michael Eskin, 6 months ago.

OK, things just got very, very weird…. 🙂

A couple demos of automatic conversion of sheet music to MusicXML and import into the tool, all being done on my iPad (works on iPhone, too), but the MusicXML files could easily be sent to a desktop system for use instead:

1) Demonstration of scanning two pages of piano score with PlayScore 2 for iOS, exporting the MusicXML file it created, then importing and playing the file using the ABC Transcription Tools.

You can also email or AirDrop the MusicXML file from the iPad/iPhone to use the file on a desktop system.

PlayScore 2:
https://www.playscore.co/

Demo Video (iPad screen capture with sound):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GvSNeaSFqgA

play video

-----

2) Demonstration of scanning a tune from “The Waltz Book 2” with “Sheet Music Scanner” for iOS, exporting the MusicXML file it created, then importing and playing the file using the ABC Transcription Tools.

Unlike PlayScore 2, this one doesn’t pick up chords and lyrics, but seems to do better on simple scores.

You can also email or AirDrop the MusicXML file from the iPad/iPhone to use the file on a desktop system.

Sheet Music Scanner:
https://sheetmusicscanner.com/

Demo Video (iPad screen capture with sound):

https://youtu.be/a32IEmlk5ps

play video

I discovered that PlayScore 2 is able to interpret music that is in PDF files.

This makes it possible to take tunes from any PDF tunebook you already have and make them editable again in my ABC Tools.

Here’s a quick demo on my iPad:

https://youtu.be/kqCIPAsDjGA?si=cHq2UKnQU9gMNaf5

play video

I have a very exciting announcement about a major new feature for my ABC Transcription Tools!

On desktop browsers, you can now assemble tunebooks by dragging and dropping ABC or MusicXML files to the work area.

All the tunes in the dropped file get appended to the end of the work area.

Only single file drag-and-drop is supported.

If you try to drag multiple files in at one time, only the first one in the group will be imported.

I think this a “game changer” for the tool.

Demo Video:

https://youtu.be/y4Vr3nFXmwo

play video

So, if it’s now possible to use drag-and-drop to add more tunes from ABC and MusicXML files, it sure seems like the “Add” dialog should let you, y’know, add tunes from your own files the same way, not just examples and template.

Now it does.

There’s a new button on the reworked Add dialog that will append additional ABC files to the end of whatever is in the editor area.

It dawned on me this afternoon that most modern iOS apps (including my own “Celtic Sounds” app) can be downloaded from the App Store and run on M1 and M2 silicon Macs.

So I downloaded PlayScore 2 from the App Store on my Mac.

You need to download the iOS version, you won’t find a Mac-specific version.

It even carried forward my monthly subscription to PlayScore 2 at the Pro level (about $6/month), and I can use the same app subscription for all devices on my Apple ID account.

Same Emerson, Lake, and Palmer “Trilogy” demo as I did on the iPad, but this time on my Mac.

After PlayScore 2 generates the MusicXML, I then drag and drop it (new feature!) to my ABC Transcription Tools, then play it.

Works and sounds exactly the same as it did on the iPad, but now I can do this on my Mac desktop.

https://youtu.be/py_YvmG58iE

play video

This is amazing.

I’m already in violation of the MIDI spec by having my custom instruments starting at MIDI program 129, so might as well break some more rules.

Now, if you just want to mute the melody or the bass/chords, instead of remembering to use program #136 you can just use:

%%MIDI program mute

and

%%MIDI chordprog mute

This also works for the Default melody and bass/chord program setup in the Settings dialog.

I’ve customized the abcjs MIDI parser, so it just detects this case handles it all nice and quietly behind the scenes, nothing to see here. 🙂

Of course, any MIDI files you export that use any of my custom instruments or mute feature are not compatible with other MIDI software. If you will be exporting any of your ABC to MIDI, only use MIDI programs 0-127 like a good MIDI citizen. Otherwise, party on!

Here’s an example of an ABC for my tool with the melody mute:

X: 1
T: Cooley’s
R: Reel
M: 4/4
L: 1/8
K: Edor
C: Traditional
%abcjs_soundfont fluid
%
% Use an Accordion sound when playing the melody:
%%MIDI program mute
%
% Use an Accordion sound when playing the chords:
%%MIDI chordprog 21
%
% ABC for the tune, both melody and chords:
%
|:“Em”EBBA B2 EB|“Em”B2 AB dBAG|“D”F/E/D AD BDAD|“D”F/E/D AD BAGF|
“Em”EBBA B2 EB|“Em”B2 AB defg|“D”afge dBAF|1 “D”DEFD “Em”E3D:|2 “D”DEFD “Em”E2gf||
|:“Em”eB (3BBB eBgf|“Em”eBB2 gedB|“D”A/A/A FA DAFA|“D”A/A/A FA defg|
“Em”eB (3BBB eBgf|“Em”eBBB defg|“D”afge dBAF|1 “D”DEFD “Em”E2gf:|2 “D”DEFD “Em”E4|]

OK, time to be a good General MIDI citizen.

Changed the way I handle MIDI export for tunes that have any of my custom MIDI programs (129-136, including muting):

Limits on Use of my Custom MIDI Instruments

The General MIDI specification only supports MIDI program numbers as high as 128.

My custom MIDI instruments start at MIDI program 129 and go up from there.

These custom instruments and program numbers can only be used by my ABC tool and are not interoperable with other ABC software.

In the exported MIDI file, any of my custom MIDI instrument program numbers will be remapped as follows:

129: Uilleann -> 109: Bagpipes
130: Smallpipes D -> 109: Bagpipes
131: Smallpipes A -> 109: Bagpipes
132: Sackpipa -> 109: Bagpipes
133: Concertina -> 22: Harmonica
134: Melodica -> 22: Harmonica
135: Cajun Accordion -> 21: Accordion

Muted voices using MIDI instrument 136 or “mute” will be changed to program 0 (Acoustic Grand Piano) and the volume set to zero.

iPhone demo showing converting a PDF of the notation for The Doors “Riders on the Storm” to MusicXML using PlayScore2, then importing and playing the MusicXML file with my ABC Transcription Tools.

https://youtu.be/7gQfQVnBLsg

play video

Try it yourself:

https://tinyurl.com/2h454m48

Reworked the MIDI program, MIDI chordprog, %%staffwidth, and %abcjs_soundfont injection dialogs so you can now either inject a single string at the cursor insertion point, or the entire set of tunes.

I found this particularly useful when injecting %%MIDI program values in the multi-voice demos I’ve been posting recently.

Also, the main Settings as well as the inject MIDI program and chordprog dialogs now show drop-downs menus with all the MIDI program names.

You no longer have to remember the mapping of instrument to MIDI program number when selecting instruments in any dialogs in the tool where you used to have to type a General MIDI program number.

Additionally, these instrument drop-down menus include the “Mute” instrument at the top as well as all my custom AppCordions instruments at the bottom.

I’ve done some reworking of the backup generation so that it handles bass and chords around pickup notes and partial measures, or example in the first ending of a tune where there is a pickup at the start of the tune.

By default abcjs would just play repeated chord notes on every beat for the entire partial measure, which to me, particularly in traditional Irish music, and especially jigs, sounded very hackney.

Now, it’s much more adaptive, using the rhythm pattern for partial measures if there are sufficient notes for it to make sense to do so, or doing just chords, or leaving both the bass and chords out, if it makes sense.

I think the new version is much nicer sounding in these cases, hope you enjoy it.

Here’s an example of a jig with pickups and partial measures:

https://tinyurl.com/4s65bfsc

I’ve sent the source changes to Paul Rosen to consider merging into abcjs.

Here are all of my ragtime ABC examples:

“Ragtime Nightingale”- Joseph Lamb
https://tinyurl.com/ymwb7h6c

Demo video how it was generated:
https://youtu.be/CpTrfw3PRUk

play video

“The Entertainer” - Scott Joplin
https://tinyurl.com/29hr79m9

“Peacherine Rag” - Scott Joplin
https://tinyurl.com/mrxu47vh

“The Chrysanthemum” - Scott Joplin
https://tinyurl.com/5n8hw8cu

“Solace” - Scott Joplin
https://tinyurl.com/52p7bd2y

I recently added the ability to do custom rhythm patterns to my ABC tool:

http://michaeleskin.com/abctools/userguide.html#custom_backup_rhythms

With this, and the appropriate choice of a backup instrument you can easily add a metronome to a tune, assuming the tune doesn’t already have chords.

For example:

X: 1
T: Cooley’s
R: Reel
M: 4/4
L: 1/8
K: Edor
C: Traditional
%abcjs_soundfont fatboy
%
% Use a custom 4/4 backup pattern to use as a metronome
%abcjs_boomchick 4/4 cBBB
%
% Use a piano sound for the melody
%%MIDI program 0
%
% Woodblock for backup
%%MIDI chordprog 115
%
% ABC for the tune, both melody and chords:
%
|:“E”EBBA B2 EB|B2 AB dBAG|F/E/D AD BDAD|F/E/D AD BAGF|
EBBA B2 EB|B2 AB defg|afge dBAF|1 DEFD E3D:|2 DEFD E2gf||
|:eB (3BBB eBgf|eBB2 gedB|A/A/A FA DAFA|A/A/A FA defg|
eB (3BBB eBgf|eBBB defg|afge dBAF|1 DEFD E2gf:|2 DEFD E4|]

Here’s a share link with it live:

https://tinyurl.com/2p9ck8bu

Here’s a jig metronome example:

https://tinyurl.com/yck7suum

Michael , with this GHbagpipe tune in7/8 i set both lines as percussion . So useing that to play anong with or alternatively settig chords as piano and melody as percussion.
So for creating a backing trac…. awesome

X: 2
T: The Crippled Swallow
R: march
M: 4/4
L: 1/8
K: Amix
M:7/8
Q:1/8=300
|:“A”e>cA “A”cA “A”ce|“G”d>BA “G”G2“G” G2|“G”g>dB dB dg|“D”f>gf“A” e2 e2:|
|:“A”a>ec ec ea|“G”g>dB dB dg|“D”f>dA dA df|1 )“A”e>cB A2 A2:|2 )e>cB A2 A/B/c/d/||“D”
|:“A”e>cA aA ce|“G”d>BG gG B>d|“D”f>dA fA df|“A”e>cB A/B/c/d/ e/f/g/f/:|
|:“A”a>ec ae a/g/f|“G”g>dB gB g/f/e|“D”f>dA fA f/e/d|“A”e>cB A2 A/B/c/d/:|
|:“A”:e>cA c/B/A c/d/e|“G”d>BG B/A/G B/c/d|“D”f>dA f/e/d d/e/f|“A”e>cB A/B/c/d/ e/f/g/f/:|
|:“A”e>cA a/g/f/e/ d/c/B/A/|“G”d>BG g/f/e/d/ e/d/c/B/|“A”c>de “G”g2 g2|“A”c>de “A”a2 a2:|
%abcjs_boomchick 7/8 BccBcbc 3

The ABC Tools can now automatically add a metronome to your tunes for practice.

There is now a new command on the Advanced Controls dialog: “Inject Metronome”.

The tool determines the meter of the tune and injects an appropriate metronome style. It is aware of most common meters, including less commonly used ones like 5/4, 5/8, 7/8, and 10/8. If you give it a meter it can’t handle, it will tell you.

As it uses the ABC bass/chord backup system to do it’s job, it is best used on tunes without chords.

The metronome injector will strip any existing chords and MIDI chord related ABC from the tune before injecting the metronome. This is explained on the metronome injector dialog.

Here’s a demo video of the metronome injection feature on several common styles of traditional Irish tunes:


https://youtu.be/o43deg56Jfs

play video