Music Notation Software with ABC Import / Export

I’m looking for a software package that will allow me to create sheet music, entering the notes directly, or importing abc files. I also want to be able to control the layout of the page.

I’ve had a look at Melody Maker, and while it’s great in some ways, I hate the way all of the bars are displayed on a single horizontal line - you only see a full page when you print.

ABC Navigator 2 is a great free package, but doesn’t allow enough page management, ie I want to be able to decide where the page breaks come.

Has anyone got any suggestions? Or any experience of PrintMusic - does it include an ABC interface?

Thanks,

Pamela

Hi Pamela
Have you looked on this site?
http://www.myriad-online.com/en/index.htm

That’s Melody Assistant (wrongly referred to as Melody Maker in my first post) - I’ve downloaded a trial, but find it really frustrating - in the way it displays the entire tune on one horizontal line with no way of inserting line breaks. And the trial version only allows you to create tunes in 4/4!

There must be something better around - I’m hoping for something with a good display (what you see is what you get), display flexibility (insert comments / line breaks / ties) and abc compatiblity.

I’m scoring harmonies for voice / flute.

any help appreciated!

Hi Pamela

Did you look at Harmony Assistant on that site? It looks like it has different display capability than Melody Assistant, among other things.

Aha! That looks better. Thanks.

Any other suggestions?

In the links section you’ll find ABCNavigator. Not a true music notation program so it’s probably not enough for you, but a very good (as far as I have found out - I just recently downloaded it) ABC-program with good preview and print fascilites. And it’s free….

I’m puzzled. My ABC navigator lets me do line breaks where I want, and I’m only really concerned about page breaks when I’m printing. ABC Navigator has a helpful little option on the print window “Insert page break”. What more do you need?

I certainly don’t need more than that! But if you are looking for notation software with ABC import/export you may want more than ABCNavigator give you? I dont’ know?

After a couple of hours playing, I’ve decided to buy Harmony Assistant. Very easy to use, very flexible, includes ties, space for comments, easy dotted rhythms and then exports them to ABC files!

As for ABCNavigator - if that’s the same as ABCNavigator 2 free shareware, while it does let you decide where to break the lines, it doesn’t let you page break, and doesn’t handle putting partial harmonies, notes, ties etc. But it is a great ABC reader and very reliable.

Thanks everyone for helping.

A quick Google search turned up this newly released free program, iabc. I haven’t installed it yet, but it looks like it may be what you are looking for.

http://abc.sourceforge.net/iabc/

Here’s what the web site says:

iabc is a free (open source) program for editing music. It uses the ABC music notation language to produce high-quality graphical notation or MIDI output. The music notation and the ABC notation can be updated in real-time, making the construction of tunes using the ABC language hassle-free (or at least hassle-resistant).

What features does iabc implement

* Graphical Display of music
* Music printing
* MIDI output
* Multi-voice abc
* Cut/paste/undo/transpose edit functions

I’ve bee using Five Line Skink lately. It’s a java app and does everything you ask. Best of all - it’s free.

http://celticmusic.ca/skink.html

If you use Noteworthy Composer, there’s a noteworthy-to-ABC converter available (nw2abc.exe IIRC)

I use ABC2Win, as it produces the most tunes per page which is what I want. No, it doesn’t do page breaks, but copes fine with line breaks.
I have never been impressed with the lack of help files on ABCNavigator.
I must investigate IABC.

I use Five Line Skink all the time (mentioned above) - it’s great, and it opens ABC files from The Session and shows the variations that people have posted. It will also open large archives such as the excellent RRtunes.abc collection, though navigation can be slow. I just gave iabc a try and it crashed when opening RRtunes. Also, if you open single ABC files from The Session, it doesn’t display the variations. More relevant to Pamela’s original query, I bought a copy of Melody Assistant a while ago, and it’s great fun though I can’t say I’ve used it a lot. You can’t open ABC compilations with it, but you can import single tunes from ABC. The first version I had crashed when you tried to export a tune to ABC - but I recently loaded the free upgrade and this seems to have been fixed. I must get a copy of ABC2Win as I haven’t tried that yet.

…just tried ABC Navigator and it’s brilliant.