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Author Topic: Decoding ABC music  (Read 5248 times)

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Dee J

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Decoding ABC music
« on: July 21, 2009, 12:56:20 PM »

As an absolute beginner, with little experience of sight-reading music, playing from ABC notation has a lot going for it... but sometimes something trips me up. In this case its the Parts notation in 'The Three Musketeers' (La Marseillaise in G) as found on the ABC finder.

The tune is clearly in two parts (A and B) with repeat marks around each, but the P: field contains the following

P:${1}\over{2}$A(AB)$^4$
%P:A/2.(AB)4

I can't find many of these symbols lited in the tutorials - anyone care to translate please.

Dee
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jb

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Re: Decoding ABC music
« Reply #1 on: July 21, 2009, 01:38:59 PM »

Someone else is bound to know for sure, but to me it looks like two renditions of the same instruction regarding A/B repetitions: to play an unrepeated A section (A/2) followed by four lots of A+B with repeats as shown. I don't recognise the syntax of the first version though.
And I guess these instructions will relate to playing for dance.
You could always try emailing the declared transcriber Alex Boster <boster@acm.org> to check.
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Bill the Farmer

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Re: Decoding ABC music
« Reply #2 on: July 22, 2009, 11:49:41 AM »

I think the first line includes some clever scripting to get a '1/2' character and a superscript '4' on the end. Not part of ABC as we know it.
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Simon

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Re: Decoding ABC music
« Reply #3 on: July 26, 2009, 08:18:25 PM »

I think the first line includes some clever scripting to get a '1/2' character and a superscript '4' on the end. Not part of ABC as we know it.
Right. The Latex typesetting system uses the dollar sign to go into math mode. The other commands are Latex as well. Guess that especially on linux some abc converters interpret this correctly.
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Steve C.

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Re: Decoding ABC music
« Reply #4 on: November 16, 2009, 04:58:07 PM »

I like the "idea" of ABC, but it seems to confuse me more than having a music staff/button map crib sheet, especially the timing of notes.  I am sure we already have this somewhere on the site, but would someone please send me their recommendation for a good ABC "tutor"?  THANKS.
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Simon

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Re: Decoding ABC music
« Reply #5 on: November 16, 2009, 05:49:45 PM »

Try this page on melodeon.net, which has some links to other tutorials. Another good resource is the pdf manual from the abcplus project.
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Pete Dunk

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Re: Decoding ABC music
« Reply #6 on: November 16, 2009, 06:14:52 PM »

I like the "idea" of ABC, but it seems to confuse me more than having a music staff/button map crib sheet, especially the timing of notes.

Steve the whole idea of people passing on abc files is so that the end user can print out staff notation or listen to a midi playback of the tune. You don't need to learn to read from the abc notation (although some people do!) and you only need a tutorial if you want to transcribe a piece yourself.

Here's an abc file, if you want the printed notation simply highlight the text from X:1 to the end then select 'Edit', 'Copy' from the menu at the top of your browser (or Ctrl+C on your keyboard) then paste the file into the editing window here and click 'Update'. Now click PDF to view and print a high quality score.

X:10
T:The LNB Polka
M:2/2
L:1/8
Q:1/4=200
K:Dmix
d2 A2 c3 B | A2 F2 G2 FG | A2 B2 ABAG |
F2 A2 E4 |d2 A2 c3 B | A2 F2 G2 FG |
A2 B2 ABAG | F2 E2 D4 |d2 A2 c3 B |
A2 F2 G2 FG | A2 B2 ABAG | F2 A2 E4 |
d2 A2 c3 B | A2 F2 G2 FG | A2 B2 ABAG | F2 E2 D2 EF||
G2 E2 BGEB | GE B2 B2 AG | F2 D2 AFDA |
FD A2 A2 GF |G2 E2 BGEB | GE B2 B2 AG |
A2 B2 ABAG | F2 E2 D2 |EF | G2 E2 BGEB |
GE B2 B2 AG | F2 D2 AFDA | FD A2 A2 GF |
G2 E2 BGEB | GE B2 B2 AG | A2 B2 ABAG | F2 E2 D4||


If you do want to learn the language and transcribe follow the link Simon provided to the main melodeon.net website and go for Chris Walshaw's tutorial first.

Pete.
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Steve_freereeder

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Re: Decoding ABC music
« Reply #7 on: November 17, 2009, 02:07:28 AM »

I like the "idea" of ABC, but it seems to confuse me more than having a music staff/button map crib sheet, especially the timing of notes.

Steve the whole idea of people passing on abc files is so that the end user can print out staff notation or listen to a midi playback of the tune. You don't need to learn to read from the abc notation (although some people do!) and you only need a tutorial if you want to transcribe a piece yourself.
Exactly. The original idea of ABC was so that written music could easily be transmitted electronically to someone else as a simple text file without the need for  complex and expensive music notation software. ABC decoders were and are available as freeware or cheap shareware to convert the ABC text files into visual music notation. Yes - it is possible to 'read' directly from ABC, if that's what you really want to do, (I guess much in the same way that some people can read computer machine code) but most folks use a decoder.
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Steve
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Steve C.

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Re: Decoding ABC music
« Reply #8 on: November 17, 2009, 01:43:10 PM »

Thanks all.  I really did not understand that the use was primarily for transport/translation of the data, not necessarily for use "as is".  I had read that some people find it easier to learn tunes directly from the ABC.  But overall, I do not think that I will go there.  I have used the ABC editors, quite a miracle, really.
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nemethmik

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Re: Decoding ABC music
« Reply #9 on: November 17, 2009, 01:59:09 PM »

some people find it easier to learn tunes directly from the ABC
Very True! Reading ABC music is not harder at all than deciphering sheet music with dots.
The example above from tallship is perfectly readable to me, I would not need the dots.
Miki
« Last Edit: November 17, 2009, 02:06:22 PM by Miklos Nemeth »
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Steve_freereeder

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Re: Decoding ABC music
« Reply #10 on: November 17, 2009, 03:17:05 PM »

some people find it easier to learn tunes directly from the ABC
Very True! Reading ABC music is not harder at all than deciphering sheet music with dots.
The example above from tallship is perfectly readable to me, I would not need the dots.
Miki
Yes - I can decipher the ABC too if I have to, it's not that difficult; but my point is that ABC is not a very good visual/aural aid on its own.
Standard musical notation is a bit like a frequency-time graph*, and as such, gives a direct visual impression of the pitch and duration of the notes and their pitch-time relationship with each other. You can't easily get that from raw ABC.

I'd rather see a picture of a landscape, rather than read a text description of that landscape.

* Before anyone jumps in: yes I know the axes - particularly the horizontal time axis - are not strictly linear, and there are various duration conventions and shorthand symbols, but nevertheless the analogy holds good, and the visual picture of the music made by note heads is there.
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Steve
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Chris Ryall

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Re: Decoding ABC music
« Reply #11 on: November 18, 2009, 08:15:40 AM »

Think it's technically a 'tokenised language'.

Has anyone else heard Simon Jeffes's "CAGE DEAD" written at the demise of John Cage? You might say that Jeffes invented ABC, a whole year ahead of Chris Walshaw. But then we've all written out tunes by letter..  and ABC is more than that.

I use ABCnavigator and it does ABC, generates dots and plays the thing too. What's the problem?
« Last Edit: November 18, 2009, 08:18:02 AM by Chris Ryall »
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