abc notation home page
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Welcome to abcnotation.com, home of abc notation - the text-based music notation system and the de facto standard for folk and traditional music.
Here is just a taste of what you can find, either at this site or via a link:
- around 380,000 tunes, available as free sheet music or midi sound files, at this site alone
- traditional music from medieval & renaissance times up to the present day
- plenty of free software (Windows, Mac, Linux, mobile, ...) to transfer abc into scores or midi sound files
- tunes from many cultures - a large proportion from Irish, Scottish & other Celtic sources, with plenty of music from America, England, France, Scandinavia & all over Europe and even a sizeable collection of Chinese music
- a notation format popular all over the world, particularly for folk and traditional music
- online versions of many well-known historical collections, such as O'Neill's Music of Ireland, Playford's English Dancing Master & tunes composed by Carolan, to name but three
- a concise, text-based music notation system, that makes it easy to share tunes via email or on websites such as this one
- session tunes, band repertoires and original music
- specialist software which can generate tabulature and fingering charts for instruments such as guitar, mandolin & banjo (and other fretted, stringed instruments), fiddle / violin / voila, diatonic accordion, trumpet, horn euphonium & tuba, harmonica and drums
- examples, tutorials, a blog, discussion forums and plenty of other information about abc
So how does it work? As an example, the well-known tune Speed the Plough could be written in abc as
X:1
T:Speed the Plough
M:4/4
C:Trad.
K:G
|:GABc dedB|dedB dedB|c2ec B2dB|c2A2 A2BA|
GABc dedB|dedB dedB|c2ec B2dB|A2F2 G4:|
|:g2gf gdBd|g2f2 e2d2|c2ec B2dB|c2A2 A2df|
g2gf g2Bd|g2f2 e2d2|c2ec B2dB|A2F2 G4:|
After processing a typical result might look like this:
... music shops, instruments, gigs, festivals, equipment, celtic, folk, accessories, sheet music, musicians ...
... mandola, concertina, recorder, flute, violin, trumpet, piano, banjo, fretted, squeezebox ...
hundreds of musicians visit abcnotation.com every day - your advert could appear here
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© Chris Walshaw, 1995-2013.
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