abc notation home page

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 else you can find, either at this site or via a link:

• around 67,000 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 of traditional song & dance music (from collectors, composers & publishers such as O'Neill, Carolan & Playford, 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 instruments such as guitar, mandolin & banjo (and other fretted, stringed instruments), fiddle / violin / voila, bagpipes, flute & whistle, 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: