abc tune search : charts

The top tune pages viewed and searches made over the last seven days (with previous winners excluded for a week). [Charts last updated 12 Mar 2010 at around 6am GMT.]

For more details on how the charts are generated, take a look at this blog article and this update.

Note for newcomers: If you've stumbled across this page by accident - perhaps via a web search - welcome, and thanks for visiting the abc web site!

abc is a text based format for music notation, popular all over the world, particularly for folk and traditional music. There are around 56,000 tunes available at this site alone (all of which can be viewed & downloaded in abc or staff notation, or played as midi through a computer sound card), along with loads of free software.

Because the format is so compact, it is easy share tunes via email or on websites such as this one.

Much of the music available in abc is from Irish, Scottish and other Celtic sources but there are also plenty of tunes from America, England, France, Scandinavia and all over Europe. There is even a sizeable collection of Chinese music.

In addition, many well-known historical collections of traditional song & dance music have been transcribed into abc - from collectors, composers & publishers (such as O'Neill, Carolan & Playford, to name but three), and from medieval & renaissance times onwards.

There is plenty of free software to transfer abc into ordinary staff notation or midi files which can be played on a computer.

And because of the popularity of abc amongst folk musicians there is even software which generates tabulature and fingering charts specifically for players of 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.