abcnotation.com | learning

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This page contains several links to resources which will help you learn abc. If you are completely new to abc you may be better to start with the how to ... articles or the tutorials - if you are more familiar with abc then the standard will give you all the rules.

the abc standard

... versions of the abc standard, the (semi-formal) description of the rules of abc, can be found at ...

abc standard version 2.1 (Dec 2011) - the current standard
links to previous versions and developmental work

how to ...

... a growing series of articles on using and understanding abc.

abc examples

... a whole series of abc examples starting from notes, beams, etc right through to some fairly complex tunes.

abc tutorials

a popular abc tutorial put together by Steve Mansfield
an abc primer written by John Chambers
a more in-depth abc tutorial also written by John Chambers
a guide to making music with ABC Plus by Guido Gonzato, on using advanced abc features available in abcm2ps and abcMIDI

abc quick reference guide

... a very handy tri-fold chart of abc syntax from Steve Merrony.

miscellaneous

how to include abc files in plain text searching on Windows XP

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! Here is just a taste of what you can find at abcnotation.com, either here or via a link: