ABC Notation (Computer Assisted Learning)

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Ange joueur de biniou kozh ou cornemuse (sculpture dans le donjon du château de Vincennes).

ABC Notation is a shorthand form of musical notation for computers.  It can be converted to show the standard staff notation of music (i.e. engraving).  It can also be processed to produce a MIDI sound file.  ABC notation is ASCII based and has the flavour of software from the 1990s at a time before the preponderance of Windows and "what you see is what you get" (WYSIWYG).  The language has evolved but is standardized.  The initial release dates to 1997 but the latest release was in December 2011.  Details are at: http://abcnotation.com/ .  The standard has extensions that can accommodate lyrics (aligned with notes - reminds us of hymn books), chords, tablature and even percussion/drumming. 

The developer of ABC Notation, Chris Walshaw, originally developed the program to notate French bagpipe music (binioù and bombarde).  ABC Notation is an offshoot of MusiXTEX - a typesetting/engraving system for music typesetting.  A further offshoot of this project was LilyPond - but its input files resemble programs.  There are conversion programs.  There are a number of proprietary score-writers available (Celtic Pipes, Bagpipe Writer, MuseScore etc.), but for a not-for-profit society like the Northwest Territorial Pipe Band, the promise of opensource software is compelling.  Because of the origins of ABC Notation for bagpipe music, the notation handles grace notes and other embellishments very well.  Nevertheless it should be noted that ABC notation can handle more than just bagpipe music.

Below is an example of ABC Notation for The Brown Haired Maiden - a typical learning tune in the bagpipe tutor (teaching book).  The level of control is very interesting and it can be exported to a MIDI file.  This makes ABC Notation and the associated programs very useful for learning purposes in providing engraved music (that is legible and not subject to copyright) and in providing audible MIDI files to learn the tune by ear and to follow on the practice chanter. It also provides a useful tool for learning music theory.

ABC notation is a shorthand musical notation for computers using letter notations.  It was originally developed in the late 1990s for French bagpipes but gradually expanded to music generally.  The files are simple text files that are read by software and either played on the computer speaker or rendered into sheet music.  There are similarities to LaTeX.  From Andrew Lenz's website, there is the abc notation for a tune:

X:1
T:The Brown Haired Maiden
N:Very common tune.
Z:Transcribed Sept. 28, 2003 by Andrew T. Lenz, Jr.
C:Traditional, Arr. PM Jay Salter
R:March
M:2/4
L:1/8
Q:1/4=80
K:HP


|: A | {Gdc}d3/2c/2 {g}B{G}A | {Gdc}d2 {e} A3/2{Gdc}d/2 | {g}fd {gf}gf | {g}fe {A} e{gf}g |
\
|f/2a3/2 {fg}fa | A2 {Gdc}d3/2e/2 | {g}f2 {gf}ge | {Gdc}d2 {gdG}d :|
\
|{gf}g | f/2a3/2 {fg}fa | A2 {Gdc}d3/2e/2 | {g}fd {gf}gf | {g}fe {A} e{gf}g |
\
|f/2a3/2 {fg}fa | A2 {Gdc}d3/2e/2 | {g}f2 {gf}ge | {Gdc}d2 {gdG}d{gf}g |
\
|f/2a3/2 {fg}fa | A2 {Gdc}d3/2e/2 | {g}fd {gf}gf | {g}fe {A} e{gf}g |
\
|a3/2g/2 {fg}fa | A2 {Gdc}d3/2e/2 | {g}f2 {gf}ge | {Gdc}d2 {gdG}d |]

The notes are defined as shown in the figure above.  In the code the default is an eighth note (L: 1/8).  So if one rights d , one rights a d eighth note.  The code above generates the following sheet music:

All of this is opensource.  Most commercial programs are based on a similar approach.  The software is downloadable at:  https://sourceforge.net/projects/easyabc/ .

Sources: