Editing ABC

A little about ABC musical notation

ABC musical notation is a simple way to transcribe music to paper. A tune in ABC looks like this:

X: 1
T: An Buachaillin Dreoite
R: jig
M: 6/8
L: 1/8
K: Gmaj
|: DGG ABG | AGF GFE | DGG ABG| cAG F2E|
DGG ABG | AGF GBd | eff gdB|1cAF G2F :|2 cAF G2A ||
|: BDD cDD | dcd G2A | BAB GBd | cAG FGA |
BAB cBc | d^cd efg | a2f gfd |1 cAF G2A :|2 cAF G2F ||

The ABC tune can be “rendered” via software to produce standard sheet music:

The first 6 lines of the example is called the header, and consists of:

X: - a number (usually used to sort the tunes)
T: - the title of the tune
R: - the rhythm (jig, reel, hornpipe, etc)
M: - meter (6/8, 4/4, etc)
L: - length of each note in the ABC (1/8 means that each letter in the ABC has the value of 1/8 of a measure. 
For example: gabc = 4 eighth notes. a2bc = one quarter note and 2 eighth notes. a3c = a dotted quarter followed by an eighth note.)
K: - The key (Dmaj is the same as D, however Dmin and Ddor mean different things)

After the last line of the header (K: should always be the last line of the header) the musical notes start. The notes are:

  • Octave below Middle C = C, : Middle C = C : 3rd space C = c : highC = c’

  • Bar lines are indicated by the symbol |

  • Repeat symbols are |: and :|

  • Common ornamentations: 3(abc or a/b/c indicates a triplet, ~a indicates a roll

There are many more options and details about ABC, but that should get you started. See this ABC tutorial for a good resource.

Use editABC to edit a tune

When you first open the editABC page there is already a tune (An Buachaillin Dreoite) in the grey box. If you click on a note in the music, the corresponding symbol is highlighted in the ABC notation. You can edit the note in the ABC, and the results will instantly be seen in the music.

If you want to write out a tune from scratch then it’s probably a good idea to leave the code for in place and change it bit by bit.

If you delete the text in the grey box then the musical notation will disappear. If you now paste in some ABC for a tune that you’ve got from another source such as The Session the music notation will appear above the grey box. You can then adjust any details that you want to change.

You can use the audio player on the page to play back the tune to check your work.

When you’re happy that you’ve got your notation just right you can use the Download ABC button to save your work to your device.

Edit an existing tune page

You can also edit the ABC for an existing tune page if you want to help correct mistakes. Not all our tunes have an ABC that matches the recorded version so your help would be appreciated.

For example, if you go the tune page for The Abbeyleix you should see a button labelled If you click on that button you should now see something like this:

You can make changes to the ABC in the same way as in the previous section. Any changes you make here will NOT change the website so don’t be nervous about having a go.

When you’re happy with your changes save them using the Download ABC button. We’d love you to send your changes to us at archive@lpnz.org. We’ll review them and almost certainly use them.