What are are these letters and what do they mean?

[Findiglay]

Good evening/morning all,

For my first post here I'd like to ask very simple question. Let me present figure A -


A|dcAG ADDB|cAGF ECCE|DEFG Addc|AcGc Adfe|
dcAG A2dB|cAGF ECCE|DEFG Addc|AcGc ADD:||
A|dcAG Acde|fAdf ecAB|cAGE GAcd|ecc2 eage|
dcAG Acde|fAdf ecAG|F2FE FGAB|cAGE FDD:||

Well, I do understand that the letters represent notes. What I can't figure out though, is why are some upper-case while others are lower case? Does it indicate a difference of octave?

If anyone could answer this question I would be grateful.

Thanks,
Findiglay

[OldSausage]

Here are all the gory details:

http://abcnotation.com/learn

Best idea is, get a program like TablEdit that can import abc and turn it into music or tab, then you never have to learn it.

http://www.tabledit.com/

[Jacob]

abc notation notes (http://abcnotation.com/examples#Notes)

[Jim Garber]

I use this converting thing on concertina.net (http://www.concertina.net/tunes_convert.html). You do need to paste only one abc file at a time but you need all the header info tho.

It would look like this:


X:1
T:O'Keeffe's Slide
S:Sessions, LPs, etc
Z:Nigel Gatherer <gatherer@argonet.co.uk>
M:12/8
L:1/8
K:Am
A2 e e2 d BAB d2 B|A2 e e2 d B2 G GFG|
A2 e e2 d BAB d3|BAB d2 e B2 A A3:|
e2 a a2 b a2 g e2 d|e2 a a2 b a2 g e2 f|
g2 a g2 e dBA G3|BAB d2 e B2 A A3:|

Then it converts to the standard notation and you can download a nice clear pdf.

[John Kelly]

Follow the advice of David and Jacob and look up the language of abc. You are right in thinking that upper and lower case letters mean different octaves.

[foldedpath]

A few notes in addition to the info links above:

ABC notation does have a few advantages over Tab and Standard notation when learning, identifying, and especially editing fiddle tunes.

Since it's plain ASCII text, it's possible to run a database search on a collection like the Tunes section of thesession.org (http://thesession.org/tunes). Type in part of a tune whose name you don't know in ABC format, and the search tool will come back with all tunes that have that particular note sequence. You can't do a search like that on a graphics-based format like sheet music in PDF format, or printed Tab.

It's also a quick way to make a small edit in a fiddle tune, or even transcribe a tune learned by ear... which I think was the reason it was invented in the first place.

My fiddler S.O. knows how to work with ABC, and she also sight-reads sheet music. If she finds an ABC version of a tune that's just a few notes different from a recorded version she likes better, it's very simple to change the notes in ABC and then print out a PDF in standard sheet music format. Or she can quickly write out a tune from scratch in ABC that she learned by ear, and print the standard notation. It's much faster than booting up a big notation program like Finale or Sibelius, when all you want to do is crank out a simple fiddle tune in sheet music.

[mikeyes]

Jim,

If you remove the X:1 part of the next tune in your set you can put it in behind the first tune on concertina.net. No spaces between tunes and the converter will print as many tunes as you want. At least, I think it will, as I have never printed out more than three tunes at a time.

Fiddle-Tunes (http://www.nhcountrydance.com/music/fiddle-tunes_abc_about.html) has a very good compendium of what ABC is and gives you a couple of free converters on line including some that allow you to change keys.

[Findiglay]

Thanks for the responses everybody,

I've used TablEdit for a while but I had no idea it could do this. I found the function under "file/import abc.." pasted the notes into a .txt doc, saved it as .abc, imported and it worked a charm.

I'll be sure to read the rest of the information you all provided, thanks.

Great community you have here btw,
Grant

[kkmm]

Very interesting subject for me. I learn something new today. Never know there is such a thing called abc notation.
I read the overview on the Web and it's quite easy to understand. This must have been invented by a software guy who also know music notation.
I am wondering how does abc represents accidentals. For examples:
For a song based on C key, F# is an accidental, how does abc shows this ?. my guess is "F#", but not so sure.
For a song in D key, F represent F# note, how is F natural shown in abc ?

[Jacob]

inaccurate reply removed

[kkmm]

Doing some more search, I found the answers to my own questions.
To sharpen a note precede it with the caret ^ : ^C (to get a C# on in a key of C)
To flatten a note precede it with an underscore _ : _B (to get a Bb)
Double sharps are shown as ^^ and double flats as __
To naturalize a note precede it with an equals sign = : =F (to get natural F in a key of D for example).
Reading abc notation gave me a blurry eyes.
I guess this notation is aimed at storing music in a text format which can be transferred to any computers, tablets, smart phones for playing. I doubt that I will ever write any song using this notation. But it's really good to know what this is.

[Fretless]

Aw, you beat me to it :) so I'll just add that for notes below the C on the G string, add a comma (G,A,B,CDEFG...) and for notes above the b on the E string, add an apostrophe (cdefgabc'd'e'...).

I have a great app on my phone called Tunebook (http://www.jhlabs.com/tunebook/) (iPhone and iPad) for storing tunes in the ABC format. ABC files take up almost no space so you can have a honker database - my current one is under 200k and has over 400 tunes. You can view them in ABC or standard notation, listen to midi, import tunes from websites, edit tunes, and even email them.

And while I'm at it, another good ABC-based app for searching for a tune name is TunePal (]http://tunepal.org/tunepal/index.php) (iPhone and Android). You record a bit of a (traditional) tune and it searches for matches. It's not always successful - it's current database is around 16,000 tunes - but kinda mind-blowing when it is.

Fretless