the abc musical notation language

abc is a language designed to notate tunes in an ascii format. It was designed primarily for folk and traditional tunes of Western European origin (such as Irish, English and Scottish) which can be written on one stave in standard classical notation. However, it is extendible to many other types of music. Since its introduction at the end of 1991 it has become very popular and there now exist several PC and UNIX based tools which can read abc notation and either process it into staff notation or play it through the speakers of a computer.

One of the most important aims of abc notation, and perhaps one that distinguishes it from most, if not all, computer-readable musical languages is that it can be easily read by humans. In other words, with a little practice, it is possible to play a tune directly from the abc notation without having to process and print it out. Even if this isn't of interest, the resulting clarity of the notation makes it fairly easy to notate tunes. In addition, the ability to write music in abc notation means that it can be easily and portably stored or transported electronically hence enabling the discussion and dissemination of music via email.

As an example the tune Paddy O'Rafferty would be written out as 

T:Paddy O'Rafferty
C:Trad.
M:6/8
K:D
dff cee|def gfe|dff cee|dfe dBA|dff cee|def gfe|faf gfe|1 dfe dBA:|2 dfe dcB||
~A3 B3|gfe fdB|AFA B2c|dfe dcB|~A3 ~B3|efe efg|faf gfe|1 dfe dcB:|2 dfe dBA||
fAA eAA|def gfe|fAA eAA|dfe dBA|fAA eAA|def gfe|faf gfe|dfe dBA:|
After processing a typical result might look like this (using abc2mtex):

abc notation - standards, new developments and history

To find out about how to use the notation have a look at the abc standard V1.6 which describes the (simple) rules of abc (although note that this was written by Chris Walshaw for abc2mtex and so doesn't include some of the extensions found in other packages). A new version of the standard is under discussion by all of the abc tools developers and there is also a short history of abc.

abc-users mail list

 ... a mailing list intended as a forum for discussing the abc notation and the software tools to handle abc.

abc software packages

The packages which support abc notation can be found at the following sites:

abc collections

There are several collections of abc-notated tunes available on the internet. Have a look at (in no particular order):

Mail me if you want to add your collection to this list.

the web-wide abc index

(WARNING: over 0.5 Mbyte; soon to be split into alphabetical chunks)

The idea of the web-wide abc index is to collect together a central list of all abc tune collections on the web. A simple way of using the index is to search through the tune names using your favourite web browsers search facility. You can click on the file code to take you straight to the desired file. Alternatively you can download the thematic index and use the tools provided by indexabc to search for tunes beginning with a certain sequence of notes.

The file codes I use in the index can be found here. I haven't indexed all the internet collections as many are based around one tune per file (and it would take forever to download them all). If you want a collection included in the index, just mail me the abc file(s) and the URL of where it can be found on the web.

abc international

The multinational abc software conglomerate.

Products shortly to be released from abc international:

all of which combine into one mega package: Out on the shelves as soon as I get my head together: And for the singers among you:
Chris Walshaw
(C.Walshaw@gre.ac.uk)