Monday, August 26, 2019

Listening to ABC files

abcjs editor -> web-based player
https://abcjs.net/abcjs-editor.html

ABC is a great format for sharing music in the Irish trad scene. This compact notation is easy to learn and allows people who may not have great familiarity with MIDI or other encoding to document and distribute tunes. The Session (https://thesession.org) is one community that uses ABC on its discussion forums, and has a built in viewer that lets you see the sheet music for each tune. While you can also download a MIDI version, there is no easy way to hear the song itself in the browser. The ABCjs editor is a web-based app that provides a window to copy/paste ABC code, and returns a sound file that users can listen to. Load it in a second window and simply paste in the ABC. If the tune is played too fast, you can add Q:100 or Q:80 to the top of the file to adjust the speed. (You can even get the code to add this window to your own website.)

=============