The most recent version of this software is always available from the abc4mac home page.

 Read about abc4mac , which will tell you about this Macintosh implementation of the abc standard for exchanging tunes on the internet. Here are changes in the software since the last release.

Download some of my favourite Irish and Cape Breton abc tunes here.

Introduction

abc4mac is a program to process abc files on the Macintosh. The original development of abc was carried out by Chris Walshaw, who maintains an abc home page at: http://www.gre.ac.uk/~c.walshaw/abc/

Finding ABC Files

More abc files are available at the Ceolas celtic music archive: They are also commonly exchanged on various mailing lists, including
• IRTRAD-L , the Irish traditional music list
• FIDDLE-L, the fiddle list
• cittern-l, the cittern list.
Instructions for joining these lists can be found here.

If you have a particular tune in mind, you can probably find it in the web-wide tune index,

Henrik Norbeck's tune files are probably the best of all in terms of both quantity and quality.

About this Software

This software was developed as a quick-and-dirty port of James Allwright's abc2midi version 1.7.9, combined with Michael Methfessel's abc2ps version 1.3.3, under DropShell to produce a drag-n-drop interface. I have done a certain amount of testing (more on version 0.9 than on any previous versions), but I am sure there are more bugs lurking - let me know if you find one. I have included the documentation for abc2ps and abc2midi with this release. One day when I have nothing better to do I will document this package better...

Getting Started

Drag an abc file (or files) onto the abc4mac icon and you will get:
• a midi file for each tune in the abc file.
• a single postscript file that contains all the tunes in the file.
For example, if myTunes.abc contains two tunes, the files that will be produced are:

• myTunes1.mid - MIDI for the first tune
• myTunes2.mid - MIDI for the second tune
• myTunes.ps - PostScript for the whole thing
Here's an example:
 

X:1
T:The Swallowtail Jig
R:jig
M:6/8
K:EDor
"Em"GEE BEE|GEG BAG|"D"FDD ADD|dcd AGF|
"Em"GEE BEE|GEG B2c|"D"dcd AGF|1 "Em"GEE
E2F:|2 "Em"GEE E3||
|:Bcd e2f|e2f edB|Bcd e2f|edB "D"d3|
Bcd "Em"e2f|e2f edB|"D"dcd AGF|1 "Em"GEE
E3:|2 "Em"GEE E2F|| 

After passing through abc4mac, the output looks like this:



[Note that the above image was produced using GhostView to export to a JPEG file.]

There are lots more examples here.

Playing MIDI Files

The MIDI files produced can be played by MoviePlayer, if you have a sufficiently recent version of MacOS and QuickTime 2.5 or better. Open the midi file from inside SimpleText or MoviePlayer - it will automatically convert the file into a 'movie' that can be played. (MoviePlayer can even play it backwards...!) Sparkle (an MPEG player) can also play these midi files - (so can MS Word). MIDI files can be also be played by more sophisticated midi packages such as the shareware:

• Arnold's Midi Player (simple, easy to use) ,
• MIDIGraphy (a little more complicated, but it lets you modify as well as play the file, as well as looping a selection so you can learn the tricky bits).
Both of these and more are available on the Web at Harmony Central.

The above example would sound like this (assuming you have the Netscape MIDI plugin).

Viewing and Printing PostScript:

To print the PostScript files on a PostScript printer use a utility such as Drop*PS , or view the file on your screen with GhostView. If you double-click on a PostScript file generated by abc4mac, GhostView will be started if possible. Note that GhostView requires at least 4 Mb of memory [better use 8, at least], and roughly 5 Mb of disk space, so you need a fair bit of resources. GhostView can also be used to produce bit-mapped output that can be printed on a QuickDraw printer, if you have sufficient memory.

The latest edition of GhostView (5.5) can also be used to create .pdf files that can be read and printed by Acrobat Reader, as well as jpeg files.
In the Extras folder you will find droplets to help you build pdf and jpeg files from abc4mac.

Infowave (used to be GDT Softworks) has a package called StyleScript that apparently supports true Level 2 PostScript on Apple, HP and Epson printers: although I don't have any first hand knowledge of this, I have recieved reports that it works just fine.

Command lines for abc2ps and abcmidi (not for the faint of heart):

The preferences menu has an option to set a command line that will be passed to abc2ps or abcmidi. These command lines use the same options as those described in the documentation for abc2ps and abcmidi (included with this release). abc4mac always passes the selected abc file name as the first item on the command line, so if the abc2ps documentation, for example, says to use

abc2ps myfile.abc -o -O =

then you need to enter in the command line field the magic string

-o -O =

to make abc4mac do the same thing. The defaults, which you can always recover by pushing the reset button in the command line dialog, are to process the entire file, and create an output file with the same name and the .ps extension. (This is, in fact the aforesaid magic string -o -O =).

Restrictions and Bugs:

• abc4mac requires 20Mb of free memory - you probably need to run it with virtual memory enabled.
• abc2ps format files (.fmt) have to reside in the same directory as the file being processed.
• abc2ps and abcmidi have parsers that have slightly different behaviour in some cases. In particular, some of the abc2ps sample files produce valid output that doesn't make 'musical sense' - the MIDI processor complains.
• abc2ps allows nested slurs - abcmidi does not
• abc2ps allows ties across bar lines - abcmidi does not
• abc2ps allows in-line key changes and bass clefs, not so for abcmidi
• If you run abc4mac interactively by double-clicking on the application icon, you will not be able to switch to another application until you have processed the first file.
• abc4mac always puts the output files (.mid and .ps) in the same directory as the input files - non-PostScript printers are not directly supported (except see above).
Comments and queries should be directed to Wil Macaulay (wil@syndesis.com)

ABC Described

This is Chris Walshaw's description of abc2mtex version 1.6. It is probably the closest thing to 'standard' abc that exists.

Are There Other ABC Packages?

Yes. On the Macintosh, BarFly is one of the best. On other platforms, you'll have to fend for yourself, (but go look at the abc home page for guidance).

If the link above for BarFly doesn't work, try a copy I have placed here.

Here is a quick comparison of BarFly and abc4mac. I use them both, BarFly for figuring out the basic tune and abc4mac for checking guitar chords and output of multiple tunes on a page, once I have the tune the way I want it.
 

Feature	abc4mac	BarFly
print tune files	requires Drop*PS or GhostView	yes
postscript/encapsulated PS	yes	no
MIDI output	yes	no
play guitar chords	yes (with MIDI player)	no
interactive editing	no	yes
multiple tunes per page	yes	no
extensive formatting options	yes	no
loop continuously	no	yes
define macroes for ornaments	no	yes