ABC Software Packages

This is a clone of the list that can be found at Chris Walshaw's abc home page, with changes and additions as I learn of them..

If you spot any inaccuracies or needed additions, please tell both me and Chris.

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

• jcabc2ps
  ... is John Chambers' clone of abc2ps. It implements a number of extensions to handle the variants of abc that the abc tune finder finds on the web. These include several syntaxes for clefs, multiple voices, endings past the second, and non-classical key signatures.
• abcm2ps
  ... is Jean-François Moine's clone of abc2ps which handles "organ and choral stuff (many voices per staff)".
• jaabc2ps
  ... is John Atchley's version of abcm2ps (including precompiled versions for Windows).
• YAPS (yet another abc to PostScript converter)
  ... is James Allwright's merge of the abc2midi parser and the library of PostScript routines from abc2ps.
• abc2win
  ... is a package by Jim Vint aimed at PC users which supports the entry of abc notation and viewing the musical notes onscreen in Microsoft Windows including Windows 3.1, Windows for Workgroups 3.11 and Windows 95. It will read and update files of abc tunes. Tunes can be played over the PC speaker as a means of checking the accuracy of the notation. It is a shareware package so you can use it for free to view and play music and pay a (small) registration fee if you wish to print out the music.
• abcmus
  Henrik Norbeck's abc player/tunebook manipulator for MSWindows with lots of nice features (search, automatic chordsetting, different import and export options, etc).
• BarFly
  Phil Taylor's Mac program for handling abc musical notation. It can play, check, transpose and display tunes in abc notation.
• Melody Assistant
  ... is a full-scale shareware score editor that speaks abc. It can print, play and even create guitar tablature and runs on both PCs and Macs.
• PalmABC
  ... is an abc player/editor from Steve Spencer-Jowett which runs on Palm Pilots.
• Tune Pal
  ... is an abc player from Bryan Duggan which runs on Psion handheld computers.
• ABC Viewer
  ... is an abc viewer from Dave Holland which runs on Palm Pilots.
• ABassC
  ... is a freeware viewer/player from Norman Schmidt which runs on Palm Handhelds and displays music in either treble or bass clef.
• Virtual Composer
  ... is a score editor for the Mac from Ioannis Galidakis which exports abc (but does not read it).
• MusicEase
  ... is a full-featured Windows based editor which imports abc and SongWright files. Edits, transposes, prints and plays. New features include automatic conversion to tablature, automatic addition of chord fret diagrams, and general MIDI instrument support. Also available from the same site is the Digital Tradition Folksong Player
• RISC OS software
  ... from John Pettigrew contains front ends for abc2ps and abcmidi for use on RISC OS systems.
• Runabc.tcl
  ... is a Tcl/Tk GUI (graphical user interface) for abc2ps & abc2midi from Seymour Shlien which helps you manage a database of abc tunes. Requires Tcl/Tk 8.0 or higher.
• AbcView
  ... is a Java applet from Rick Miller which displays abc on any Java 1.1 compliant web browser.
• Skink
  ... is a java application from Wil Macaulay which supports the abc 1.6 standard. It can open, edit, save, and display abc files.
• abctostaff
  ... is a web-based abc to staff converter from Steve Havelka which converts single abc tunes to postscript.
• TablEdit
  ... is a Windows program for creating, editing, printing and listening to tablature and sheet music (standard notation) for guitar and other fretted, stringed instruments (including 5 string banjo) as well as harmonica, diatonic accordion, drums and violin. TablEdit can both read & write ascii, MIDI & abc files (and read Bucket O' Tab & Tabestry).
• ABC2Tab
  ... is an abc to Mountain Dulcimer ASCII Tablature convertor from Lyle Melick. It is currently available as a Windows95 & WindowsNT command line program and PERL source code.
• abctab2ps
  ... is a program from Christoph Dalitz for typesetting music and lute/guitar tablature with abc. It is available on Unix, Windows & Atari platforms.
• m2g
  ... is a program from Jerry Dallal to add abc guitar tab notation to abc music notation for Windows based computers.
• fiddleabc
  ... is a program from Mike Casey for PCs which plays abc tunes while displaying the notes on a screen fiddle/banjo fingerboard.
• BowTIE
  ... is a Windows application from David Randolph designed to help trumpet and horn players learn to transpose which uses abc as its native file format. Euphonium and tuba players may also find BowTIE useful for learning fingerings on instruments in various keys.
• SET6
  ... is a package by William Robison specifically designed for notating Highland Bagpipe music. It has its own input language but a program to convert abc to this format is supplied. It can also handle Bagpipe Music Writer files and can output in a variety of different formats. Executables are freely supplied for PC and HP/UX users (but not the source code).
• playabc
  ... is a program by Don Ward which will play abc files through the speaker of most UNIX systems.
• PlayQABC
  ... is a part of Jim Vint's abc2win package for PC users, but is also available for free as a standalone to play abc tunes on any PC/DOS system.
• AbcPlay
  An ABC player for a PC Windows system with a Midi/Sound card. The program has a number of handy features to make to hearing of ABC files easy, also has cut/paste functions and the ability to save tunes as a Midi File. Written by Bernard Chenery, Tasmania.
• abcMIDI
  James Allwright's package to convert abc to MIDI and MIDI to abc. Since most standard music packages support MIDI output, this should make it easier to generate abc from commercial software. It is available on the web as C source code. It also contains abc2abc which can be used to transpose abc.
• abcMIDIfier
  A Windows utility by Dave Glenn which provides a user-friendly front-end to James Allwright's abcMIDI package.
• Busker
  ... is Windows software from Jos Mass which can play abc files and automatically add accompaniment based on the chords in the abc file. The abc files can also be printed in staff notation.
• indexabc
  Ever wanted to find the name of a tune ... or remember how the last part of it goes? If you can remember the first couple of bars, you can use indexabc to search through all your tune files (or anyone else's that you've downloaded) to find tunes beginning with that sequence of notes! In any key!! Also useful for making a customised index of your abc tunes and sorting it in any one of hundreds of ways.
• ABCTools and ABCFind
  ABCTools is a Windows program that lets you transpose ABC tunes, make cheat sheets, check the syntax of your tune files, and more. ABCFind is a Windows program that lets you search ABC tune files for text or tune fragments. You can look for tune titles (or any text string) in your ABC files, search for tunes if you know the first (or any) bar of the music but not the title, compare tunes, and more.
• arranger
  ... is a PC program from Neil Jennings which reads abc format files, adds chord symbols, and rewrites a new abc file.
• abctwin
  ... is a program from Phil Todd which can create 2 and 3 part harmony for an abc melody and save them either as chords or as separate abc files.
• NMD2ABC
  ... a QBASIC program to translate the Nottingham Music Database format to abc.
• JedABC
  ... from Guido Gonzato is an extension to the Jed editor that turns it into a powerful and easy to use IDE (Integrated Development Environment) for ABC files, with full integration with converters, players and previewers.
• abcpp
  ... from Guido Gonzato is a simple yet powerful preprocessor designed for, but not limited to, ABC music files. It provides conditional output, macros, symbol renaming, and file inclusion.
• abc2prt
  ... from Guido Gonzato is a simple tool to extract parts from multivoice ABC music files.
• abc music notation utilities
  ... from Luis Pablo Gasparotto is a collection of packages for abc to abc processing, which can compress rests, reduce accidentals and extract parts.
• abc-mode.el
  ... from Matt Junker is an emacs major mode for editing abc files designed for use with abcm2ps and abc2midi, but easily customisable for other packages.