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Bass clef in ABC blocks?

A topic by tryonk created Apr 11, 2023 Views: 229 Replies: 5

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tryonk1 year ago

Just starting out with Deepdwn, having used Ulysses for a bit and been familiar with Markdown for ages. Version 0.39.0 on Mac.

I've been playing traditional music for about five years, and ABC is really common in that community. I'm also trying to find good tools to update a local session's songbook, so I nearly peed my pants when I saw Deepdwn supported ABC, albeit with limitations. My specific question is that I play cello, and the clef command is critical for me, because I need to transposes tunes into my octave. I have been looking at Markdown editors primarily for text editing (I also use mind maps a lot), but if I could use a Markdown tool for a songbook, so much the better.

Are there any plans to beef up ABC support? The clef command would be wonderful, as would some of the more advanced formatting commands. I can use Easy ABC to created PDFs, but the ability to put ABC inline in my text would be fabulous.

Guess that's more of a request than a question, but hey.

Thanks

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billiam1 year ago (1 edit)

Hi!

Do you have an example of ABC notation that isn’t working? Setting the clef should be possible using either the ‘K’ (key) or V voice fields, per https://abcnotation.com/wiki/abc:standard:v2.1#clefs_and_transposition

```abc
K:bass
F, G, A, B, C
```

In Deepdwn:

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tryonk1 year ago

On a related note, is it possible to include external Markdown or ABC files by reference? For instance, if I have a folder of tunes in ABC files, can I build a book from them by including them in a master document rather than copying and pasting the ABC text into the master? This would be a much cleaner way of maintaining a large library, although I know some ABC implementations basically concatenate lots of tunes into one big text file.

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billiam1 year ago

Hi Sorry, that’s not possible right now, no. Deepdwn is a markdown editor at its heart, rather than an ABC file viewer/organizer.

If you’re interested in markdown for this, you might find a way to programatically generate one or more markdown files with all of your ABC files embedded as code blocks, but I imagine it would be ungainly to view and keep updated.

I wonder if there’s an ABC file organizer that might be better suited?

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tryonk1 year ago

Yep--there are lots of tune book apps, and some of those will aggregate tunes into printed or PDF books with a TOC and index. I was just thinking Deepdwn might provide more flexibility, but as you say, it's really a Markdown editor at heart. It would be great for writing text with musical examples, which I'm guessing is closer the the original purpose for including ABC.

ABC is similar to Markdown, in that there are a proliferation of extensions and roughly a jillion apps that generate everything from butt-ugly screen rendering to LaTex or MusicXML output suitable for professional printing; hence, I'm not surprised my wonky formatting didn't work. Returning to standard ABC fixed it.

My other reason for asking is that I've been working with apps like Ulysses and Scrivener to convert my mind maps into actual documents via OPML export-import (Ulysses works especially well with MindNode, although I prefer SimpleMind). For a writing-phobic geek like me, the ability to break text down into manageable bits is a game changer, and text cards are a big part of that. Well integrated outlining comes close, which is why I decided to try Deepdwn--I need to get comfortable with outline folding, as this accomplishes much the same thing.

The drawback to Ulysses is that it uses wonky Markdown, although the integrated environment and tools make up for that if one is willing to stay there. One can hope that they will allow editing in more standard Markdown in future versions--there is a Markdown option for external files, but even that has nonstandard behavior around paragraph breaks. If I can get comfortable working with Deepdwn, that will allow greater portability of my files between it and other Markdown based apps.

Thanks,

Ken Tryon

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tryonk1 year ago (1 edit)

Here is an example:

```abc
T:Ned Of The Hill
R:waltz
M:3/4
L:1/8
K:Gmaj
%%clef bass
B,,A,,|{F,,}G,,2 E,,3 F,,|G,,4 {B,,}G,,A,,|B,,2 G,3 F,|E,4 E,2|D,4 B,,A,,|G,,4 A,,B,,|C,3 B,, A,,G,,|E,,4 B,,A,,|
```

As I recall, there are extensions to the ABC format, and commands beginning with %%, like %%clef, are some of those. I changed the syntax to

K:Gmaj clef=tenor

and it formatted as expected, even for the somewhat unusual (for anyone but a cellist) tenor clef.

Thanks for the tip!

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Bass clef in ABC blocks?