[top-posting fixed and unnecessary quotation removed AGAIN] >> I would *not* be happy to have any of my transcriptions auto-munged >> by abc2midi in its out-of-the-box released form, and people who wrote >> tunes exploiting its interpretation of rhythmic constructs would >> not be happy with how more standard ABC software translated them > I'd be quite happy to put a tune through abc2midi - if it was way > out I'd complain, but otherwise I'd be cool about the idea.
The problem is with broken-rhythm constructs. The ABC standard says these have a 3:1 ratio, but the implementor of abc2midi made it 2:1, that being the norm for hornpipes. The result is that a strathspey, pipe march or dotted jig in ABC run through abc2midi sounds rather silly, and if you change the default (there are various ways of doing this) a hornpipe will sound exaggerated. Some sites have fixed abc2midi's defaults to bring it ine with the standard, others haven't. The standard way probably accounts for many more uses of the construct by now, but either choice guarantees you'll get some tunes processed into something the transcriber didn't want. > Remember there is a very large site that uses abc2midi - it's called > thesession.org and it works very well. I just had a look, but couldn't see any way to extract a MIDI file from it. And extracting ABC wasn't much fun either. Using a text editor on the HTML source, I get this from their site after removing HTML tags: X: 1 T: Gan Ainm M: 4/4 L: 1/8 R: strathspey K: Emin ED"^em"|:B,/2E3/2E3/2F/2 G3/2E/2G/2B3/2| "D"A3/2G/2F3/2E/2 D3/2E/2F/2D3/2|"^em"B,/2E3/2E3/2F/2 G3/2E/2G/2B3/2| e3/2d/2B/2d3/2"G"d/2e3/2gf|"^em"e3/2f/2e3/2d/2 B3/2c/2d/2B3/2| "D"A3/2G/2F3/2E/2 D3/2E/2F/2D3/2|"^em"B,/2E3/2E3/2F/2 G3/2E/2G/2B3/2[1| "D"A3/2F/2D/2F3/2"^em"E2ED:| [2"D"A3/2F/2D/2F3/2"^em"E2F/2A3/2 |:B/2E3/2E3/2D/2 B,/2E3/2E3/2D/2|B,/2E3/2D/2F3/2 G3/2E/2G/2B3/2| "D"A3/2F/2E3/2D/2 B,/2D3/2D3/2E/2| F3/2D/2F3/2G/2 A3/2F/2G/2A3/2|"^em"B/2E3/2E3/2D/2 B,/2E3/2E3/2D/2| B,/2E3/2D/2F3/2 G3/2E/2G/2A3/2|B/2e3/2d/2e/2f e3/2d/2BG| [1"D"A3/2F/2D/2F3/2"^em"E2F/2A3/2:| [2"D"A3/2F/2D/2F3/2"^em"E2|] Using broken-rhythm constructs, sorting out the anacruses to avoid needless repeats, and lining things up for readability, I get this: X:1 T:Gan Ainm M:4/4 L:1/8 K:E Minor ED |"Em"B,<EE>F G>E`G<B|"D"A>G`F>E D>EF<D|"Em"B,<EE>F G>E`G<B| e>dB<d "G" d<egf | "Em"e>f`e>d B>c`d<B|"D"A>G`F>E D>EF<D|"Em"B,<EE>F G>E`G<B|"D"A>FD<F "Em"E2 :| F<A|"Em"B<E`E>D B,<EE>D| B,<ED<F G>EG<B|"D" A>F`E>D B,<DD>E| F>DF>G A>FG<A| "Em"B<E`E>D B,<EE>D| B,<ED<F G>EG<A| B<e d/e/f e>d`BG |"D"A>FD<F "Em"E2 :| The two versions should sound exactly the same. With abc2midi as released, they don't. If you can see a way to get a MIDI out of that site, can you put my version in to check what it does? (I can't identify it either, though it sounds a bit like both "The Highlands of Scotland", a tune in Kerr's collection from the 1880s, and "The Banks of Spey", a tune by William Marshall). ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Jack Campin: 11 Third Street, Newtongrange, Midlothian EH22 4PU; 0131 6604760 <http://www.purr.demon.co.uk/jack> * food intolerance data & recipes, Mac logic fonts, Scots traditional music files, and my CD-ROM "Embro, Embro". ------> off-list mail to "j-c" rather than "abc" at this site, please <------ To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html