[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).


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