Have just started playing around with abc notation and am still learning the ins and outs of working with it. Used to be able to type in three note harmony in Basic and have it play. Have been wanting to find a decent ASCII notation for music on the computer ever since. ABC fits the bill very nicely and even has the ability to handle lyrics.
I have a copy of abc2midi version 1.24 on Windows. Don't know if it's a bug or a feature, but when I tried to type in chords, the software seemed to expect lyrics with a syllable for each note of the chord instead of for each chord. Is that the way the program is supposed to function? I guess if you keep melody as the first voice and add the chords as a second voice, lyrics should work okay. Someone on the list was asking about abc/midi programs for Unix clones. Out of curiousity, is there a standard library for playing midi files on Linux? In Windows, you can use the DirectSound library or the older mmsystem library and Windows handles the problem of drivers for different sound cards. Do they have a similar system on Linux or is it like programming in DOS where you have to write or dig up your own drivers? And while I'm asking about libraries, has anyone run across any recent DOS driver code for some of the newer sound cards that've come out. What I have for programming the sound card only seems to work with older versions of SoundBlaster and not the newer cards or the Turtle Beach cards. One last question, just in case anyone on the list has any suggestions. I know of some folk songs in another language and am trying to figure out whether they are traditional tunes or contemporary. Where do you start a search of this kind to determine the background of a song? I've already tried some Internet searches and some folk song web sites. Even have a few reference books. Wanted to write abc versions for some of the songs that fit the category of public domain, but am having trouble figuring out which tunes qualify since I'm having trouble locating historical info on them. Thanks. Laura To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
