Recently I have been using ABC to write out sheet music for the piano accordion, but ABC does not directly support the notation needed for the bass clef (left hand bass buttons) on the piano accordion.
There are two columns of bass notes (plus four columns of chords which I will ignore for now) on the left hand side of the piano accordion. One column is called the fundamental bass notes, and the other column is called the counter bass notes. The sheet music indicates COUNTER bass notes by putting a short horizontal line under the note if it is to be played in the counter bass column. The short horizontal line is located where a staccato mark would be placed under the note, except that it is a short line instead of a dot. If the bass note is to be played in the fundamental bass column, then the sheet music does not have any special marking under the note.
I have been using staccato marks to indicate counter bass notes, but my wife (who is the accordion player) then has to manually change all the dots to little lines with a pencil when I print it out.
It would be nice if the ABC notation had a special symbol that would draw a short line under a note (in basically the same location that a staccato mark would go below the note) that could be used to indicate a counter bass note on the piano accordion. I think that is the only thing that really needs to be added to the ABC standard in order to support the piano accordion.
The piano accordion also has 4 columns on the bass (left hand) side that are chords (in addition to the 2 columns of bass notes), so there are a total of 6 columns on the left hand side:
1. counter bass notes
2. fundamental bass notes
3. major chords
4. minor chords
5. seventh chords
6. diminished chords
For the chords, the sheet music is written showing only the fundamental (root or tonic) note of the chord on the staff with either an M (major), m (minor), 7 (seventh), or d (diminished) written above the note to indicate what type of chord it is. Only the root note of the chord is shown. The other notes in the chord are not shown. ABC already supports this with its notation for guitar chords, so the piano accordion chords aren't really a problem. It might be nice to be able to specify a smaller font for the piano accordion chord types so it doesn't get confused with guitar chords. I sometimes write music where I show the guitar chords above the treble clef staff, and then I show the accordion chord types (M, m, 7, or d) above the bass clef staff. It would be easier to read if the accordion chord types were in a smaller font so they don't get confused with the guitar chords.
One other thing to note about piano accordion bass clef sheet music is that the bass notes (counter bass and fundamental bass) are always written on or below the middle line in the bass clef staff (from C to d in ABC bass clef notation), and the chords are always written above the middle line (from e to d' in ABC bass clef notation). The ABC notation supports this without any problems that I am aware of.
Michael Bishop
Ottawa, Ontario, Canada
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
