for the musicians among my readership (there might be one, come on!) I have a great new site for you. The title above refers to the basic time signature of old English hornpipe music. the site (see blow) is a sort of file sharing service for sheet music.
It’s a way of transcribing music. It’s a way of discovering music. It’s amazing. On BBC Radio 4 I listened while two musicians searched the archive for a song (because the name was cool, “chicken and sparrow grass”), practiced it, arranged it and finally played it. It might have been the first time in 400 years that the song had actually been played.
this is, to me, a good use of technology. It provides a way for modern musicians to discover new melodies, a way to archive old tunes so they don’t become lost and for all intents and purposes has created an archive that records our past from a purely musical perspective. Very cool…way to go.
The music is transcribed from manuscripts, by artists and scholars. Here’s an example, in fact it’s the ABC notation for the song above:
K:G
B2G2G2 Bcd2d2|c2A2A2 cde2e2|\
B2G2G2 Bcd2B2|e2c2d2G6:|!
|:g2gfed e2efge|a2agfe fefgaf|g2gfed e3fg2|a2f4 g6:|]
They use lots of community written software to translate the ABC notation into traditional notes and bars and there are midi samples.
All you need to know is on the site but if you want to hear how the song evolved from a small cryptic text file into a fully formed song, go here: but do it fast, they don’t leave the shows online forever.
3 Comments
learning sheet music has a tendency to put fear in most people . putting it in abc notation allows even the dumbest of us to play something on the piano(or musical instrument of your choice) besides chopsticks
Just plugging Folk Tune Finder a music search engine full of hundreds of thousands of ABC tunes. If you’re interested in discovering or finding tunes, visit http://www.folktunefinder.com .
I liked the tune too. I found this blog trying to find it. Ironically, I couldn’t actually locate the ABC online! Is yours a transcription from the arrangement or the original? I wrote it down, but it’s hard to tell which bits are embellishments…
NB to visitors, the above isn’t well-formed ABC. It needs to start with an X: (index number) and should probably have as a minumum T: (title), M: (metre) and L: (note length).
I think I disagree with you, chopsticks. One of the great things about ABC is that whilst it’s quick to write, it can be typeset into dots easily. I would say dots are far easier to read! Each to their own I suppose.
Joe
Cool, welcome to my babbling, Joe. I got that snippet off the ABC website mentioned in the BBC article. I may not have grabbed it all. The notation is the song as it appears in the database, embellishments are yours to discover.
It’s ok to disagree with Lightly, he’s naturally disagreeable.