notes by George (Geo) Salley, July 2003
What does a beginner want from such a facility as Tune-O-Tron?
TRANSCRIBING
Thanks to the ABC music notation "language" it very easy to transcribe a tune from a score in order to input to the Tune-O-Tron. See Note 1.
It is recommended that one use the Notepad text editor, since the text will be in straight ASCII with no imbedded symbols. [On a Macintosh, use TextEdit or SimpleText. - Ed.] Although the Convert-A-Matic will accept text in a number of file types, other ABC programs only recognize .abc files. Simply use the "Save As" "File" function to add the .abc file type to the tune name.
PLAYING
To input the tune into the Convert-A-Matic simply use the Edit function "Select All", and then the Edit function "Copy" on the Notepad page, switch to the Convert-A-Matic page and use the Edit function "Paste". Then click on "Submit".
The score will be displayed, with options:"MIDI music file""PDF Sheet Music" & "ABC Source".
Errors in transcription can be spotted in the score, or heard during playing the MIDI file. Corrections can be made to the ABC input by using the Browser's "Back to previous page" and making them in the Convert-A-Matic input field. Then re-Submit.
The changes can be saved by clicking on the "ABC Source" and using the Edit functions "Select All" and "Copy", bringing up the input file, erasing it, and using the Edit function "Paste".
Slowing it down
In order to control the MIDI playback speed one may use the ABC Tempo notation "Q". For example Q:1/4=80, where the tune will be played at the rate of 80 quarter notes per minute. Thus by changing the value, e.g. Q:1/4=40 the tune will be played at "half" speed. Speed can be adjusted by toggling back to the Convert-A-Matic input page, changing the tempo, and re-Submit.
TRANSPOSING
There are a number of programs available, but I can comment only on the one I have any experience with, see note 2.
This program is perfectly adequate. It does require that the input file an .abc one. "Open" the tune file, and click on "Headers", then "Transpose Key Signature", and select the Key to transpose to.
The transposed tune can be Saved to file, and also copyed with the Edit function to the Convert-A-Matic input page (see above).
CHEAT SHEET
| MAJOR KEY | SIGNS |
|---|---|
| C | no sharps, no flats |
| G | one shart (F) |
| D | two sharps (F,C) |
| A | three sharps (F,C,G) |
| E | four sharps (F,C,G,D) |
| B | five sharps (F,C,G,D,A) |
| F# | six sharps (F,C,G,D,A,E) |
| C# | seven sharps (F,C,G,D,A,E,B) |
| F | one flat (B) |
| Bb | two flats (B,E) |
| Eb | three flats (B,E,A) |
| Ab | four flats (B,E,A,D) |
| Db | five flats (B,E,A,D,G) |
| Gb | six flats (B,E,A,D,G,C) |
| Cb | seven flats (B,E,A,D,G,C,F) |
Note (1) For a complete ABC tutorial see Steve Mansfield's @ www.lesession.co.uk
Note (2) Elizabeth Scarlett's "ABCTools" @ www.magma.ca/~scarlett/abc
It may interest the reader to know the following about Geo and how he came to offer to write the foregoing, an offer we were happy to accept!
I am not a musician, and have never claimed to be! At most I am a "player".
I started as a child on the piano, because at that time everyone was expected to. The scores were all in C and if a Flat or Sharp was called for, one merely used the appropriate black keys. Then in Jr. High I elected to attempt the cornet in the Band. Of course the scores were written for the instrument, so I just memorized the valve fingering for the notes. Embouchure was just a matter of the octave. In High School I switched to the trombone, still just playing the "positions" as represented by the notes on the score. But it was neat since I could "slide" to the correct note if necessary.
When I took up the concertina, it was a 20b in C/G, and I had trouble finding scores in those two keys for the Sea Chantys that I wanted to play. I did work out some cross-row fingering that gave other keys. However, I also needed to sound the tunes for both pitch & tempo. As a consequence, I wrote a program for my 64K Apple that I could input the notes & sound them. I had to write the pitch & duration subroutine in machine language to make it fast enough, and used compiled BASIC for the main program. The input "language" I developed resembled ABC. I also had constructed a circular "slide rule" for note transposition; from which I developed look-up tables to use in the computer program for score transposition. Along with a program to "draw" the score on the dot-matrix printer and I was in business.
An item that survived the '99 Floyd flood: The zero power transposition computer. The arm that operated the inner disk is missing. Click on the image for a larger version.
There are some examples in the early issues of Concertina and Squeezebox. I found a tutorial for ABC by Steve Mansfield and, for my purposes, can "write" the score in a text editor instead of using a program such as ABC2Win, then use Paul's Convet-A-Matic to check the tune with the MIDI, and get the PDF printed score. Also I found that Elizabeth Scarlett's ABCTools (freeware) does transposition. So I am again in business (some 20+ years later!).