Roger Hare

If you really want to impress 'em, try 'em with a 'Halloween' tune... Hallowe'en.pdf

Me too but with yet another system (same numbering, and uses L and R for left and right though). Useful, as I discovered and fixed, an error in the software I use to generate tabbed scores like this. Two versions attached: (1) uses the Australian Bush Traditions system (my personal favourite). (2) uses a modified form of the ABT system (it uses an over-score rather than a ^ to denote a pull). I've been trying this modification for the last week or so as, on average, the tabs take up a little less space. I think they are both basically the same as papawemba's, except for that G in bar 6 - my software chooses a button on the C-row, papawemba chooses a button on the accidentals row. ---------------------- Later edit: Now I think about it, in appearance, papawemba's tab looks a little like the French CADB system for melodeon - in that case, the horizontal rows are 'Poussez' and 'Tirez', and there is a variant where there is one horizontal row for each row of the melodeon... Using one or other of these approaches, it should be possible to develop several other 'new' systems for Anglo tablature. Somehow, I find that idea a little daunting/depressing...☹️ Hedwig's Theme(1).pdf Hedwig's Theme(2).pdf

Scholer certainly made G/D Anglos. I think an identifying criterion may be the dimension of the flats - they were 4" (6.9" across-the-flats, I think). Other companies made them, I have a 'Commander' which is pretty similar (and not very effective). I won't be trading in my Marcus or Lachenal G/Ds any time soon. There are some videos on YouTube dealing with Scholers. One of them is here.

An update - I just received a message from Edward Jay from which it is apparent that he is now producing '3-d printed' Anglos. As it happens, I'm not in the market for one at the moment, but I thought that a 'heads-up' here might be useful...

I think this is correct, though there seems to be some question about whether it was actually Alf Edwards on the screen in that early scene in the film. See: Arthur, D., Bert - The Life and Times of A. L. Lloyd, pp.226-227, Pluto Press, London, 2012. ISBN: 978-0-7453-3252-9.

[1] My pleasure - all part of the service. Good to know that those MIDI files helped. [2] Yes, notes in a printed score. I have attached an example of what I mean by a 'large-print' score. You can see that you can do different things. In the second example: (a) the note heads have the note name superimposed; (b) the accompaniment chords are in a box to make them more prominent. I haven't done so, but I could also add simple tabs, at the cost of reducing the text size so each tune fits on a single page... ________________________________________ [1] Meine freude - alles teil des dienstes. Gut zu wissen, dass diese MIDI-dateien geholfen haben. [2] Ja, anmerkungen in einer gedruckten partitur. Ich habe ein beispiel dafür beigefügt, was ich mit einer 'großdruck'-partitur meine. Sie können sehen, dass sie verschiedene dinge tun können. Im zweiten beispiel: (a) haben die notenköpfe die notizname eingeblendet; (b) die begleitakkorde sind in einer box, um sie hervorzuheben. Ich habe dies nicht getan, aber ich könnte auch einfache registerkarten hinzufügen, auf kosten der textgröße, damit jede melodie passt auf eine seite... bkb.pdf

[1] Are you able to read scores at all? For example, a 'large-print' score? [2] Meantime, I've attached simple MIDI renderings of the C and G scores posted as a PDF by GC way back towards the top of this thread. Some folks hate these MIDI files, and while I agree, they are a bit spotty, they can be useful. Me - I love 'em...😎 Don Taylor (of this parish) has a sampled concertina sound font for MuseScore on his Google Drive here, but I can't remember how to install it, so I can't generate those better quality sound files I'm afraid...☹️ Bonnie Kirkwall Bay - C.mid Bonnie Kirkwall Bay - G.mid

Thanks for that - looks as if all three of those are still available at low cost. I may well follow that up.

Excellent! Perhaps I should have said that what I do when this happens is to open the file with a text editor, use the 'save as' option to save it to a different file name, and then rename the new file with the original file name. If you have any questions, please ask... Splendid! Thank you! I collect these URLs for online ABC tune collections so that in the pub', I can amaze my friends with my encyclopaedic knowledge of these things - how very sad...😎 Roger.

[1] Thanks for that - it looks like a fantastic resource with lots of stuff to go at, in addition to the tunes I asked about! Lovely! I hadn't seen that one before. Thank you! Of course, it may well be that many of the tunes in my small accumulation are already in that larger collection, so the ABC file I attached may not be much use to you, but see below... [2] Hm! That's odd. It's an ABC file. It should download OK as it's straight text, despite the extension. I've attached a second copy, in case anything went wrong first time around. If you have any problems this time, let me know and we can investigate further. I had assumed that you were an ABC user. If not, let me know and I'll generate a PDF file and try sending that. You could try opening the file with a bog-standard text editor like Notepad or Notepad-2 and simply re-saving it. I have occasionally found that this helped with a recalcitrant text file... wales.abc

[1] Me too, so I missed the post about the Blodau'r Grug book. I can see it for sale in a couple of places. Ta! [2] Inspired by your original 2019 post I went looking, and have amassed a small collection of Welsh tunes in ABC format. I was further encouraged to do this by the fact that the session band I'm involved with are planning a new edition of their tune book. We were specifically asked to look for Welsh tunes as they are disastrously under-represented in the current edition. I have attached the ABC for the ~50 tunes I collected so far. The two titles flagged [2] in the quoted panel above aren't in my collection. Do you have ABC or dots for them? wales.abc

Yup! I use a different (terser, more minimal) system (ABT), but: Like GC, I started out writing the tabs on to existing printed music 'by hand'. 'Easy', but slow, tedious and error-prone. I graduated to editing the tabs into ABC files 'by hand' - similarly slow, tedious and error-prone... I got bored, and cheesed off with this and wrote a program to do the job for me - fast and accurate, (but a little wonky when it comes to 'odd' characters like 'over-bar'). My equivalent of the 'PrintMusic'/'Finale' programs, I guess. T'other day just for ducks (🦆🦆🦆), I wrote a 'macro' to convert ABT button numbering to GC button numbering and vice versa - know thy editor...

Yes, that ties in with what I'm remembering. I think we exchanged a couple of mail messages about this plug-in in March or April. I'm not a MuseScore user, but I try and keep up to speed with stuff like this. As you say, maybe in MuseScore 4...

Thanks very much! That clears it up nicely! I did wonder if that was the sort of approach being used. I thought you might be using lilypond, but I 'guessed' that you were using some sort of computer-based system. I haven't heard of Finale before. Me, I'm bone-lazy - a huge pain is something I try to avoid...😎 Thanks again!

Sorry - slight thread drift... If it's not 'commercial in confidence', how do you get the 'over-bars' to indicate a 'pull'? I think two different folks tried (a few months ago) to produce scores similar to yours using ABC and MuseScore. If I remember correctly, both were unable to produce the notes with an 'over-bar'. Using ABC, it's easy to produce a simple 'one-line-of-tabs' rendition (a little like your 'Key of C, melody only', but with a single line of tabs), but even then I can't do the 'over-bars' and use a '^' to indicate a 'pull'. As it happens, I'm perfectly content to use '^' for 'pull' I'm just curious about how to get the 'over-bars'. Thank you.

WCCP = West Country Concertina Players.

I guess we'll just have to agree to differ about the general tenor/tone of the OP, but I finally had time to sit down and spend a little time reviewing the OP - with 4 printed tutors immediately to hand to check the detail of the points made in the OP. I can't claim that the process was absolutely exhaustive but a few extra points popped out of the woodwork: 1) Two of the tutors made a pretty fair stab at pointing out the fact that the tabs were 'advisory', and that the duplication of notes in different locations on the concertina allowed for an alternative choice of buttons, allowing 'Better Bellows Control'. This is good... 2) One tutor gave a pretty comprehensible 'left-hand accompaniment' with some (not all) of the tunes. This is good - if that's what floats your boat... 3) In one tutor, poor typography was a 'problem'. This is not so good...

Yes looks useful. I'm sitting in a library without an instrument. That pitch shift range is -3 to +3. Have you sussed what the 'units' are on that scale? I can't see any hard-and-fast definition on the ABRSM help or FAQ pages. Ta.

Thassright - ta! However, when I tried to download it I got a 'can't be downloaded securely' message, so I decided not to proceed further at this stage. Maybe that's what put me off when I tried a couple of years earlier... Thanks anyway.

Aye, I knew about that one. I tried it some time back and for some reason I can't remember, decided not to use it. Maybe I should re-visit? Thanks for the reminder. I really wanted to update what was said about SpeedShifter, as it seems to be 10 years since it was last mentioned. I put it through its paces yesterday, and it seems fine. It does mump and moan a little if you are not connected to the internet (which usually I'm not), but otherwise it all seems OK. It seems possible to wind it up to a higher volume than some other applications.

[1] Me too. I just hadn't realised it - thank you for pointing up the difference. [2] Not just rank beginners 😎 I still go for the simple approach with a bare minimum of tab-assistance, and find being in a position to easily markup already-printed single-line melodies is pretty much where I want to be. I already used the word minimalist and Steve Schulteis also used it in the context of modifying that splendidly scary system he unearthed. Minimalism is 'good medicine' in my book. [3] I think you will find this table here. I've also been looking at the (fairly) minimalist adaptation of the ABT system which I've cobbled together, and despite having said I wasn't planning to do it, I now see that if you have an ABC file (I'm an ABC user) with a simple one-line tab system incorporated, it's a doddle to change from one button numbering system to another. I've done it by applying a sequence of global edits to the tabbed ABC file, so you do need to know how to use your editor. This was a 'proof-of-concept' exercise, and I'm definitely not going to modify my software to allow for different button numbering set-ups - too fiddly, and I'm happy with what I'm currently using.

I see a few references to this Royal Schools of Music software from 2011, some of which seem to indicate that it doesn't work, or at best, works very poorly. I encountered the software for the first time at Morris practice last night, and as far as I can see/hear, it's working, and looks to be rather useful. I've installed the Windoze version... It is possible to speed-up, slow-down tunes for practice purposes, plus other things. It seems to work on .mp3 files - I haven't looked to see if other formats are allowed. The current version seems to be from 2018. The software can be downloaded here. I've installed the Windoze version, I can't speak for any other OS. There's a page describing other training/learning software here, though I haven't investigated this page yet...

A very brief follow-up. I lied - I had a think about it! It's possible to edit the Bramich characters for push and pull (⬛⬜) into an existing tabbed file like the one I posted earlier. It's also possible to do it in a program. The game's a bogey though, because though the characters appear in the (Easy)ABC 'score' window, they mysteriously disappear when converted from ABC->PostScript->PDF. I've no idea why... I may have a look at producing the same sort of thing using a different button numbering system.

If folks stick their heads above the parapet and publish stuff for which they charge real money, they should be prepared to receive 'bad' as well as 'good' reviews? I do think that 'trashing' is a little strong. The OP was fairly critical of many aspects of existing systems, but was discreet/diplomatic enough not to name names. If it's OK to write good reviews, it's OK to write bad reviews if one sincerely believes that the book (or play, or film, or piece of music, or w.h.y) is bad. Authors should expect to get 'some roughs with the smooths' - it's the way the world wags.

[1a] Yes. I flagged the ABT system explicitly in one of the posts I made in the thread from which this one is a spin-off, so I didn't bother to repeat myself. Perhaps I should have done... [1b] The non-symmetrical numbering system used by other tutors throws me off in the same way. My rationale for going with symmetry is to do with the fact that the hooman body is symmetrical (externally at least). There are precedents. The medical profession numbers the thumb and fingers symmetrically, and (some) novice piano lessons use the same numbering. There isn't an exact correspondence between the symmetric button numbering used by MB/ABT and the numbering of digits by the medical profession and by pianner teachers, but it's good enough for me...😎 [D'ye know, the lower numbers=lower pitch argument never occurred to me...] [2a] If you try it, you should see that using even that short block of ABC code (which is included by the software I use), it is possible to radically change the appearance of the final PDF - which may (or may not) be wished for. For example, I added the box around accompaniment chords because someone said "It would be great if tabs and accompaniment chords looked a little different from one another." [2b] Yes it is pretty sneaky, isn't it? If I may be permitted to revert to 'smug bastard' mode for a moment, I have to say that I'm pretty pleased with the approach - I can add tabs like that to a file containing 10,000+ tunes in about 90 seconds, and I have tested the software on a 'joke' ABC file containing 45,000 tunes (though I don't imagine anyone would seriously use files that size).. (Correction: 40 seconds - I was thinking of another file...) There are other approaches: When I first developed the software to do this stuff(*), I 'attached' the tabs intimately to the note concerned using ABC 'text annotation' strings. That was OK, but there were some problems. One was that tabs for some things (such as staccato notes) were difficult to code. Another was that it didn't look quite right - the tabs appeared in a wavy line below (or above) the staff - I much prefer the straight line of tabs produced by entering them into ABC 'w:' fields. An unexpected consequence of rewriting code to use the 'w:' approach as opposed to the 'text annotation' approach was that the problems involved with staccato notes (and all other notes preceded by 'single-character decorations') simply went away - which was very nice...😎 It's worth saying that this is 'just a program'. It could be re-coded to accommodate the solid and hollow squares used by the Bramich system, or even other button numbering systems, though I stress that I have no plans to do so. [3] No, it doesn't work like that, it's 'melody-only' if you care to think about in that way - this mirrors pretty closely the 'melody-only' approach adopted by MB and ABT in the printed and on-line tutors (and in most other printed tutors?). The real beauty of this approach is that I am completely independent of any and all printed tutors or tune books. I can trawl the internet looking for 'good tunes', and can (and do) find absolute 'gems' which are simply not available anywhere else. I only wish I had the time to learn to play the buggers...☹️ ________________________________ [(*) Although I had made a desultory start on this programming project before Coronavirus arrived, the enforced isolation arising because of the epidemic gave me plenty of time to spend on the project - so that's one more thing for which Coronavirus can be blamed! I've also been working on a program to convert 'legacy' ABC files with a more-or-less 'random' ABC coding style into something in a more-or-less 'standard format'. This is much slower than the tabbing program, but it makes a reasonable stab at 'enforcing' a standard ABC coding style.