Roger Hare

It's still linked in Don's sig as far as I can see. Maybe your machine got temporarily screwed? It is indeed very high quality...

My step-up from a 20-button was to a 30-button - the very Marcus Mikefule is referring to. It is indeed an impressive instrument. It's sitting beside me right now. (Pause while I play 'Back to the Army Again' for 30 seconds or so...😎). It is my first-choice instrument when I play for t'Morris, or with the Beech Band (when we're allowed to, of course). If the post was intended to recommend a Marcus as a good second instrument, I would heartily endorse that recommendation...

I'm just highlighting short extracts from the recent posts to keep it short: Schult said: > I'm not sure if MuseScore has a way to do batch processing. Yes, I thought that might be the case. My own approach is quite deliberately ABC-oriented, and geared to 'batch processing'. > I figure pianists manage, so it's at least possible. (wrt two staves) Good point! I hadn't thought of that! Don said: > ...if you use the concertina sound font linked to in my signature below then Musescore will give you a nice > sounding play-along... > I gave up using things like EasyABC on Windows because the instruments used for play-back are really horrible. Yes! That sound font is really nice. I wish it were possible to load sound fonts into ABC! As Don says, the MIDI sound in ABC is pretty scratchy, but if you tweak it a bit, it can be improved (I use Tango Accordion to simulate a concertina). I think I may be fortunate in having quite a good sound card in my machine, and it doesn't sound quite as 'orrible as I've heard on some machines. Schult said (in response to Don's suggestion): > That actually gets me thinking that ABC letters should be one of the options to show on the buttons. The 'batch-oriented' program wot I wrote was initially written to add ABT tabs to existing ABC files (using the different button numbering associated with the ABT system). It does that job reasonably successfully, and that's what I mostly use it for. I have however added various options as I gained more confidence. One which I added about a fortnight ago was to display the ABC code for a note below the note, and I'm quite pleased with it. The point being not that I did it, but that I did it and thus confirmed that it is a viable option. If a berk like me can do it in ABC, I'm sure you'll manage to do it in MuseScore - good hunting! Time for a large whisky!

Ooh! Doesn't it start to get horribly complicated with two staffs - it's complicated enough already. I'm not sure I can visualise what that would look like. Question I meant to ask earlier. Can schult's MuseScore approach handle tunes in 'batches' or is it a 'one-at-a-time' approach? I'm not even sure this is a sensible question in MuseScore context...

Thanks! Looks as if my 'hand-crafting', and your plug-in are both hovering at approximately the same height above this problem. I'll have a look at the video again later. As I implied in what I said earlier, it's not a problem for me as I don't use GC's tablature and don't use MuseScore, but it is interesting. It would be nice if it could be sorted. The lack of horizontal alignment is what I would expect to see if I used text annotations rather than accompaniment chords in the ABC As far as the horizontal bars above the notes are concerned, I tried using a macron at first, but that only works for a small sub-set of letters, and not for numbers at all. I also thought about adding a separate 's:' line with only underscores in it, to create the continuous horizontal line, but LMF defeated me... I wonder what lilypond would make of the problem (no, I'm not even thinking about trying that one myself...).

Sounds as if you may be hitting the same sort of problem as I did with ABC? I'm not a MuseScore user. Any chance you could post a PDF of one of the tunes you have treated in this way for the purposes of comparison? Thanks. Edit, a few minutes later: I've now briefly re-visited the rest of this thread, and it looks very much as if other folks have had similar problems with the solid and dashed lines, and also with the actual placement of some of the lines of button numbers.. ------------------------------------- I'm also not a user of GC's tablature. I use a 'terser' system which has allowed me to create a program which does the tabbing for me while I relax with a cup of tea and a biscuit. This is what I set out to do in the first place, so I'm happy..😎

Purely by chance, last week I re-visited this problem and tried again to add Coover tabs to an ABC file. I got a little further than I did before, but wasn't able to reproduce the tablature exactly. It's not a big deal for me as I don't use Mr. Coover's system in the first place, and am really only interested in adding tabs to existing files using a computer program, but it was an 'interesting' exercise. I used 'Amazing Grace', the first tune in Civil War Concertina as a test-bed. I've attached the ABC and the resultant score (I used EasyABC 1.3.7.7). If you compare the score with the one in the book, you will see that it is close(-ish) - but not close enough. The solid lines above the staff and the dashed lines below the staff are both missing - and I can't see a consistent, reproducible way to add them... So, it looks like it's MuseScore (or lilypond?) to do this job... --------------------------------------------- Here, for my fellow geeks is what I did: The button numbers which go above the score in a Coover-tabbed tune have to be inserted in the ABC file using s: lines ('symbol' lines); The button numbers which go below have to be inserted using w: lines ('lyric' lines). Because the accompaniment chords are placed at the 'top' of the tabbed score, they also have to be transferred to an s: line. Button numbers in the s: lines have to be inserted as 'symbols' which basically means using faux-accompaniment chords or text annotations. If you use text annotations, they are not lined up horizontally. Below the staff, the button numbers can go in as 'words'. The effect is that above the score, button numbers are encoded in quotes, below the score, they are not. Both w: and s: lines are parsed by ABC as if they were w: lines, so bar-lines, rests and grace notes can be ignored. If a note is present in the score, but not explicitly assigned a button number, an empty string (ie: a space) must be explicitly used for that note - a 'null' value will not do. At this point, I gave up. The solid 'over-lines' above the staff, and the dashed lines below the staff defeated me. I really don't think it's feasible within ABC. Once I 'got my eye in', it took 10-15 minutes to encode each line of music - far too slow for practical purposes. At this point, I gave up and pulled a beer out of the 'fridge... ag.abc Amazing Grace.pdf

You don't say what type of concertina you have - Anglo or English, or w.h.y. If it's an Anglo, I suspect that folks with more knowledge/experience than myself will be along to answer your question 'real soon now', but I wonder if what you are talking about isn't (more or less) what is being discussed in this thread. Whatever, it might at least 'get you started'... There's some good advice in there, quite a lot of it coming from the general directions of Lincolnshire and Worcestershire...

I think a significant part of the discussion revolved around the difficulty of finding suitable alternative materials for the bellows? Edward Jay had a project to make concertinas using 3-D printed parts: (https://www.livingtradition.co.uk/news/1001). I think at the time he was still using leather bellows. I think there were a couple of other projects centred around the possible use of 3-D printed parts. Paul Harvey at Flying Duck Concertinas mentions the use of 'vegan' bellows and 'washable paper' bellows, without going into too much detail. Maybe these would be up to the job? He also discusses the continued use of traditional leather bellows. Maybe a fusion of the two approaches might lead to a viable 'campaign concertina'? I think the whole idea is really interesting - I'll be somewhere near the head of the queue to try one out if they ever hit the streets... Later Edit: Ah! More about synthetic bellows in this thread. Synthetic chamois is mentioned. Thought I'd seen something else somewhere...

Brilliant. Thank you! With an opening shot of Clint Eastwood looking mean and lean well before his Good/Bad/Ugly days, eh? 'Twas very popular in the UK...

PM sent.

That's extremely helpful! Thank you very much! FWIW, that's the way I implemented it first shot out of the box - it seemed 'right', but it was when I was looking at the score with accidentals in the staff and below the staff that it occurred to me that there were in fact two ways to do it. Thanks again!

A simple question (I hope). Some folks use 'below-the-staff' note names as an aid to learning staff notation. Is there a convention for notating accidentals? That is, are accidentals depicted as (say) #C and #F, as they would appear in the score, or as C# and F#? I did a simple implementation of this scheme a while ago for a whistle class, and the accidentals problem did not occur because of the limited scope of a whistle. I now wish to generalise the implementation to include all notes. Thanks.

My pleasure - all part of the service! I meant to ask: What was the name of the Western?

Is this the one? Nice - it's now on my 'little list'. See also http://glostrad.com/green-grow-the-laurels/. Basic ABC and PDF attached. It's in F. I'm happy to transpose it to another key if you don't have the software.... ggtl.abc Green Grows the Laurel.pdf

Well, since I posted the details of the Scholer videos, CC have announced the Rochelle-2 which with it's smaller size, looks like it might be a game-changer at this end of the market? CC are still a bit coy about describing the bellows. My personal opinion is that the bellows are the worst feature of many of these $400-$500 instruments, and I feel that the bellows are so important...

I have a vague memory of somewhere seeing (~2 years ago?) a bass concertina offered for sale by one M. Harding. Unfortunately, I really can't remember where I saw this (it may have been on c.net), but I remember wondering at the time if this was the man his'self. Maybe he already got rid?

You may be able to bring the Scholer 'back from the dead' and then use it till you can afford something better than one of these $400 instruments. There is a series of 4 videos on Youtube about the workings of these instruments: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mbPw0yR19zM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=88yCVla_Djg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uvs4-ANFuq8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=anBj1hibG0o Offhand, I can't remember if they discuss fixing the bellows, but you might be lucky. I think the Rochelle is larger than 'standard size'. This may be a problem (it was for me when I tried a CC English). If you are going to go for one of these $400 models, shop around a bit would be my advice.

Yes, one of the ABC versions I have is an arrangement for two flutes (I think) from a batch of tunes for (I guess) a military re-enactment outfit. Even played through a crummy MIDI player, it sounds rather nice... The whole file of 100+ tunes, including the Cotillion is here.

I'm looking at my copy of Songs from the Seven Seas right now, and it occurs to me that some of those scores are a little difficult to read in some parts. If you can track a copy down (I don't know if it was ever re-printed), the shorter Sea Shanties (Barrie & Jenkins, London, 1977. 0 214 20329) might be a good bet? There's still (from memory) 120+ songs in there...

That's very kind of you. Saves me doing it myself (which is what would have happened). Thank you very much! R

Thank you. Do you have an ABC copy of the PDF you posted? I have several copies of this tune, all with only the A and B music. Ta.

This article is about bookbinders glues, but it contains a discussion of some glues which might be suitable for leather-leather and leather-card bonds. May be of interest?

I recently came across a Norwegian tune called 'Seksmannsril' on the Northern Roots web site. Great tune - sounds a lot like 'Soldiers Joy'? I'd love to know the convoluted story behind that one...

I'm ever-so-slightly piggy-backing on dmksails OP - I apologise in advance! Did anyone find the PDFs/ABC I posted useful? I see there have been a few downloads. I'd really appreciate some feedback, it would help me develop the software I used. I suggest responders use PMs to avoid clogging-up this thread... Thank you.