Michael Eskin

My video submission for World Concertina Day 2024 with short demo videos of my ConcertinaXL and EnglitinaXL iPad apps.

Finally, you can: Highlight Notation by Selecting the ABC Text Highlight ABC Text by Clicking the Notation In the Developers Settings "Experimental Features" section there is now an option to replace the "Tune Trainer" button in the top toolbar with a new "Select Mode On/Off" button. When Select Mode is turned on you can highlight the notation for any ABC text by selecting or select the ABC for any element in the rendered notation just by clicking on it. You can even click on tablature elements in the notation. Turn on highlighting the corresponding notation when selecting ABC text and highlight the ABC text for any note or element clicked in the notation by checking: Replace Tune Trainer toolbar button with Select Mode On/Off button When Select Mode is On: - Select ABC text to highlight the corresponding notes in the notation. - Click any element in the notation to select the corresponding ABC text in the editor. - Select Mode requires redrawing all tunes on each change. - This may be slow on large numbers of tunes. - All pre-processing of the ABC at notation drawing time is turned off. Any hiding of Annotations/Text/Chords selected in the Advanced dialog as well as automatic injection of staff separation space will be disabled. Your settings will be restored when you turn Select Mode Off. - PDF tunebook generation will work with no issues. - The Tune Trainer is still available from the Player when playing tunes. Once enabled, the Select Mode button will be shown every time you run the tool. To re-enable the Tune Trainer toolbar button, open this dialog and un-check the box. The main reason I’m keeping this in an “experimental” option that you have to “opt-in” for is that for the whole thing to work, the ABC and the rendered notation absolutely have to stay 100% in sync. To do that, I have to re-render the entire ABC on every change. That works fine for relatively small collections of tunes, lets say up to 30 tunes (depends on the speed of your computer), but once you have 50 or more tunes, there may be a noticeable delay as the tool re-renders the whole tunebook on every change. While that’s not an optimal experience in some cases, I went ahead and made the feature work for any number of tunes. I do explain this in the “Experimental Features” section of the “Developer Settings” dialog. I think most users aren’t even going to notice any delay, particularly working on sets of 1 to 10 tunes. When Select Mode is off, to work efficiently with extremely large tunebooks, even over 1000 tunes, I’m able to do rendering optimizations to only redraw the tune you are working on, which actually makes it possible to work on such books. When Select Mode is on, it isn’t optimal for those very large tunebooks and probably isn’t usable if there are over 100 tunes. When it’s off, it works like before. Demo video:

I've added a pretty major new feature for the PDF tunebook play link generation. Kind of a game-changer, really. Inspired by a comment by Hans-Jørgen Jensen, now when exporting PDFs from the tool, you now have the option of having your tune play links contain the entire tunebook instead of just the single tune. When you click on the title of the tune in a PDF tunebook generated with this feature enabled at PDF generation time, the player will open with the entire tunebook loaded, the particular tune selected and the previous and next arrows available to navigate through the tunebook. Demo video:

I play in the traditional Irish style and on a C/G Jeffries-style instrument. I'm guessing to play tunes in the harmonic style with the melody on the right and chords on the left, I'd be best served transposing them to a key that sits better on the C/G or just think of my instrument as a G/D. Are there any fully arranged tablature versions of traditional Irish dance tunes that I might experiment with? I could probably arrange one myself, but would prefer a good reference example. I'd love to be able to at least demonstrate the style for my occasional concertina students.

Sometimes it's the little things that make a huge difference. You can now open the Player or export a PDF right from the full-screen tune view by clicking the new buttons on the bottom left and right corners of the window. This is extremely useful since most people will be coming into the full-screen tune view from play links in PDF tunebooks. Now, without ever entering the editor they can: Close and re-open the Player. Launch the Tune Trainer. Save the tune image out in JPEG, PNG, or SVG format at any resolution. Save the audio as a MP3 or WAV file. Save the MIDI for the tune. Export a PDF of the tune. As part of this sprint to the finish I also added previous and next tune navigation buttons to the Player. This is particularly useful if coming in from a play Share URL with multiple tunes, you can now step through all the tunes and play them. Previously you'd have to exit to the Editor and click on another tune to play it. Now, you never have to leave the full-screen mode or Player to play all the tunes in a tunebook. Very happy to have these now! I'm going to be taking a break for at least a week (or two) to clear my mind and try to get more into a retirement mindset. I've been spending 8-12 hours a day working on the tool every day since retiring from my real job and I feel like, with these new features on the full-screen view, like I'm at a very good stopping point. If any "show-stopper" bugs come up, I'll address those of course, but I think the tool is in great shape. Going forward, as I've been adding more ways to get images and metadata out of the tool, I'll be focusing on ways to use the output of the my tool with other products, for example, the examples I did with SmartDraw VisualScript integration. I think there is a lot that can be done in the area of academics and music education where the tool can provide a lot of value to assist with creations of lessons, websites, and other teaching materials. That will be my focus more than adding new features to the tool itself. At least that's today's thought. 🙂

A new feature specifically for the developers out there: You can now export the Share URLs for all the tunes in either a JSON or CSV formatted file. These tools are useful for developers who want to have Share URLs to go with each of the exported tune images. The names of the tunes in the exported files match the exported image names. Each JSON or CSV record has two fields: Name - Contains the tune name matching the image name (minus extension) that is created by the batch image exporters. URL - Contains the Share URL for the tune. The Share URL is the same as would be generated for each tune using the Sharing dialog and includes the &play=1 parameter so that tunes open in the Player. Export all Share URLs as JSON: Exports tune names and Share URLs for all of the tunes in a JSON file. Export all Share URLs as CSV: Exports tune names and Share URLs for all of the tunes in a CSV file. Demo video:

You can now batch export the images for your tunes all at one time in JPG, PNG, or SVG format. This feature can be very useful for putting the tune images for an entire tunebook on a website or importing them into other documents. The JPG and PNG files are bitmaps. The SVG files are vector-based. This feature is only available on desktop browsers. Unfortunately, I am unable to export images of tunes with tin whistle tablature due to limitations of the whistle fingering font. Demo video:

You may now export the image for a tune in JPG, PNG, or SVG format from the "Export Audio or Image" button in the player: This is very useful for including tune images on websites or importing them into other documents.

Playing around with using VisualScript for SmartDraw to do visualizations of ABC search results including play links. Click on any link icon to play the tune in my ABC Transcription tools: PDF version: https://michaeleskin.com/documents/SmartDraw_Search_Sporting_6Dec2023.pdf SVG version: https://michaeleskin.com/documents/SmartDraw_Search_Sporting_6Dec2023.svg

You can now export PDF tunebooks in both Portrait and Landscape mode orientation. Both full tune and incipit export is supported. Power User Tip: You'll want to take advantage of the new "Notation Spacing Explorer" to get the most out of the Landscape mode export. If tunes aren't fitting on a single page when doing Landscape mode export, use the "Notation Spacing Explorer" to reduce the staff spacing and increase the notation width from the default to a higher value, perhaps 700, to decrease the rendered staff height. Once you dial-in your spacing values, in the "Notation Spacing Explorer" be sure to inject the value into all the tunes in your tunebook by clicking "Inject all tunes" and then click "Inject Spacing into the ABC". This addition required substantial changes to all of the PDF export code, so please let me know if you see any issues with PDF export in either Portrait and Landscape mode. Demo video: Also makes this sort of thing easier to do:

If anyone wants to generate Share URLs to my ABC Transcription Tools for tune sets from Google Sheets, I've written up a simple Google App Script function that does the job for you. Just copy and paste the code into your own custom App Script function for your Google Sheet: https://michaeleskin.com/tools/google_sheet_share_url_encode.js More information on creating custom Google Sheets App Script functions: https://developers.google.com/apps-script/guides/sheets/functions

I've added a major new feature on the "Advanced Controls" that gives you complete control over your tunebook's staff spacing and rendering: "Notation Spacing Explorer" Learn more about it here: https://michaeleskin.com/abctools/userguide.html#advanced_notationspacingexplorer There is also a button for it on the PDF Export dialog.

I've added some new automation in the tool that will take care of injecting the right headers for creating "Large Print" versions of tunes instead of using the default size, you then can dial-in the final results:

Noel taught in person this year (2023), at least for his West Coast workshop in Oregon. Several of my friends attended.

Demo videos of the new "Wide View" option available in my Player and Tune Trainer on desktop browsers: Overview: "Star Wars Cantina Band": "Sonata Presto" - Ludwig van Beethoven:

I've fixed the centered text and in-ABC centered subtitle expandtowidest layout issue bug I found in abcjs 6.2.3! You can still opt-out of the new layout system on any specific tune by adding: %%noexpandtowidest anywhere in the tune, but there's almost no need for that now. I've sent the bugfix code to Paul Rosen for possible future inclusion in abcjs.

Roger, I'm not talking about bands and audiences, I'm specifically talking about the viability of using a 20 button instrument in the context of a traditional Irish session, where it can absolutely be made to work, just like single row melodeons which have similar challenges. Sure, if you're doing Beatles song covers in a show for a paying audience, that's a whole different set of requirements than what I'm talking about. Get a 30 button if Eleanor Rigby needs a C#.

What kind of music do you play? I'm coming from 30 years playing and hosting traditional Irish sessions, and 20 years playing 30-button Anglo concertina in that setting. That you talk about an audience tells me we are coming from very different places and perhaps is a factor in the whether a 20 button is an appropriate choice. What you describe doesn’t sound like the traditional Irish session scene’s relationship with the music, so I’m guessing it’s a different genre. For a session, while people may be listening, we play for ourselves, there is no audience. In a session environment nobody is going to have any issue with the substitution examples I provided. They probably wouldn't even be noticed, much less criticized. Variation is the heart of traditional Irish style playing which is where I’m coming from.

No, they won’t. Tunes aren’t fixed in stone. I’d even consider doing some of those substitutions on a 30 button to keep things interesting. I’m guessing you’ve not had much experience playing in sessions with one-row melodeon players who have to make these kind of substitutions all the time depending on the key of their instrument. At least we have two rows on a 20 button instrument instead of one.

Sorry to disagree with pretty much everyone here, but with about 30 seconds thought one can fairly easily work around the lack of a C# in many tunes in D major or even E Dorian mode. Will it alter the character a teensy bit, sure, but will it make the tune unrecognizable, I doubt it. Let's take a tune like "The Merry Blacksmith": X: 1 T: The Merry Blacksmith R: reel M: 4/4 L: 1/8 K: Dmaj |:AB|d2dA BAFA|ABdA BAFA|ABde fded|Beed egfe| d3A BAFA-|ABdA BAFA-|ABde fdec|dBAF D2:| |:fg|a2ag f2fe|d2dA BAFA-|ABde fded|Beed egfg| abag fgfe|dcdA BAFA|ABde fdec|dBAF D2:| Works just fine and perfectly recognizable with some simple repeated d notes for the C#s: X: 1 T: The Merry Blacksmith R: reel M: 4/4 L: 1/8 K: Dmaj |:AB|d2dA BAFA|ABdA BAFA|ABde fded|Beed egfe| d3A BAFA-|ABdA BAFA-|ABde fded|dBAF D2:| |:fg|a2ag f2fe|d2dA BAFA-|ABde fded|Beed egfg| abag fgfe|dddA BAFA|ABde fded|dBAF D2:| How about "Cup of Tea", which starts in E Dorian and goes to D Major: X: 1 T: The Cup Of Tea R: reel M: 4/4 L: 1/8 K: Edor |:BAGF GEEF|GEBE GEEA|BAGF GEEG|FDAD FDDA| BAGF GEEF|GEBE GEEA|B2 BA GABc|dBAG FD D2:| K:D |:d2 eg fdec|d2 eg fB B2|d2 eg fdec|dBAG FD D2| d2 eg fdec|dfaf g2 fg|afge fdec|dBAG FD D2:| |:FAdA FABA|FAdA FEE2|FAdA FABc|dBAG FD D2| FAdA FABA|FAde fee2|fdec dBAF|GBAG FD D2:| With single note d and e substitutions for the C#s, you get a version that works perfectly fine on a 20-button instrument and retains the character of the tune. X: 1 T: The Cup Of Tea R: reel M: 4/4 L: 1/8 K: Edor |:BAGF GEEF|GEBE GEEA|BAGF GEEG|FDAD FDDA| BAGF GEEF|GEBE GEEA|B2 BA GABd|dBAG FD D2:| K:D |:d2 eg fded|d2 eg fB B2|d2 eg fded|dBAG FD D2| d2 eg fded|dfaf g2 fg|afge fded|dBAG FD D2:| |:FAdA FABA|FAdA FEE2|FAdA FABe|dBAG FD D2| FAdA FABA|FAde fee2|fded dBAF|GBAG FD D2:| I'm not saying a 30 button instrument is not a good-to-have, but if all you have is 20 buttons, with a little bit of creativity you can make great use of them. Here's a link to the notation for all four tunes in my ABC Tools: https://tinyurl.com/4r4cmmaa

I've upgraded my version of abcjs to have all the features of the latest 6.2.3 version. This is the first major upgrade of the renderer itself since I started the tool in January. One huge improvement in the new version is that it pretty much gets rid of any "ragged right staff edge" issues and will auto-format the tune width when required so that you always get a clean right edge. This also virtually eliminates the need to do any manual reformatting of imported MusicXML files. They would often end up with ragged right edges in the previous version. I found that I could pretty much not have to use the ABC %%barsperstaff override for pretty any tunes. I used to have to that pretty regularly for my tunebooks. To be clear this is not just for MusicXML formatting, it should provide much more consistent adaptive scaling across the board. Now, with great benefit often comes great risks... The base version of abcjs itself is over 26,500 lines of code. My version of abcjs builds on top of the base version making changes all over the library for my custom soundfonts, swing and custom ornamentation solutions features. It was a huge effort to manually integrate line-by my features and improvements on top of the base 6.2.3 version and not break anything. I've run thousands of tunes through this new version and it's been very stable both in terms of ABC rendering, but also playback. Existing tunebooks should still function just fine, the notation might just look very slightly different when launched into the player than before if it was a tune that abcjs can format more nicely than before. While I don't anticipate any showstopper issues, as always, with a major change like this, please let me know if you run into any crashes or odd behavior. If a specific tune is problematic, use the Sharing features to send me a share URL for the tune so I can diagnose it.

A friend of mine had Bob Tedrow make him a set of straps to his specification (he has big hands). You might want to get in touch with him.

Grab any of my free Anglo Concertina PDF tunebooks with Anglo concertina tablature from: https://michaeleskin.com/tunebooks.html Look for tunes that don't have any letter "a" after a number in the tab. The "a" is used to represent a note on the top row of a 30 button instrument. I'm sure you will find hundreds of tunes, particularly in the "King Street Sessions Tunebook" that will work just fine on your 20 button instrument. I've attached a couple of examples.

You and I share a common definition of "fun". 🙂

Now when you click the "Open" button, if you have any unsaved changes, you will get an alert warning that you have unsaved changes and allowing you cancel the open operation. This change basically touches every single feature in the tool, so please let me know if you run into any weirdness. If you just open a file, play it, generate a PDF of it, you should not see this dialog if you click "Open" again. If you do anything to it, type a single character, add anything, transpose, any operation on the ABC, that will trigger this dialog the next time you click "Open". Using the "Clear" button, which has it's own verification alert, will clear the flag that signals the code to put up the unsaved changes alert. Saving the file clears the flag as well.