cboody

Yeah Dmix for Tullochgorum. Those weird last notes seem common in certain kinds of Scottish tunes. To me the effect is sort of like the abrupt stop of the pipes. (sort of!!!) Green Grow the Rashes (Rushes) is a really sing-songy little thing. The words help it, but not nearly enough!

I don't know if this is the tune you are looking for, but here's the version I know: X:537 T:Tenpenny Bit T:Traditional R:Jig M:6/8 L:1/8 K:G e |: "Amin"eAA eAA | "G"BAB GBd | "Amin"eAA eAA | "G"def gfg | "Amin"eAA eAA | "G"BAB GBd | "Emin"edB "G"gdB |1 "Amin"BAA A2 e :|2 "Amin"BAA A2 B || |: "Amin"A2 a aga | "Emin"bge "G"dBG | "Amin"A2 a aga | "Emin"bge "G"g2 d | "Amin"e2 a aga | "Emin"bge "G"dBd | "Emin"edB "G"gdB |1 "Amin"BAA A2 B :|2 "Amin"B[AA]A A2 |]

Haven't tried that Sony, but I'll second the Edirol. I've got the original R-1 (I believe) and it is just plain a fine unit, and very easy to use. I've also got a Zoom H2. Would anyone like to buy it?

Interesting stuff in that collection. "Whistle and I'll Come to you" is a Robert Burns poem, though I don't know if this is the tune commonly associated with the poem. "Flowers of the Forest" is often performed at funerals on the pipes.... But then you folks across the pond probably already know that....

Just watch it you. I have the conductor's score for Thomas Tallis' Spem in Alium and I know how to transcribe it! Great. Go to it. I've been wanting to edit it for 8 brass choirs for years and have been too lazy to get it into any notation. (It shouldn't take much time...right? )

Thanks Peter! I'll accumulate them as they come out. I appreciate your efforts. Yeah some of the arranging is a bit odd, but still....

This is not to dispute that it has hooks and levers, but I can't see them. Can you rub my nose in what I need to see?? Thanks.

Yeah BIAB is not cheap. But, EasyABC is free...

I have not used ABC Explorer though I have heard good things and it has a good following. I can, though, support what has already been said about EasyABC. It is really a solid program and just keeps getting better. It will produce somewhat more musical MIDI files thanks to the new stress programming that is in abc2MIDI, and I suppose could work well for something to practice with. Oddly, no one has mentioned Band in a Box which is designed to produce backing files and does it very well indeed. Definitely not free but rather fine none the less.

What Steve says... Though I must admit I sometimes miss the Stagi I had for accompanying. A nice mellow instrument if you don't mind playing slowly.

Let me take a shot at the idea of music reading and sight reading. I spent lots of years supposedly teaching folks to do that and so, regardless of my success, I have some thoughts: 1) "Reading music" is taking a piece, looking at it, and mentally "hearing it." Most musicians who are trained to play from paper develop this skill along the way, though it is not often taught as a separate skill. And, there are all sorts of things that enter into that general idea including understanding of the musical style of the piece being read. I use the skill when looking at orchestral or concert band scores that are filled with instruments in various clefs and transpositions. I'd be lying if I said I heard everything that is there, but I do get a good idea of what things are going to sound like, where the tough parts are, and sometimes whether the work is worth the effort. I'm much more successful with a single line part, since I spent most of my performing life playing instruments that play a single note at a time. And, I'm extremely good at interpreting Baroque music because I spent many years studying and performing it at a high level. That's the style aspect. Ask me to properly perform balkan music and I'm in trouble. I'll probably get the notes and rhythms but not the style. 2) "Sight reading," as already mentioned, is the ability to put the music on the stand and play it with accuracy. The pros do this at a level that the rest of us can only marvel at. I used to perform with a women who is a professional violinist. She always complained how poorly she read. After the complaint she would immediately play some fairly complex music without error. Part and parcel of this skill is the ability to pretty much hear the piece as it goes by so intonation gets corrected as need be. Also part of the skill is the ability to read ahead of the note being played so you are prepared for what is coming. For me, reading music requires musical knowledge, but no application of that skill to any given instrument. Sight reading adds to music reading the necessary executant skills on the instrument in question. The sight reader is reading music, internalizing the expected rhythms and pitches, applying the appropriate executant skills, and checking to see that what comes out matches what his music reading tells him should come out. Humans have incredible capabilities.

I'm not an anglo player, but why wouldn't you just use cuts or strikes to separate the notes? Or in the B section try rolls. Perhaps the Stagi is too stodgy? I'd probablly play the tune up a step in A dorian, but that is probably because I play D whistle so much...

Button Box folks are just fine, and certainly worth contacting. But I second the suggestion that you contact Greg Jowaisas. He has a large inventory of used instruments, does top level repair and tuning, and will work with you to meet your needs. I suspect he'd have more options available than the Button Box, at least of some models.

I guess I's add "My Love She's but a Lassie Yet" to your set of tunes. "Road to the Isles" is not a Burns tune, but I've seen it danced at Burns celebrations. (Not sung, just played for dancing.) For the Haggis IMHO the duet with drones and melody would be much nicer than a whistle. I'm not conversant enough to be very sure about what tunes,but I'd think any good standard pipe march would work: Scotland the Brave, Barren Rocks of Aden, Black Bear, Atholl Hichlanders, Atholl and Breadalbane Gathering (sp), etc. If it were me I'd avoid Scotland the Brave, but on the other hand it might be what folks want to hear....

While not technically against the rules, there are a couple of things in the abc that stretch things to the point where it might be reasonably misinterpreted by the software. I removed the backslash and line break after the A section 1st ending, so the 2nd ending followed on the same line and the Tune-o-Tron player got through that barrier OK, but played the B section as if there were no 1st and 2nd ending markings, that is, it played everything (in the B section) up to the repeat twice and then it played the 2nd ending. Moving things around so that the 1st and 2nd endings didn't start in the middle of a measure didn't fix that problem. Getting rid of the line breaks in the middle of the unusually long 1st and 2nd endings also did not solve the problem, but I suspect it has something to do with the length of the 1st ending. Interesting. My version does not have the line break issue nor the backslash. Tune-O-Tron plays the A section fine and then skips directly to the second ending of the B section which it plays one time and then it stops. maybe we should move this this set of posts into a new thread about ABC notation! NO problem here with that. The issue was with the posted tune, and none of us seems to have solved that. I hope someone in the Tune-O-Tron world is checking things out....

While not technically against the rules, there are a couple of things in the abc that stretch things to the point where it might be reasonably misinterpreted by the software. I removed the backslash and line break after the A section 1st ending, so the 2nd ending followed on the same line and the Tune-o-Tron player got through that barrier OK, but played the B section as if there were no 1st and 2nd ending markings, that is, it played everything (in the B section) up to the repeat twice and then it played the 2nd ending. Moving things around so that the 1st and 2nd endings didn't start in the middle of a measure didn't fix that problem. Getting rid of the line breaks in the middle of the unusually long 1st and 2nd endings also did not solve the problem, but I suspect it has something to do with the length of the 1st ending. Interesting. My version does not have the line break issue nor the backslash. Tune-O-Tron plays the A section fine and then skips directly to the second ending of the B section which it plays one time and then it stops.

Correct. " ||: " is not accepted in either the abc 1.6 standard that most midi players are written to or the newer abc 2.1 standard. The only legal repeats are " |: " , " :| " , and " :: " . Again, the problem is not the player but your interpretation of the rules. Both the old and new abc standards require that the header end with the K: field. You have a Z: field after the K: field. Put it before the K: field and everything should be fine. Well, it wasn't me that had the original problem, but I certainly should have noticed that Z: field. Must have been sleepy...which I am now.... But I checked Jack's ABC and mine without the offending Z: field and neither played right in Tune-O-tron... I still wonder about an error there.....

The end of the repeat is "open" (there is never a line down to the end bar of the repeat). I think that is standard in notation where repeats go across multiple lines... Ok - perhaps the notation is OK , but the midi version plays like the section just runs to the end of the line. Apparently the midi players don't like using ||: for a repeat. They expect |: I changed that and things played right in EasyABC (which uses abc2midi), but the Tune-o-tron still has difficulties with it. I suspect an error in the midi player there?? Can someone check?? I also changed a couple of note durations to make measures come out to 3 quarter notes. Better check to see that I guessed right.. X:1 T: Diamond Waltz M: 3/4 L: 1/8 K: D Z: From Rob Fawcett AG| F2 d3 F | G3 B AG | FAdefg | a2 f3 d | B3 c d2 | A2 d2 F2 | G2 E3 F | G3 E AG | F2 d3 F | G3 B AG | FAdefg | a2 f3 d | B3 c d2 | A2 d2 (3EFG | F2D3 D |[1 D4 :| |[2 D2 D2 FG |: A2 a3a | a4 ga | b2 e3 e | e4 ag | fgabaf |gf e3 d | c2 A3 B | A3 G FG |[1 A2 a3a | a3 b/a/ ga | b2 e3 e | e4 fe | d3 c A2 | G2 F2 G2 | A2 d3 d | d3 G FG :|[2 ADFAde | fgabaf | bg e2 e2 | e4 fe| d3 c A2 | G2 F2 G2 | A2 d3 d | d4 ||

You mean like "With Her Head Tucked Underneath Her Arm?" Or do you want really want tunes and not songs....

The end of the repeat is "open" (there is never a line down to the end bar of the repeat). I think that is standard in notation where repeats go across multiple lines...

Don't think so. Where's the abrupt end? Not worth frettin' about, if you ask me! Chris Frets? It has frets??

Ashokan Farewell was written by Jay Ungar at the end of the Ashokan Fiddle Festival one year. Ken Burns picked it up to use in his Civil War TV series, and it is, I believe, the only piece used in the series that is not from the Civil War Era. As to derivation from other tunes: I don't particularly hear Wild Mountain Thyme in it, but as a friend says, "with 8 scale tones you're going to get some duplication." Jay is very familiar with lots of traditional music. I would expect him to be u sing cliches from what he knows. But I don't think that makes it derivative.

Wild Mountain Thyme by Years!!

Saving files should not be an issue. Drop me a note off list and tell me what happens and I'll try and help. EasyABC will save the file to the folder from which it was loaded unless you do a "Save As..." That will give you the option to choose the location in a standard Mac save window. As to easy access of many abc files of one genera (say polkas for instance), rather than keeping each file separate collect all the polkas into a single file and save it and away you go. This has the advantage of allowing you to sort the tunes in a single file alphabetically (or in other ways), renumber the collection's X: field, and do many other useful things. It also means you'll have a handful of abc files rather than hundreds.

EasyABC is very good, and I think will do everything you are talking about. And, it is free, so you can try it and see if it meets your needs. It will read midi files (within reason) and turn them into notation as well as dealing with ABC.