ABC Transcription Tools - Learning New Tunes Part-by-Part with the Tool

[Michael Eskin]

Most people think of ABC primarily as way to create sheet music handouts and tunebooks.
 

If you are looking for a free and easy way to to learn new tunes part-by-part from thesession.org or even my own PDF tunebooks, the playback features of my ABC Transcription Tools may be exactly what you are looking for.

Here is a detailed demonstration of how I would use the tool to learn a new tune part-by-part starting with an ABC version of “The Killavil” jig from thesession.org:

 

 

[RAc]

Great, Michael, thanks!

 

Now if you added a feature to auto-increment the speed in configurable intervals for the looped playback (similar to the practice mode in some metronome apps), it would be a real killer... 😉

[Michael Eskin]

Great idea!

Here you go:
 

The "Tune Trainer" is a "step-up" style player that lets you practice along with a tune at increasing speed.  You can pick your starting and ending tempos, how much you want the speed to increase each time, and how many times the tune should play before increasing the tempo.

From the User Guide:
 

Enter your starting tempo percentage in the box labeled "Starting tempo %".

 

Enter your ending tempo percentage in the box labeled "Ending tempo %".

 

The actual playback tempo in beat-per-minute will depend on the tempo of the original tune, either set with a Q: tag or using the default tempo if no Q: tag is present.

 

Enter how much you want to speed up the play each time the speed is increased in the box labeled "Tempo increment %".

 

Enter zero if you just want to loop at the starting tempo.

 

Enter how many times the tune should loop before incrementing the speed in the box labeled "Increment tempo after how many loops".

 

Click "Apply Trainer Settings and Reload the Player" to apply your values.

 

Click the play button to start the training session.

 

To exit the Tune Trainer, click the Close button.

 

 

Edited November 7, 2023 by Michael Eskin

[RAc]

Fantastic! Thanks so much!

 

BTW, your tool also obsoletes online metronomes and drum computers now... 😉

Edited November 7, 2023 by RAc

[Don Taylor]

Michael

 

Perhaps you could modify the Play back tempo control to make it easier to change without using a keyboard.   

 

Have two buttons instead of a text box, something like this:

 

 

This from the Audiostretch app and tapping the + or - changes the tempo by 5%.

 

[Michael Eskin]

Don, there are already up and down arrows at the right of the input boxes to allow you to increment or decrement the values using a mouse.  On Firefox and Safari they are always visible, on Chrome you have to hover your mouse over the input box for them to show up.

Here's a screenshot showing the increment/decrement buttons:

 

 

Is your use case on a mobile device?

Edited November 7, 2023 by Michael Eskin

[Don Taylor]

Yes, I use an Android tablet and this is what I see:

[Michael Eskin]

Hi Don,

 

What a mess.  Sorry about that.  I have no idea why it's so messed up on your device. 

I'm not planning to be making any changes specifically for Android tablets at this time.   Too much variation between Android tablet screens and browsers.  The app works perfectly fine on my Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge phone I use for testing.

Which browser are you running? I've seen much better layout results on some Android devices running Chrome. It almost seems like the browser you are running isn't identifying itself as Android to my code, so you're getting a bad layout solution.

 

 

Michael

 

[Michael Eskin]

Here's a demo video of the new metronome feature in the "Tune Trainer":
 

 

[RAc]

13 hours ago, Michael Eskin said:

Here's a demo video of the new metronome feature in the "Tune Trainer":
 

 

Wow, Michael, this is turning into a game changer! Now how about an option to gradually fade the volume of the playback with each loop while the metronome is active? That would mean that after x iterations, one would be on his/her own in playing the tune (having only the metronome beat) after having been taken by the hand.

Edited November 8, 2023 by RAc

[Michael Eskin]

Interesting idea, not really possible with the abcjs audio rendering system. I'll add it to the list of ideas for the future.

 

For now, I suggest walking away from the computer while playing along and let the inverse square law do its job. 🙂

Edited November 8, 2023 by Michael Eskin

[Michael Eskin]

Made some pretty major exciting changes to the ABC Transcription tools UI this morning, making the new "Tune Trainer" a top-level feature on the main toolbar.

The "Tune Trainer" can now also be started from the Player, which makes it easy to get to from any tunes played from my tunebook share links.

The former "Hide/Show Controls" feature that used to be on the top bar is now consolidated with the show/hide of the top header button (little triangle) at the far right of the top toolbar.

The .WAV/.MP3/MIDI save have been moved to their own dialog, click the "Save Audio or MIDI" button on the player.

 

This is particularly useful for those coming into the tool from PDF tunebook share links.

One sort of quiet thing I've added is that the settings you apply for the Tune Trainer are saved and restored the next time you launch the tool. That way you don't have to update it every time if you have some favorite settings, set them once, click the button to update the trainer player settings, and those values will be used until you change them again, even if you quit the tool and run it again later.

 

Demo video:
 

 

Edited November 8, 2023 by Michael Eskin

[Michael Eskin]

Added a training progress bar to the Tune Trainer.
 

The status text above the progress bar shows the current tempo and how many loops you've completed at the current tempo.

The progress bar increments every tempo loop through the tune and shows how far you are through the entire training sequence.

 

Edited November 9, 2023 by Michael Eskin

[Michael Eskin]

 

OK, I've come up with something that hopefully will make Don Taylor happy.
 

So, there's a new tool setting available for the Tune Trainer specifically for touch devices, but works on all platforms:
 

"Tune Trainer uses label L/R side click to increment/decrement values (for touch devices)"

If this is checked, you can decrement/increment values in the Tune Trainer number fields just by touching on the left or right half of the label to the left of the input field.
 

If you click the % the the right of any of the tempo percentage input fields, the touch increment for the tempo percentages toggles between 1 and 5.

 

Clicking on the loop count label decrements or increments by 1.

The image showing the approximate touch areas is just to explain the feature, the labels aren't colored like that in the tool.

 

 

Edited November 10, 2023 by Michael Eskin

[Michael Eskin]

There have been so many changes in the Tune Trainer recently, I figured it was time for a new complete walkthrough demo video:

 

 

[Michael Eskin]

For those who have asked about improved autoscroll in the player, I think this is much much better.

I’m now targeting 75% of the way down the visible notation window as the scroll trigger and target instead of the bottom.

This allows generally at least two additional lines of a single line tune to stay visible below and at least one line of a two-voice tune to be visible below the currently playing line.

Here’s a demo video showing the new system with a couple of tunes.

I think this is a huge improvement, thanks everyone for the suggestions. I wanted to do this before but didn’t have a good solution until today.

 

 

[Michael Eskin]

Here’s the over three-hour recording of the Zoom demo and Q&A from November 11, 2023.

We covered pretty much every aspect of the tool and more.

You’ll want to watch it in HD to be able to best see the demos.

 

 

 

 

 

Edited November 12, 2023 by Michael Eskin

[Roger Hare]

17 hours ago, Michael Eskin said:

Here’s the over three-hour recording of the Zoom demo and Q&A from November 11, 2023...

I just looked at about 10 minutes of this block-buster/epic - I'm now waiting for the usherette to come around with the choc-ices and 'flavour of the month' ice lollies...🙂

 

It's well impressive - thank you! I hope I'll find time over the next few days to look at some more...

 

Only other comment - sometimes the volume seems a little low, but I wonder if that's the 'sound system' on the machine I'm currently using...

Edited November 13, 2023 by Roger Hare