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ABC Notation:

ABC notation was designed by Chris Walshaw to transmit tunes (primarily Eastern European traditional and folk tunes such as Irish Jigs and Reels) in a concise way over e-mail, using lower ASCII characters. Although this system is used primarily for those tunes that may be written on a single staff, it may also be used for more complex writing, such as Beethoven's Symphony No. 7, Movement 2, so there you go... This is a quickly growing notation system that in a lot of ways reminds me of HTML, it's written a certain way for a certain type of 'browser'. It's entered as text, and with a converter (usually a software package or web site) it is converted into a gif/jpg file, a pdf, or postscript file. Some packages return a midi file as well so you can play and listen both. In time and with some luck, maybe web browsers will be able to convert it on the fly and just show you the notes.

An example of a basic tune written in ABC is:

%abc
X:14
T:O'Keefe's Plow
T:Tom Billy's Reel
R:Reel
N:IrTrad, 5/99
Z:Roger Landes
M:C|
L:1/8
K:D
dcdA BAFB|AF F/2F/2F EFDE|F/2F/2F AF G/2G/2G BG|ABde fdec|d/2d/2d dA BAF
B|AF F/2F/2F/2 EFDE|F/2F/2F AF G/2G/2G BG|1ABde fe e/2e/2e:|2ABde fdde||
fa a/2a/2a afdf|g/2g/2g fg edBd|fa a/2a/2a bafd|ABde fe e/2e/2e|fa a/2a/
2a afdf|g/2g/2g fg|{f}edBA|F/2F/2F AF G/2G/2G BG|
1ABde fe e/2e/2e:|2ABde fdec||

...which converts very nicely into a pdf file, or MIDI file...

This may look a bit cryptic, however with a bit of study, you may be able to play the melody directly from the code itself. You can see that there are particular fields involved, the T: field (Title), the K: field (Key), and an area with a number of note names entered. You may also enter guitar chords above each line and lyrics below each line of notes, or below the entire piece. See the following tutorials for a detailed description of this notation system.