abctab2ps User's Guide - Deutsche Lautengesellschaft
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1. A B C D E F G A B c d e f gab a EF e _s K A B c d e f f g A B c d e f g Note how the clef influences the default octave The default octave can be lowered or raised with the modifier 8 or 8 after the clef in the K field e g K D treble 8 To reset the octave modifier use K treble 0 The symbols and _ are used before a note to generate respectively a natural sharp or flat Double sharps and flats are available with and __ respectively 43 Rhythm By default a letter generates a note with the default length specified in the L info field If a the letter is followed by or 2 the length is halved If the letter is followed by an integer the length is multiplied Both modifiers can be combined so that the multiplier 3 2 produces a dot G G GH G3 2 G3 G4 G6 G8 G16 p eee 9999 For dotted rhythms there is a shorthand notation gt means the previous note is dotted the next note halved and lt means the previous note is halved the next dotted Similarly gt gt and lt lt can be used for double dotting Rests are generated with a z and can be modified in length in exactly the same way as notes can z z zII Z z2 z4 DI 7 DI of Ci Ci ta Invisible rests are generated with a x These count like regular rests but they are not printed This can be useful in multistave music eg if one voice ha2. y should not be used because it is reserved as an invisible anchor for slurs or decorations on unplucked courses 68 71 ASCII D G Numbers 4 7 for the french habit of numbering bourdons 72 78 ASCII H N Numbers 8 14 for the italian habit of numbering bourdons If you need special tablature symbols like signs for tenuto signs or damping you can use the high code lower case letters p w 112 119 for this purpose For germantab you must adhere to the following encoding scheme Character Codes Symbols symbols for courses 1 5 starting with course 5 fret 0 c5f0 the symbol 1 in germantab and then c4f0 c3f0 c2f0 c1f0 cSf1 c4f1 etc There is no need to implement all codes 32 87 up to fret 12 should suffice for most purposes symbols for course 6 Brummer for tabbrummer ABC symbols for course 6 Brummer for tabbrummer 1AB symbols for course 6 Brummer for tabbrummer 123 19 7 9 Unsupported Features The following features are currently not supported in tablature lines e lyrics is there any need for this feature 8 Format fine tuning Some layout parameter can be set by command line options see the man page of abctab2ps or for details but most are set via pseudo comments Pseudo comments are lines beginning with two percentage signs The syntax of a pseudo comment is 6s lt parameter gt
3. troll emphasis sforzando or pralltriller or mordent or accent i 1 y al CN F F F F breath N u v H tenuto Istaccato wedge lupbow downbow fermata x x ni gt rd rd rd rd rd f S O x Iplus Iturn p also pp mp f segno coda Ix or ff Imf sf sfz 4 7 Chords Chords i e more than one note head on a single stem can be coded with brackets around the notes e g CEGc produces the chord C major They can be grouped in beams e g d2f2 ce df but there should be no spaces within a chord A chord with two identical notes makes a unison one head with stems going both up and down eg AA Important notice The old style chord notation with plus signs eg ac which was an undocumented non standard abc feature of abc2ps is no longer supported in abctab2ps The abc notation formally permits notes with different durations on the same stem a bc2 and so on However abctab2ps assigns all notes in a chord the duration of the first note in the bracket If you are looking for polyphonie see the remark on abem2ps in section 6 2 Slurs and ties within chords are possible a b c d slursatoc btod a b ac ties a to a 5 Text In the tune body there may be three different types of text e text above the staff bar labels guitar chords bass figures e text below t
4. 1999 10 22 CD tablature format parameters tablature decorations new meters sM none and M 3 1909 1201 2000 03 10 new font loading scheme encoding for italian fonts 2000 04 28 CD new format parameter tabledgeabove new decorations ia in tablature pe ee 06 12 i tab decorations can apply to individual notes of a chord new decorations command line options in input file Boel pi 07 29 Ci new format parameter tabflagspace new clef banjoStab new tabrhstyle none new tabdeco L guitar chords in tablature added new format parameter tabfontscale 1 0 0 2000 10 17 CD first and second repeat in tab supported new decoration ee segno new clef banjo4tab or ukuleletab ee 11 17 CD new clefs french4tab french5tab italian4tab ital ian5tab spanish4tab spanish5tab lea ees 01 06 CD new tabdeco V right aligned text with right new page layout parameters barnumbers and barnumber first scope of layout parameters documented Re 06 30 CD guitar chords up to eight line breaks and accidental signs supported new tabrhstyle grid di 0 luna 01 01 CD more clefs supported better documentation of clef speci fication more meter specifications supported 2002 03 19 standard Postscript fonts documented 2002 05 30 multi bar rests coda sign empty tab chords 2002 08 15 invisible bars documented 1 5 0 2003 0
5. e when enclosed by brackets a bracket is displayed at the beginning of each line e when enclosed by braces the voices go on a single couple of staves keyboard score There cannot be more than 4 voices between the braces e when enclosed by parenthesis the voices go on the same staff no more than two voices When this pseudo comment appears inside a tune the postscript generation is restarted as if there was a new tune Since abcm2ps is based on an older version of abc2ps it only accepts the voice parameters clef name or nm snm The other definitions are ignored 13 7 Tablature Lines of lute or guitar tablature are distinguished from music lines by the particular clefs frenchtab french4tab frenchStab italiantab italian7tab italianStab italian4tab italian5tab spanishtab guitartab spanish4tab span ishStab banjo4tab ukuleletab germantab or banjoStab Like usual clefs they can be specified in the K field or in the clef parameter of a voice definition The different clefs specify the following types of tablature frenchtab In french tablature the top line stands for the highest course The frets at which the courses are stopped are given by letters a stands for an empty string b for the first fret etc The letters are printed between the lines french4tab frenchStab Like frenchtab but with four resp five tablature lines one more course than tab lines is supported spanishtab guitart
6. factor 1 if you want a flag above a chord of the default length The shortcuts gt and lt for dotting work like in music lines The code for triplets and general n plets is the same as in music see section 4 3 eg 3 a bc1 cd There is no consistent way for the notation of rests in tablature most historic sources draw a flag with no fret letters while modern editions often use modern rest signs Which rests abctab2ps draws depends on the tabrhstyle see section Z 7 in modern and modernbeams style abctab2ps draws modern style rests in all other style old style rests are drawn If you need an flag without letter in tabrhstyle modern you can use empty chords eg 1 or G2 Like tablature chords rests inherit their length from the previous chord or rest and they are only drawn if they explicitly have a rhythm factor Moreover invisible rests are indicated by x 7 3 Decorations In music the abc language only knows graces that affect an entire chord While this is ok for most decorations there are some tablature grace signs eg appoggiatura that apply to a single note of a chord Thus there are two ways to specify a tablature decoration e If the magic character eg H for fermata stands outside and immediately before a chord the decoration applies to the entire chord If that decoration usually is associated to a single note eg appoggiatura or vibrato it applies to the top
7. in order to emulate historic prints Mostly used in connection with nobeams nobeams logical do not draw beams in music a do not draw stroke through flag of single grace notes fields shall not be printed for printing different meter specification eg meterdisplay 3 2 3 will print 3 when M 3 2 is given set to false or no when metronome marks in Q meterdisplay Remarks 1 Usually one only sees the sum of topspace and titlespace However if text is written preceeding a tune it will come after topspace and before titlespace 2 vocalspace wordsspace and textspace count to the top of a line of text That is the relevant text size eg 12pt is added 23 8 4 Scope of parameters Generally layout parameters only affect the current tune in which they are declared To make a layout parameter global for all tunes declare it before the first X field or use a separate see beginning of section 8 Several parameters eg titlefont barnumbers barnumberfirst will only have any effect when they are declared before the T field It is generally the safest bet to declare format parameters between the X and T field There is one notable exception from this general scope rules tablature font settings see section 7 7 are global and must be set before or in the first tune 8 5 Spontaneous alignment If you do not want to change a layout parameter but simply want to insert some space or a page brea
8. invisible rests x Invisible rests can also be used for separating note groups in monophonic stemless notation 4 4 Bars and repeats Bar lines are specified with a abctab2ps does no plausibility check whether a bar is over or underfull so you can put bar lines where you please The following symbols are supported bar line thin thick double bar line thin thin double bar line left right repeat invisible bar line Invisible bars lines are workarounds if you need labels on the first bar or put a line break in the middle of a bar ae i pit tt thick thin double bar line a lei Li First and second repeats can be generated with the symbols 1 and 2 e g faf gfe l dfe dBA 2 d2e dcB When adjacent to bar lines these can be shortened to 1 and 2 but with regard to spaces i e 1 is legal 1 is not If you want a dot after the number in first and second repeats use the format parameter endingdots 4 5 Beams ties and slurs ligaturae To group notes together under one beam they should be grouped together without spaces Thus in 2 4 gt A2BC will produce an eighth note followed by two sixteenth notes under one beam whilst A2 B C will produce the same notes separated It is possible to put rests z under a beam e g aza The beam slopes and the choice of upper or lower staffs are generated automatically 9 You can tie two notes tog
9. line of abc notation will produce one line of music although if the music is too long it will overflow onto the next line You can counteract this by changing either the note spacing with the E field or break the line of abc notation If however you wish to use two lines of input to generate one line of music then simply put a backslash at the end of the first line The best output is usually obtained if the staff breaks are chosen explicitly by suitable line breaks in the input file In this standard usage the program tries to set the music as well as possible for each line separately The symbols and at the end of a line are ignored as well as the field E for the elementary length If a line is too long to fit onto one staff the overhang is spilled onto the next staff in this version This makes it possible to get reasonable output even when the input is one long logical line In practice this is equivalent to automatic line breaking To control line breaking the following command line options to abctab2ps are available 20 b break at all line ends even if they end with the continuation symbol NATA c consider the input as one long line ie implicitly append a backslash to every line of music Bn try to typeset with n bars on each line aq set the maximal amount of permitted shrinking to a where a lies be tween 0 and 1 8 2 Fonts Fonts are specified in pseudo comments of the form lt itemf
10. lt value gt This changes the layout parameter lt parameter gt to lt value gt in subsequent lines These layout settings may also be collected in a format file with the extension fmt which can be included with the command line option F This is useful eg for a songbook because the layout of all songs can be maintained in a single file Layout parameter in a format file must not start with A line consisting of the word end in a fmt file skips the rest of the file To see the settings for all the parameters use flag H When used in conjunction with other flags such as p P or F the corresponding parameters are shown If you redirect the output to a file and edit out the header line you immediately have a prototype fmt file which specifies all the parameters There are some parameters which can also be set in the E info field These are shrink set glue mode to compress space set to natural glue widths stretch stretched glue mode fill normal mode to fill staffs break ignore continuations xref write xref numbers to output one write one tune per page newpage start new page for next tune lw ppp set local staff width to ppp points For example to output a single tune in a narrower format put E 1w 400 into the header of this tune If this is put after the header but within the tune body only the music is set with a different width and the title is written as before 8 1 Staff breaking Generally one
11. multi line stories anecdotes all of which will be ignored until the next field occurs lt Voice See section Scores for details on how to specify and address different voices 4 Music 4 1 Key and Clef Key and clef are usually specified in the K field In multi stave music see section 6 1 the clef is specified in the V field For a key change inmidst a music line use the inline version K The general form of a K field is K lt key and mode gt lt global accidentals gt clef lt clef and octave gt Every option in the K field may be omitted but the order must not be permutated The meaning of the individual options is key and mode The key signature should be specified with a capital letter major mode which may be followed by a or b for sharp or flat respectively The mode determines the accidentals and can follow immediately after the key letter or with white spaces separated possible mode names are maj or this is the default min or m inor ion ian mix olydian dor ian phr ygian lyd ian loc rian aeo lian Mode names are not case sensitive When key and mode are omitted C major is assumed global accidentals Global accidentals are accidentals that always override key specific accidentals For example K D c would write the key signature as two sharps key of D but then mark every c as natural which is conceptually the same as D mixolydian Note that the there can be seve
12. 2 X 1 8 DDorian Ae EAH le Adagio F clef treble name Flauto space 5pt ad fe d eA z A dd d e f g aA za 5 V B clef bass name Basso d2 d 2 c 2 c 2 b2 _b2 aa g fa lt O The syntax of a voice definition is V lt label gt lt parl gt lt valuel gt lt par2 gt lt value2 gt where lt label gt is used to switch to the voice in later V lines Each lt par gt lt value gt pair sets one parameter for the current voice lt par gt can be any of the following parameters or abbreviations name nm nm Violin I This sets the long version of the voice name to be written before the staves at the start of a piece If the string contains this is interpreted as a line break and the pieces are writen above each other 12 sname snm snm V1 I Short version of the name written before subse e TT Pee clef cl clef bass Chooses the clef treble alto or bass It can also EERE ectomtnon e staves stv stv 2 This is the number of staves starting from the cur S I eee brace brc brace 2 This is the number of staves starting from the current one to be grouped together with a brace When this option is used the name defined in the same V line is written at the centre of the brace bracket brk brk 4 The number of staves to be grouped together by a bracket This option does not change the way in which the names are written space spc spc 40 This defines or modifies the vertical space be
13. 2 20 CD ASCII codes greater o allowed in tabfonts y as anchor ian8tab Version Date Author Changes _____________ 2003 07 20 header field F added new format parameter squarebre vis 1 6 0 2003 12 28 CD more than one gchord per note possible more decora tions decorations on barlines 1 6 2 2004 03 20 CD new music deco breath new format parameter ending dots 1 6 3 2004 08 20 CD new tab decos strumup strumdown new keyword display in M filed new format parameter meterdisplay 1 6 4 2005 01 02 CD new rhythmstyle modernbeams format parameter ta hee a ballflags Tigatura Suppor 1 6 7 2005 11 18 CD new format parameters gchordspace historicstyle and nobeams AIRONE 20060731 2007 04 07 new format parameter nogracestroke 1 8 0 2007 04 21 CD new format parameter printmetronome support for german lute tablature 2007 05 11 explained print position when label on last bar in line 2007 11 11 2008 02 21 grace notes can have length long appogiaturas 1 8 5 2008 08 15 CD new format parameters nostems for stemless notes e g for chant notation and tabgermansepline for suppress ing separator line between German tablature systems new dynamic marks sf and sfz 2009 03 10 new format parameter tabgchordspace 2009 12 27 new clef treble8up 1 8 10 2011 03 08 CD grace notes appogiaturas tied to fi
14. As abctab2ps produces postscript output you also need some tools for processing postscript files ok you do not need them necessarily if you have a postscript printer but even then some of the following tools are useful If you run Linux all of these tools should already be installed on your system on other operating systems you possibly need to download build and install them yourself In order to print postscript files on a non postscript printer you need ghostscript Ghosteript can not only convert postscript into almost all printer languages it even can produce output formats which may be viewed on the screen This capability is utilised by the online previewers ghostview and gv same as ghostview but more polished GUI 24 There is a number of PS utilities for manipulating postscript files Useful are psselect for extracting particular pages e g all odd or even pages or pages 1 to 7 psresize e g for converting EU A4 to US letter and vice versa and psbook reorders pages for book printing WYSIWIG text processors generally do not allow direct import of plain postscript files In order to display the image in their editor window they need a particular version of encapsulated postscript named EPSI EPSI contains a low quality bitmap used by the text processor for its online preview on printing the original high quality postscript is used The tool ps2epsi converts postscript to EPSI 10 References and credits The latest a
15. D Q Bach n pars header body PA Q Andante E ie header Yesterday B D p E file name header Fhtp wwwabcorgblaabe G erou header GrPassionide H history hear Plats E T M K P K s A E G H K L M N S T Scope header body V Ve clef bass W Z w WwW vos boy W 2 Yesterday life was such an Z transcription note header Zfromphotocopy 3 2 Particular fields T Tune title Some tunes have more than one title and so this field can be used more than once per tune the first time will generate the title whilst subsequent usage will generate the alternatives in small print The T field can also be used within a tune to name parts of a tune in this case it should come before any key or meter changes K Key and clef See section 4l for more details L Default note length Examples are L 1 4 quarter note L 1 8 eighth note L 1 16 sixteenth If not specified the default note length is calculated automatically from the meter field the time signature is con verted to its decimal value if the value is 0 75 or higher the default is L 1 8 if the value is less than 0 75 the default is L 1 16 Beware however that it is generally not a good idea to use implicit defaults M Meter Apart from the normal meters e g M 6 8 or M 4 4 the symbols M C and M C give com mon time and cut time respectively The deno
16. ab In spanish tablature the top line stands for the highest course The frets at which the courses are stopped are given by numbers 0 stands for an empty string for the first fret etc The numbers are printed on the lines This tablature was used by spanish vihuelists nowadays it is quite common as guitar tablature Spanish tablature does not support more than six courses spanishStab banjoStab Similar to spanishtab but five tablature lines not more than five courses spanish4tab banjo4tab ukuleletab Similar to spanishtab but four tablature lines not more than four courses italiantab italian7tab In italian tablature the top line stands for the lowest course which makes this tablature more difficult to learn in the beginning The frets at which the courses are stopped are given by numbers 0 stands for an empty string for the first fret etc The numbers are printed on the lines If you want to notate bourdon strings in italian tablature you must specify italian7tab rather than italiantab italian8tab Additionally to italian7tab stopped courses on the eighth course are possible This results in more space between tabstaff and flags which might be compensated with a negative value for tabflagspace see section 7 7 italian4tab italianStab Like italiantab but with four resp five tablature lines not more than four resp five courses germantab German lute tablature without staff lines and unique letters for each fret course c
17. abctab2ps User s Guide Christoph Dalitz lt christoph dot dalitz at hs niederrhein dot de gt describes abctab2ps version 1 8 11 April 2011 Abstract This document describes the features of the abc language for describing musical information The language was originally invented by Chris Walshaw In the meantime it has been extended by the interaction between many people Ideally the abc language would be completely standardized Actually there are differences between implementations in different programs The description here is specifically for abctab2ps In contrast to the abc standard abctab2ps offers additional support for lute and guitar tablature Contents 1__ Version and history 2__ General structure 2 1 Program option 2 2 abc input 3__ Information fields uted 2k 2__Particular fields 4 1 Key and Clef e oaae eee 4 3 Rhythm RETE 4 7 hord 5 1 Text above notes and bar ou sahg bape 6 1 Multi stave music 6 2 Polyphonic musici 7 1 ourse and fret 7 2 Rhythm ine ee oe eons 7 6 _Tenuto stroke UU Doha 0 0 LI DU VU 17 20 20 21 22 24 24 24 24 24 24 25 1 Version and history The following table shows the changes in this user s guide For changes in abctab2ps itself see the file CHANGES version Date ao Changes ___ por oam 1999 09 05 fermata in music added
18. are written in braces You can use both the ledger line notation for courses 7 to 10 and the number notation eg a and 10 both mean the tenth course where the first notation results in an a with three ledger lines and the second results in an X Please note that braces indicate grace notes in music lines Since grace notes are not supported in tablature braces are abused in tablature notation In german lute tablature the symbols used for the sixth course Brummer vary from print to print some use ABCD somel ABC andothers1 2 3 4 where the numbers are crossed through You can choose the style with teh format parameter tabbrummer which can be one of ABC JAB or 123 7 2 Rhythm As for music the length of a note is specified by a factor with respect to the default length L field In contrast to music chords which require the length factor after the first note in a chord tablature chords require the length factor after the ast note of a chord An other important difference concerns the interpretation of chords without any note length factor In music these chords inherit their length from the default length specified in the L field In tablature these chords inherit their length from the length of the previous chord and the rhythm flag is omitted in the printed output unless you explicitly ask for a flag on every note with taballflags This means that you must specify the length
19. ation signs are also allowed on bar lines Although this does not make much sense for decorations like trill or mordent it is useful for segno and coda 5 2 Lyrics Aligned lyrics under the staff are specified using a line directly below the staff starting with w For example 10 edc2 edc2 w Three blind mice three blind mice Each blank delimited word in the w line is associated with one note in sequence The following special symbols are available to modify this behaviour x skips one note melisma split a word into two syllables associated with two notes with drawn between them tabs forward to the next bar line is drawn as a space but contracts words to be written under one note That is hey ho gives two words under one note draws a thin underscore from the previous note to this one For more than one line of lyrics just use several w lines To draw a without breaking the word there escape it as DA alt Note that in the abc music line defines a staff break This is useful when typesetting vocals because it is tedious to split the line explicitly when shifting a staff break about when there are lines with vocals If a word starts with a digit this is interpreted as numbering of a stanza and is pushed forward a bit In other words use something like w 1 Three blind mice to put a number before Three 5 3 Free text Free text between the music can b
20. cld c The first two examples show the meaning of grace notes according to the abc standard which specifies that grace notes have no explicit time values and the following meaning e A single grace note is an accacciatura see the second example above In abctab2ps the stroke through the flag can optionally be suppressed with the format parameter nogracestroke e Multiple grace notes are drawn as beamed sixteenth notes This does not allow for the notation of long appoggiaturas To overcome this limitation abctab2ps allows for a length specifier in the grace notes see the third example above The length applies to all grace notes within the same pair of braces when more than one length is specified the last length holds see the last example above When the following note is a chord appogiaturas and accacciaturas are tied to the first note given in the chord Other decorations are indicated either by a magic character e g T for a trill or by their name in exclamation marks e g trill The decoration signs must appear immediately before a note e g TG or trill G for a trill above middle G If notes are grouped in chords the decoration sign must appear outside and immediately before the chord abctab2ps currently supports the following decorations tr s sb M gt A 6 F E T P M R Lork K Itrill luppermordent lowermordent grace
21. e inserted either with W lines capital W versus lower w for lyrics or with pseudo comments a line starting with in two different ways First text This text line is left aligned center This text line is centered right This text line is right aligned aA 00 00 ae oP 00 writes one line into the output The alignment is given by the pseudo comment Second sbegintext SFirst line of text sSecond line sAnd yet another line sendtext JP A AP oP do will write a block of several lines To avoid conflict with other programs the text lines themselves are optionally prefaced with The statement begintext may have a parameter to determine how the output is done namely begintext obeylines keeps lines as they are default begintext ragged puts in own line breaks to fill the line begintext align puts in own breaks and aligns right margin begintext skip skips the whole block no output For ragged and align the program has to estimate the number of lines needed in the current font since the typesetting is done using the Postscript widthshow operator by the printer The estimate should be reasonably reliable for Times Roman but might be more dodgy for some other fonts Also note that the Ghostview fonts can be quite different than the fonts used by the printer Strangely a 13pt font can be smaller than a 12pt font An empty line in a block ends a paragraph see parski
22. e values are possible but probably not very useful o di 1 The font parameters tabfont are global settings which cannot be changed between different tunes X within a single abc file 2 The choice of tabrhstyle affects the implicit default value of tabaddflags for simple tabrhstyle the latter is 2 otherwise it defaults to 0 To override these defaults simply set tabaddflags explicitly 3 In case of tabrhstyle none you might want to set a negative value for tabflagspace 7 8 Tablature Fonts abctab2ps reads the font files for tablature letters or numbers from the directory specified by the environment variable ABCTABFONTS Font file names consist of the name of the composer who used this font and the prefix fr like french for letter fonts it like italian for number fonts or de like deutsch for german tablature fonts Font file names are case sensitive and only the third character is uppercase Valid font names are eg frFrancisque itBorrono deFraktur In the abc file you can specify the desired font files with the pseudocomments tabfontfrench tabfontitalian and tabfontgerman where the prefix in the font file name optionally may be omitted Note that different fonts look best at different sizes eg frFrancisque should be at least 14pt while itBorrono looks better at 13pt Thus when experimenting with different fonts you should experiment with different values for tabfontsize and tabfon
23. ee font for french tablature is nee PRE rate cence NS tabfontitalian keyword font file from Ten co font for italian tablature is Sn DO i eect OBESE keyword font file from which the font for german tablature is loaded see section 7 8 font exceeds its bounding box tabflagspace space between gchord text and tablature system keyword style of the rhythm signs Possible values are simple headless 16c french style grid same as simple but with support for beams modern 17c french style with heads modernbeams same as mod ern but with support for beams diamond italian 16c style with diamond shaped heads or none no tabrhstyle rhythm flags at all i Ma when true rhythm flags are printed above all notes nonta vitona mmie tabfirstflag logical when true rhythm flags are only printed when the mr ra are tabledgeabove logical when true ledger lines for french bourdons are EIEIO PTT E tener mat tabbrummer keyword style for the sixth course Brummer in german teme bt os vals ae ABC Tar 23 tabgermansepline logical when false separator lines between german tabla Semen PR ictsemcarenppral Remarks dimension additional space between rhythm flags and tablature system Only necessary when the chosen tablature tabaddflags integer how many flags shall be added to tab rhythm signs Eg a value of 2 means that a quarter note no flag in music is printed as sixteenth two flags in tabla ture Negativ
24. eger values the parameter value can be of the type logical or dimension Logicals must be one of J yes true for true or one of 0 no false for false if nothing is specified this is equivalent to true Dimensions can be given in mm cm in or pt where pt is the default Examples pageheight 29cm staffwidth 5in leftmargin 1 8cm titlespace lcm s s height of page width of staff left margin vertical space before the titl size of musical symbols space between staves cale 0 9 taffsep 60pt AJP 00 00 AP A Ol AJP A 00 AP do do JP JP AP AP do do The following table lists all possible parameters and their equivalent command line option if there is one Param eters without explanation are deemed obvious Parameter Type abctab2ps Description w m space up between the parts and the music n i separation between staves One half of this distance in multi stave music separation between staves in multi stave music separation between systems thickness of a single music and tablature staffline amount to indent the first staff Indentation is done stafflinethickness at the start of the piece and after a T field but not indent dimension after a P field S symbol size eg 1 0 is used in the pretty output space before the title see remark 1 vertical space at the top of a tune see remark 1 partsspace dimension gchordspace dimension syste
25. ether either across or within a bar with a symbol e g abc chba or abc cba More general slurs can be put in with symbols Thus DEFG puts a slur over the four notes Spaces within a slur are ok e g D E F G but the open bracket should come immediately before a note and its accents accidentals etc and the close bracket should come immediately after a note and its octave marker or length Thus b c 2 is correct but b c 2 is not To abctab2ps slurs outside chords and slurs within chords are different kinds of animals A slur outside of chord brackets always applies to the top notes of the enclosed chords and it may span several notes A slur within chord brackets however must be closed in the immediately following chord E g in order to tie the top note of a chord to the next single note you may write afd b or afd b but not afd b in the last version the slur is opened inside chord but closed outside which is not allowed In transcriptions of mensural notation into common music notation ligaturae are often indicated by square brackets This is possible with the pseudocomment slurisligatura which prints ligatura brackets instead of slurs Note that this only applies to slurs outside chords and not to ties 4 6 Graces and decorations Grace notes can be written by enclosing them in curly braces TR l a iz Sta 6 dcBc B d c el d
26. for the start of a tenuto and ten for the end of a tenuto These marks are only allowed inside chord brackets To let them start or end on an unplucked course use the invisible fret symbol y Here are some examples which also show the use of the invisible fret symbol a cD Cc a cD C a cD c a D a a D Ce Cc a 6 a aa ten c c X aa c c ten y aa ten c c d cd ten a d ten y cd a d ten y cd a 7 7 Format parameters Like various aspects of the page layout some parameters of the tablature format can be specified via pseudocom ments or a format paramter file The parameters apply to the entire abc file if the same parameter is specified more than once the last value overwrites the previous specifications In addition to the general parameter format see section 8 3 tablature format parameters can be of the type keyword which means a value from a list of special keywords The following parameters are supported 17 abctab2ps option Description tabfontsize tabsize integer distance in pt between tablature lines and if tab fontscale 1 0 size of tablature font tabfontscale decimal scale factor for tablature font If greater than one tablature letters numbers are larger than the tabla ture line distance Can be useful for fonts which are too large or to small eg frFrancisque for your taste tabfontfrench i font file from da
27. gnature The header ends when the first musical information is encountered Remark previously and according to the standard abc specifications the header ends with the K key line used to specify the key However most people are not conscious of this leading to considerable confusion for multi stave music Therefore a new convention was used in abc2ps from version 1 3 3 After the header the music follows A percentage sign starts a comment and causes the remainder of the line to be ignored Comments may appear everywhere in an abc file An example for a valid tune block is as follows X 1 here begins a header T Sample Tune M 4 4 L 1 4 Ke here begins the music abcd ABCD abcd ABCD 3 Information fields 3 1 Overview Any line beginning with a letter followed by a colon is interpreted as an information field These fields carry information like title meter key clef etc Most of the information fields are used in the header but some may also occur in the tune body If you need an information filed inside of a line e g a clef change you must enclose the field in brackets e g K bass The following table summarizes names and scopes of all information fields Scope a Hintetupingen bo P Manuscripi Sira ili la header body see sec Format fine tuning F ok key and clef header last entry body K D treble default note length header body L 1 8 header body M374 arts CP
28. he staff lyrics e free text between staffs stanzas remarks Any text may contain characters with dieresis umlauts or accents in IsoLatin1 decoding If you are using a different character set you can emulate these characters with Tex style escape sequences Ve acute accent NE grave accent e circumflex accent e dieresis ss sz obsolete B o 0 o slash aa AA aring AA ae AE ae ligatura e cc cC_ ccedilla g C n WN ntwiddle N 5 1 Text above notes and bars Guitar chords can be placed over a note or rest by setting the chord in double quotes immediately before the note eg Am ab c2 Guitar chords are centred above the note unless they are especially wide Figured bass notation can also be achieved with the guitar chord notation In order to stack figures you can use the escape sequence n for line breaks eg 6 n4 Currently up to eight line breaks are supported which should be sufficient for all practical purposes Please note that abctab2ps does not automatically add vertical space for guitar chords with an insane number of line breaks if the figures interfere with the preceding stave you can add extra space with the voice parameter space It is possible to have more than one guitar chord over one note In that case the guitar chords are equally spaced over the width of the note This is useful for harmony changes over a long note as in the following exa
29. ic slur bows are also used to indicate phrasing and more than one slur can start at a single note In tablature slur bows always mean slur and not more than one slur may start on a single note nor may slurs be stacked Like in music however slurs inside and outside of chords are different kinds of animals Here are some examples for tablature slurs Please note that the first tie in the second example is not possible in music because the opening parenthesis in the chord is not immediately closed in the next note 7 bak a cE acD nn Reni a c c c c Sere a T a a c b a b aa cl c d c c aa c a c d y Remarks e The first tie in the second example is not possible in music because the opening parenthesis in the chord is not immediately closed in the next note e In the third example the slur ends on an unplucked course This is achieved by using the letter y which is not implemented in the tablature font as an anchor for the slur Beams in the tablature rhythm flags are only drawn when the rhythm style is set to tabrhstyle grid or mod ernbeams see section 77 When this rhythm style is set the rhythm flags of notes which are grouped together without white space are connected with beams This results in grid shaped rhythm flags as used in some english 16c manuscript sources 7 6 Tenuto strokes Tenuto strokes indicating held notes are drawn with ten
30. k a single position you can use the following pseudo comments all parameters are of the type dimension sep draws a short centred line as a separator sep hl h2 len draws a separator of length Jen with space h above space h2 below vskip h adds vertical space of height h Yonewpage writes a page break 8 6 Historic layout If you prefer the look of historic 16th century prints over modern prints you can obtain diamond shaped note heads with historicstyle and suppress beaming with nobeams Note that both parameters only effect music so that it is still possible to use grid rhythm flags in tablature in combination with a historic music layout 9 Other utilities 9 1 abc Although abctab2ps supports some command line options for the selection of voices or tunes for output it is often desirable to write such selections into another abc file This is achieved with abcselect which is also available from the abctab2ps homepage abcselect is a platform independent Perl script A graphical editor for abc files with syntax highlighting and automatic invocation of abctab2ps and other third party software like ghostview is available as flabc from the abctab2ps homepage If you do not like to edit plain text files for the abc input but prefer some GUI stuff you can try Jean F Moine s tclabc As it based upon Tcl Tk it runs on almost every platform However tclabc only supports music no tabla ture 9 2 Postscript
31. minator can be ommitted in which case 4 is assumed for the denominator and only the numerator is printed in the music this is most often used for triple time M 3 To avoid the printing of a meter notation you can specify M none which implicitly assumes 4 4 for the calculation of the default note length M none is the default meter value In case the printed meter specification differs from the mathematical meter eg C is used for 2 2 2 1 or any other even time you can add the parameter display eg M 2 1 display C which will print C but use 2 1 for internal bar numbering Note that this is incompatible to the abc standard for a com patible way use the format parameter meterdisplay see section 8 P Parts Can be used in the header to state the order in which the tune parts are played i e P ABABCDCD and then inside the tune to mark each part i e P A or P B Tempo Prints out tempo denotations General form is Q w1 w2 w3 where each word is either string in double quotes such as Andante or Bossa Nova or a metronome mark such as C or C 120 or 120 Strings are printed directly metronome marks are translated to the form note 100 When you only need metronome marks for abc2midi but do not want them printed use the format parameter printmetronome see section Group To group together tunes for indexing purposes 0 History Can be used for
32. mple mrm b z a V 1 clef treble c A B G TA gt G G4 gt 6 5 V 2 clef bass 4 4 7 n 6 n4 d2 S n4 D2 g4 O Accidentals in guitar chords can be achieved with the backslash sequences sharp b flat and natural Beware that the natural sign is ambiguous in figured bass notation and is avoided in most historic sources It is better to always use flat for a minor interval and sharp for a major interval this makes sure that the figures remain valid in case of transposition If you do not like the default gchordfont Helvetica you can set it with gchordfont A nice font for continuo figures is ZapfChancery MediumItalic Bar labels like large letters A B C usually mark specific points in the music They are coded in a syntax similar to guitar chords but placed before a bar line instead of a note or rest For instance abcd A ABCD places the letter A over the second bar line Just in case somebody wants a label on the first bar which is often not preceded by a bar line the symbol means an invisible bar line When a label is on the last bar in a line it is moved to the beginning of the next line Although bar numbers can also be written manually over bar lines it is more convenient to use abctab2ps com mand line option k or the pseudocomment barnumbers for automatic bar numbering Decor
33. msep dimension maxshrink decimal how much to compress horizontally when staff breaks are chosen automatically Between 0 and 1 X strictness for single stave music 22 Parameter Type abctab2ps Description option strictness2 decimal X strictness for multi stave music In multi stave music it is often a good idea to space the notes somewhat more strictly accord ing to their duration than in single stave mu sic For strictness 1 the spacings for notes with short durations is reasonably strictly proportional to their duration For strictness 0 they are spaced about equally Good defaults are strictness1 0 5 and strictness2 0 8 lineskipfac decimal factor for spacing between lines of text 1 0 gives pees fmi _ ntsc ouput 20a parskipfae decimal similar factor for space after a paragraph of text barsperstaf integer B wy to put as many bars per statt barnumbers integer k write bar number every n th bar n 0 writes bar mett MST a S at bamumbertirs integer Start bamumbering with this number instead oF 7 delet Jogi J title fushedTefiifiue _______ _ titlecaps logical uitein capialenes Csrerchstatt Togical __ stretches underfull staves across pags stretchlasi___ logicl_ J stretches Tast staff if undertal breaka ogia b breakatallllineends squarebrevis Togical draw square brevis instead of round 191 historicstyle logical draw diamond shaped note heads music
34. n 7 chord p clef change possible values 5 coda comments options B pseudo TO T7120 real 4 decorations music 8 tablature diamond shaped notes 24 diapasons dotted rhythm 7 extra spaces 24 fermata 26 tablature figured bass fingering right hand 5 flat 6 fonts postscript tablature text format file 7 20 german tablature 14 ghostscript graces 8 tablature guitar chords music 10 tablature guitar tablature A historicstyle key 5 layout parameters 22 scope ligatura 8 22 line continuation lute tablature lyrics 10 meter metronome marks natural 6 note length default value 5 specifying 6 tablature octave 6 page break BA pitch 6 polyphonie 3 postscript manipulation tools standard fonts repeats 7 rests 7 invisible 7 multi bar 7 tablature 15 segno 8 separator line sharp 6 0 slurs music 8 tablature staccato 8 staff break 20 stanzas stemless notes 7 tempo marks 5 tenuto strokes ties music 8 tablature title 5 trill B triplets 7 tuplets 7 ukulele tablature umlauts D unison 9 voices 27
35. nd greatest version of abctab2ps and its easy to use graphical user interface flabc is always avilable from the abctab2ps homepage hosted by the German Lute Society http www lautengesellschaft de cdmm Since abctab2ps is built upon abc2ps it owes a lot to Michael Methfessel the author of abc2ps Moreover signif icant parts of this user s guide have been copied from the Readmes of the abc2ps distribution The current version of abc2ps is available from http www ihp ffo de msm Jean F Moine s abcm2ps which can handle more than one voice per stave and the GUI Editor tclabc is available from http moinejf free fr The abc language was originally invented by Chris Walshaw On his abc home page http abcnotation org u you can find links to the official abc standard definition and to a wide variety of abc related software Beware how ever that abctab2ps deviates considerably from the abc standard because the standard does not support tablature at all 25 Index abc standard 25 abe2ps 25 abem2ps 13 25 abctab2ps homepage accacciatura B accents music 8 text 9 accidentals global 5 in guitar chords local 4 appoggiatura 8 tablature banjo tablature bar decorations invisible 7 10 labels lines 7 bar numbers automatic 10 22 manual 0 basso continuo 10 beaming music 8 tablature bourdon strings bow marks 8 breath mark 8 brummer chant notatio
36. note of the chord e If the magic character eg for vibrato stands inside chord brackets it applies to the note immediately following that magic character Beware however that some decorations like fermata cannot be applied to single notes these decorations are ignored when they appear within chord brackets The following table lists all graces supported in tablature and whether they may appear within chord brackets applies to chord note Tnput char Applies to 15 coda sign also coda dot right hand fingering index finger chord frana sie dor onder lovest putedeome colon right hand fingering middle finger chord ST Baram as do dude pu oe semicolon right hand fingering ring finger chord EIN grana ile dot aner toves pluckedcounse plus right hand fingering thumb chord Representation depends on tablature type in span ishtab guitartab it is drawn as a plus in frenchtab or italiantab it is drawn as a vertical stroke quote an accent after the note note In historic sources often used for an appoggiatura or trill from above X upper X an x after the note note Sa In historic sources often used for a trill or vibrato Pd U upper U an U shaped arc after the note note In historic sources often used for an appoggiatura or trill from below V upper V an U shaped arc below the note note The only difference to U is that the arc is drawn below the tabletter rathe
37. ombination not more than six courses 7 1 Course and fret As for music simultanously plucked strings are written within chord brackets Each position in the bracket marks a specific course the first character refers to the first course the second character to the second course etc If the specific course is unplucked write a comma is it unstopped write a is it stopped in the first fret write b etc If all subsequent courses are unplucked you can end the chord If a tablature chord consists of only one plucked string the chord brackets can be omitted If a chord only contains commas eg 1 or 2 only the rhythm flag is printed The following example shows the notation of a tablature chord and its output in frenchtab and spanishtab gui tartab a TRA abc a O D O Remarks 1 This french tablature notation with letters for the frets is the same for all tablature styles Depending on the chosen tabstyle in the clef specification the output will differ Numbers for the frets in the input format cannot be used for two reasons 14 e numbers are already used in the abc language for rhythm e frets higher than ten would not be accessible because the numbers were two characters wide 99199 2 In french tablature the letter is not used Consequently the letter k means the 9th fret etc Bourdon strings or diapasons
38. ont for guitar chords textfont for text under the tune or between tunes wordsfont for words under the tune W field voicefont for voice names V field barnumberfont barlabelfont indexfont In printed music the bar numbers are often made more visible by putting a box around them This is also possible In fact a box can be put around most bits of text by adding the word box to the font specification e g Ssbarnumberfont Times Italic 11 box This can be done for the title guitar chords vocals etc To switch on the box without changing the font style and or size the character can be used as in Sstitlefont x x box Because ISO fonts are needed for special characters and accents all fonts must be known when the header of the PS file is written The program tries to be as clever as it can about this but a font might be undefined if it is invoked for the first time further down in a file For this reason a line like this can be put into the fmt file font Palatino Bold or alternatively at the top of the abc file 21 S sfont Palatino Bold Either of these will define the corresponding ISO font in the header To make things even easier the program always looks for a file fonts fmt and loads it if it exists So the often used fonts can be defined there once and for all 8 3 Page layout parameters Page layout parameter are usually specified by pseudo comments Beside dimensionless factors decimals or int
39. ont gt lt postscript font gt lt size gt lt postscript font gt must be a valid postscript font The standard postscript fonts that are supported by all postscript devices are AvantGarde Demi AvantGarde DemiOblique AvantGarde Book AvantGarde BookOblique Bookman Light Bookman LightItalic Bookman Demi Bookman Demiltalic Courier Courier Oblique Courier Bold Courier BoldOblique Helvetica Helvetica Oblique Helvetica Bold Helvetica BoldOblique Helvetica Narrow Helvetica NarrowOblique Helvetica NarrowBold Helvetica NarrowBoldOblique NewCenturySchlbk Roman NewCenturySchlbk Italic NewCenturySchlbk Bold NewCenturySchlbk BoldItalic Palatino Roman Palatino Italic Palatino Bold Palatino BoldItalic Symbol Times Roman Times Italic Times Bold Times BoldItalic ZapfChancery MediumItalic ZapfDingbats lt size gt is the font size in points eg 14 Note however that the font size like the size of the music will be effected by the parameter scale see next section eg if scale is set to 0 7 which is the default a font size of 14 will actually result in a 0 7 x 14pt 10pt font lt itemfont gt specifies the scope of the font like title guitar chords etc It can be any of the following values values without explanation are deemed obvious titlefont subtitlefont composerfont partsfont for part labels P filed tempofont for tempo marks Q filed vocalfont for lyrics or vocals under a staff w field gchordf
40. pfac below In any case can be used in a line of text to add line breaks Thus two centred lines result from this S center First line second line 11 As with the other pseudo comments see section Format fine tuning the text is associated with a specific tune if it is within that tune s block In that case it will only be printed if that tune is selected If the text is outside all tune blocks it will always be printed The exception is if the command line flag E is used to to make a separate EPS file for each tune In this case all text outside the blocks is ignored To learn how the font for text output is changed see the section Format fine tuning 6 Scores 6 1 Multi stave music abctab2ps supports multi stave music scores There are two different ways for the notation of scores You can either define the different voices in V lines at the end of the header just before the first music line and use inline V references V to associate music lines with specific voices as in the following example X 1 T Sonata II C B Marcello 1712 M C L 1 8 K DDorian V F clef treble name Flauto space 5pt V B clef bass name Basso Q Adagio V F ad fe d eA z A dd d e f g aA z a V B d2 d 2 c 2 c 2 b2 _b2 aa g fd Alternatively you can write all music of a specific voice immediately after its voice definition In this notation the above example reads Xil Sonata II B Marcello 171
41. r than behind sharp an after the note note I In historic sources used for a trill or vibrato x asterisque an after the note note di In historic sources used for a vibrato or bass note damping RE T upper T prints tr below the chord in italiantab also t rill chord In frenchtab it is drawn as an accenton the top note of the chord because the tr symbol would interfere with bourdons L upper L An oblique line under the note when applied to a chord it is note drawn under the bottom note of the chord In banjo tablature used to indicate longer notes in baroque french tablature used to indicate an arpeggio An arrow indicating a chord strummed bottom up st rumdown An arrow indicating a chord strummed top down 7 4 Text below notes The guitar chord notation of text enclosed in double quotes can be used in tablature too In tablature however the text is printed below the tablature system rather than above because otherwise it would interfere with the rhythm flags Guitar chords in tablature typically are not used for actual guitar chord symbols but for other stuff eg left right hand fingering Like in music guitar chords can contain line breaks indicated by n 16 7 5 Beams ties and slurs Like in music ties to the next note can be notatetd with a dash and more general slurs with parenthesis There is a significant difference however in mus
42. ral global accidentals separated by spaces and each specified with an accidental __ _ or followed by a letter in lower case Global accidentals are overridden by accidentals attached to notes within the body of the abc tune and are reset by each change of signature clef and octave The clef specification must be the last word in the key field Optionally it may start with a clef prefix Classical Western music notation has only three clef signs G F and C which can appear on different music lines abctab2ps supports the following clef names treble G on line 2 this is the default treble8 like treble but with an 8 printed below treble8up like treble but with an 8 printed above frenchviolin G on line 1 bass F on line 4 varbaritone F on line 3 subbass F on line 5 alto C on line 3 tenor C on line 4 baritone C on line 5 soprano C on line 1 mezzosoprano C on line 2 Optionally the clef may contain an appended octave modifier eg treble 8 which changes the pitch inter pretation see next section 4 2 Pitch Pitches are specified by the letters A G and a g optionally followed by an apostrophe or a comma Capital letters denote the lower octave on the staff An apostrophe raises the pitch by one octave a comma lowers the pitch by one octave These codes are illustrated below gt
43. rst chord note new format parameter stafflinethickness 1 8 11 2011 26 04 new format parameter tabfirstflag 2 General structure 2 1 Program options If the very first line of an abc file starts with the two magic characters abctab2ps parses that line for command line options see the man page for a detailed list of all possible command line options This can be useful for options which cannot be specified otherwise in the abc file eg Slabctab2ps noitaliantab k 5 tabsize 14 paper letter On an older Macintosh this is the only way to pass command line options to abctab2ps because old MacOs ship without a command line Immediately after the program must follow for which the options are intended Currently only abctab2ps supports this feature other programs will interpret this line as comment If the same option is specified both on the command line and in the first line of the abc file the line wins because it is interpreted after the command line 2 2 abc input Each abc input file can contain one or more tunes Each tune starts with an X reference number info field and is terminated by a blank line or the end of the file Thus no blank lines are permitted within a tune Each block describing one single tune is subdivided into a header and the musical data The header consists of various info fields which specify things like title composer key signature and time si
44. s a longer pickup than another voice Multi bar rests are generated with a capital Z followed by the number of bars When using bar numbering command line option k or format parameter barnumbers abctab2ps takes care of multi bar rests Triplets can be simply coded with the notation 3abc Similarly 2ab makes a duplet 4abcd a quadruplet etc up to 9 The musical meanings are If the time signature is compound 3 8 6 8 9 8 3 4 etc then n is three otherwise n is two More general tuplets can be specified using the syntax p q r which means put p notes into the time of q for the next r notes If q is not given it defaults as above If r is not given it defaults to p For example 3 2 2 is equivalent to 3 2 and 3 2 3 is equivalent to 3 2 3 or even 3 This can be useful to include notes of different lengths within a tuplet for example 3 2 2G4c2 or 3 2 4G2A2Bc and also describes more precisely how the simple syntax works in cases like 3D2E2F2 or even 3D3EF2 The number written over the tuplet is p The notation of nonmetric music like plainchant requires stemless notes These can be enforced with the format parameter nostems Note that notes still have lengths so that it is in principle possible to notate nonmetric music with more than one part like medieval organa To adjust the notes vertically use
45. tscale too If you you have some minimal postscript knowledge you can easily define your own tablature font start with a given font file and replace the drawing routines for the individual letters or numbers with your own postscript routines A font file with the prefix fr must define the postscript font FrenchTabfont which is used in the drawing routines for french tablature A font file with the prefix it must define the postscript font ItalianTabfont which is used in the drawing routines for italian and spanish tablature The drawing routines in the default fonts are defined in a 20x20 system you can change this with a different FontBBox statement For each character symbol you should leave some top space in order to prevent the letters from touching each other Additional bottom space for French fonts is not necessary because abctab2ps puts one point space between tablature lines and the symbols In order to make abctab2ps interpret your self defined font correctly you must adhere to the following encoding scheme for frenchtab and italiantab spanishtab Character Codes Symbols 97 119 ASCII a w FrenchTabFont letters for french tablature ItalianTabFont numbers for italian tablature Please note that 106 j is not used thus the eigth fret is code 105 Ci and the nineth fret is 107 CK There is no need to implement all codes 97 111 a o0 should suffice for almost all purposes 121 ASCII
46. tween this staff and the one below it The space can be given in pt default or with a unit in the form 1cm or 0 4in Furthermore if a or sign comes after the start of the number the value is an increment to be added to or subtracted from the default setting gchords gch gch 0 This controls whether any guitar chords embedded in the current voice are actually written True false are specified as for the formats This is parsed but not yet used in the program octave octave 2 Silently ignored by abctab2ps for compatibility with abc2midi The various settings key default length etc are maintained for each voice separately Guitar chords first and second endings and line breaks are taken from the top voice only Vocals can be set under each voice separately 6 2 Polyphonic music More than one voice on a single stave polyphonie is currently not supported by abctab2ps However there is Jean F Moine s version of abc2ps named abcm2ps which handles up to two voices per stave This does not sound too exciting but if you consider that each voice can consist of chords you will realize that almost all kind of music can be written in two voices In abcm2ps a pseudo comment of the form ssstaves lt definition gt determines on which staves the voices go lt definition gt must contain all the voice names with any pair of SIA and 0 e when not enclosed by special characters the voices go on separate staves
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