Draw the Dots by Paul Rosen
ABC Music Notation Program
ABC notation is a great way to enter very simple tunes into a computer.
It is also an easy way to write down a tune on a bar napkin without
having to draw 5 straight lines. It is also very compact, and
completely written in ASCII characters, so it is very easy to email
tunes to your friends and bandmates. There is a lot written about it on
the web.
I'd been looking for an easy program for Windows and just never found
exactly what I was looking for. I just wanted a way to create
collections of tunes and be able to edit them, see them, and listen to
the MIDI of them easily. I ended up just writing my own UI to the
popular abcps and abcmidi programs.
The program I created is in the model of Windows Explorer. There is a
tree on the left side with the name of the tunebook. That expands to
the individual tunes, so it is easy to find the tune you want. On the
right side, the top has the actual ABC for editing and copying to the
clipboard. On the bottom, there is a window that contains Adobe Reader
that shows the tune in standard notation. This is good enough quality
to print.
You can download the program and use it for free. I'd love to hear from
you if you do, and I'll try to fix bugs and UI annoyances as quickly as
I can. I want to hear both positive and negative feedback. I'll
consider feature requests on a case by case basis. Right click here for the installation
program.
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Last updated: December 27, 2006.