Toby wrote: > I've long since given up on getting precise accuracy out of abc's. It's > a pleasant surprise when they're dead on, and you always know who's > abcs will usually be perfect. Usually Jack's are spot-on, because > precision seems to be an important element of his personality.
If Nigel was listening to what I was up to in trying to get through "Margaret's Waltz" on the ud last Wednesday I think he can testify that I am not one to let the possibility of missing a note get in the way... There are two reasons why I do ABC that way. One is that I've been on electronic forums for nearly 20 years and seen what happens if you let even a slight ambiguity past - it's just quicker to get it right first time than field the questions if you slip. The other is that once I saw what ABC was about I decided to stick to doing stuff nobody else was doing, either in print or electronically, and do it so that nobody would ever need to redo it. I'm in a fortunate position for access to the major paper sources for Scottish music, and it seems only fair to the people who aren't that I shouldn't tease them by giving a rough approximation to something they'd either need to visit Scotland to look at or else pay a fortune in photocopying fees if they wanted the real scoop. > Most of the time though, I just use them to either give me > a rough idea of the notes, or else to confirm what I think > I've figured the notes out to be, off the recording.. We should be so lucky - take something like "The Fine Old Man versus Gladstone's Hornpipe" on my Dalkeith site - it's a great gutsy tune but it seems nobody but me has ever heard of it, and I doubt there's any recording. (I'd quite to be told of recordings of tunes I've transcribed, so I can add the discographic stuff: I can't afford to buy recordings any more except occasionally from charity shops, so my main source of info about the world of recorded music is the radio). Steve Wyrick wrote: : JC's abc text file does match the midi file so I assume there's : a glitch in the software Jack used to produce the gif file. You have some wires crossed, I didn't produce any GIF that Rita looked at. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Jack Campin: 11 Third Street, Newtongrange, Midlothian EH22 4PU; 0131 6604760 <http://www.purr.demon.co.uk/jack> * food intolerance data & recipes, Mac logic fonts, Scots traditional music files, and my CD-ROM "Embro, Embro". Posted to Scots-L - The Traditional Scottish Music & Culture List - To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html