
   ABassC is a freeware viewer/player for Palm and PocketPC devices

   that displays and plays music in either treble or bass clef. The

   ABC notation format is used to show melody or bassline with any

   accompanying harmony (chords or figured bass). The music can be

   played through the internal speaker. The idea is to have an easy

   to read partition on the small size screen.



   When the program is started, you must enter the reference number

   of the ABC tune that you want to view. This is the number right

   after X: on the first line of the tune. For example if the line

   is X:145 you would enter 145. If the ABC file does not exist,

   ABassC will create a "demo" file containing X:1 that you can look

   at, modify and listen to. This piece is the bassline from the 1st

   J.S. Bach chorale. He harmonized several hundred of these. Since

   they are public domain and may be studied to learn harmony, many

   of these beautiful basslines are included with the ABassC program.

   Scrolling through the music is done by clicking on the right hand

   side of the screen. The lower left quadrant gives a dialog box for

   a new piece. To play the music, touch on the upper left part of the

   screen. To stop playback press anywhere. On the PocketPC you should

   click on Exit to quit the program in order to release memory.



   On the Palm, music may be entered and edited with the built-in

   Memo Pad application. It is easier though to transcribe on the PC

   and then perform a HotSync to copy the Memo Pad file to the Palm.

   On the PocketPC the tune collection is contained in a single ASCII

   file named "ABC.txt" located in the "My Documents" folder of the

   PocketPC. This file may contain hundreds of sequentially numbered

   tunes with CR/LF at the end of each line and an empty line at the

   end of each tune. Double clicking this file opens it with the pre-

   installed Pocket Word application for excellent editing and entry.

   **Warning** rename the "ABC.txt" text file to another name before

   uninstalling ABassC, otherwise the tunes it contains will be lost!



   Note that the program is limited in its interpretation of the ABC

   language and is only intended to give a readable display of this

   particular type of music. For example, only common major and minor

   key signatures are supported. A whole lot of things such as ties,

   slurs, mid-tune changes of key, meter or default note length don't

   work. And to save space the program doesn't even display the time

   signature. But that won't stop a musician from having a Real Book

   with a hundreds of songs in his pocket with him at all times!

   

   The author plays Fender electric bass and wrote ABassC in order to

   read charts and figured bass on a PDA. Good books on figured bass

   include Niedt's Music Handbook and J.-S.Bach's General Bass Rules.

   To learn more about ABC music notation check out Guido Gonzato's

   excellent site here.



   Author: Norman Schmidt