Lord of the Rings Online (LOTRO) and Starbound are multiplayer online role-playing games which have adopted abc for their music system - visit the Starbound / LOTRO page for links to tutorials and other resources. The following collections of abcs are highly eclectic and include rock and pop classics as well as classical and folk.
This is from the Lord of the Rings Music Manager notes and has lots of information in a concentrated form. ~Maka LOTRO ABC FORMAT QUICK REFERENCE Playing ABC files in LOTRO: LOTRO reads ABC files from <My Documents>The Lord of the Rings OnlineMusic /playlist Lists the contents of the ABC directory to your chat display. You may copy and paste from there /play 'name' <number> <sync> Starts playing an ABC file. Name - The name of the ABC file. You may omit the extension if it is ABC. Use quotes if the name contains spaces Number - The index (X: tag) of the song to play in the ABC file. You may omit the index if the song is the first or only song in the file. Sync - specify the word 'sync' to wait for your whole group to begin playing together /playstart Causes everyone in the fellowship to begin playing any song they have started with 'sync' EXAMPLES: /play MySong - plays the first song in 'mysong.abc' /play 'dances/whiskey' - plays the first song in 'whiskey.abc' in the 'dances' folder under your LOTRO music directory /play Reels.txt 2 - plays the song with the index 2 ('X:2' tag) in the file Reels.txt. /play 'Set List' 2 sync - Waits for someone to issue a '/playstart' and then plays the song indexed 2 in 'Set List.abc', keeping time with other members of your fellowship. ABC FILE HEADERS Headers used by LOTRO X: Number identifying the tune within the file. T:Name of the tune. Shown in an emote to you in LOTRO and shown in the music manager app M:Meter. This can be expressed numerically (4/4, 3/4, 6/8) or as C or C| for common and cut time. Note that LOTRO doesn't actually do anything useful with meter; it has no concept of a down-stroke. L:Length of a note. This is the default length of any note specified in the ABC file and is used as the basis for all doubling, halving, etc. It should be specified in numeric format: 1/8, 1/4, 1, etc. Q:Tempo, in normal format: 1/4=100. For some reason, LOTRO seems to feel like it's playing a little slow, so you may want to increase this number. Tempo and meter also interact in unusual ways. A song in C time will play faster in C| time even with the same specifier for a note length. K:Key, specified like a tablature chord: C, Eb, Amin, Bbmin, etc. The standard supports modal key signatures (very useful for traditional folk music), but I don't know if LOTRO supports that. Headers Ignored by LOTRO: You may find these headers useful N:Notes. You may have as many lines of notes as you need. A:Author of lyrics O:Geographical region of origin. For custom music composed for LOTRO this could include race and zone Z:Transcriber into ABC form. G:Group. This is intended for application-specific indexing information. H:History. Kind of like N but intended for the 'story' behind and about the song You will probably not find this header useful: %%Introduces a large number of advanced ABC constructs, many around printing the file, none of which LOTRO notices. Headers Harmful to LOTRO: V:Defines a voice for multi-part files. P:Defines multi-part (harmony) ABC files. These will confuse LOTRO to no end. Example header usage MUSIC NOTATION Notes are specified by the standard note letter: ABCDEFG. LOTRO supports a 3 octave range; the ABC standard supports much more. Notes are most easily expressed with capitalization: ABCDEFGabcdefg is an ascending, 2 octave A-Minor scale. If you have trouble remembering the order, you can use the mnemonic that capital letters are heavier (larger) and sink below (lower pitch) than lower-case (smaller) letters. ABCDEFGabcdefgAscending scale You may modify the octave of a note with modifiers: A,One octave below A A'One octave above A A'=a and A=a, a, = A, Yes, this can lead to confusion :D The general range of LOTRO instruments is: C, D, E, F, G, A, B, C D E F G A B c d e f g a b c' Some instruments' tessitura does not include the extreme end of the range (for example, the flute will play c' instead of C,) LOTRO will apply and modifiers to notes based on the key signature and will retain accidentals throughout a measure as expected. You apply accidentals with modifiers that precede the note: ^CC-sharp (C#) =BB-natural (Both a note and a good idea) _AA-flat (Ab) Yes, you may use ^^ and __ for double sharps and double flats as needed Rests are specified by the lowercase letter z zA rest z2Double length rest, just like a note Notes normally have the length defined by the L: field in the header. You may alter this with a multiplier after a note: L:1/4 AQuarter note A2Half note A3Dotted half note A4Whole note A1/2Eighth noteA/Shorthand for 1/2 A3/21.5 note length: a dotted quarter note A/4One quarter of a quarter note: a sixteenth noteA//Shorthand for 1/4 c-|cTie the two c notes together. Ties are for the same note crossing measure bars. (ceg)Slur these notes - play them without a break between them. Special Rhythms '<' and '>' are special syntax for common broken rhythm: L:1/4 ^F>GDotted F# to G (3/8 F#, 1/8 G) ^F<GF# to dotted G (1/8 F#, 3/8 G) You may specify common tuplets like: (3ceg. This causes 3 notes to play in the time of 2. Note that there must not be any spaces inside the tuplet. You may use (2 (3 (4 (5 (6 (7 (8 or (9 LOTRO supports more general tuples as described in the ABC standard: (p:q:r Shorthand You may use unadorned slashes to represent dividing by two: C/Same as C1/2 or C/2 C//Same as C/4 C///etc. Limitations Not all LOTRO instruments are capable of sustaining notes. A Harp, for instance, will still play a 'pluck' duration regardless of the ABC LOTRO supports step dynamics +ppp+piano-pianissimo +pp+pianissimo +p+piano +mp+mezzo-piano +mf+Default dynamic: mezzo-forte +f+forte +ff+fortissimo +fff+forte-fortissimo Melody: Notes are simply strung together to make a song, with the | symbol marking off measures: X:1 L:1/8 M:C| K:C ||GF'E^F|F2AE| G4|F'2F'2|G>AA2| GF'E>^F|GGGF| F'/G/F'/G/G/B/D/B| [C4E4G4C'4]|z4|z4|z4 Split songs across lines as needed for readability. LOTRO ignores measure bars except for determining how long an accidental is in effect, but please use them if you share your ABC file. Harmony: Book 11 introduced chords to LOTRO ABC (yay!) A chord is a bunch of notes in square brackets: [] [ceg] c chord These are played like any other note: they have duration, pitch, octave, and accidentals. For example: [d2^f2a2]DMaj chord at double the default length Special notes: If notes in a chord have different lengths, the next note after the chord begins when the shortest note in the chord ends. Spaces inside a chord bracket will confuse LOTRO A LOTRO instrument cannot play the same note twice simultaneously. If a chord is sustaining a note and that note appears in the subsequent melody, an error will occur Example: X:1 N: Notes: N: - use [notes] for a chord N: - Spaces are not allowed inside the brackets. Use [ceg] not [c e g] N: - Chord notes are played together as polyphony. N: They take up duration as though they were N: listed separately. [cegc'4] will play [ceg] for one unit N: and play [c'] for 4 N: - Note how the middle c sustains after the rest of the chord in the final bar T:Testing chords K:CM M:C L:1/4 Q:1/4=150 [ceg] egc | [f,ac] ac'f | [g,bd] b,d>f, | [gbdf,] [c3e2g2c'2c,2] || Example that generates the 'note is already sounding' error: [c4e2g2]C/E/G/c The c in the chord continues for 4 counts, but the notes after the chord begin after 2 counts (the length of the e and g notes in the chord). Since the c note in the melody occurs within 2 more counts, it duplicates the c in the chord. ABC Features not supported in LOTRO: If you are editing an ABC file from the net to make it work in LOTRO, here are some of the more common elements you may need to remove: { }Grace notes [ ]2Length of a chord. Put the number after each note in the chord [DD]Unison or drone for some instruments. Remove one of the notes. 'Am'Tablature symbol in the melody. Ignored by LOTRO. Replace with a chord. W:Indicates lyrics. LOTRO will ignore these for now. LOMM can use these lines to output the lyrics [V:1]Voice indicator for a line. Separate each voice into a file for synchronized play. |: :|Repeats. You have to duplicate the contents manually. Comments are closed.
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