About ABC Music Notation

ABC notation is a shorthand form of musical notation. In basic form it uses the letters A through G to represent the given notes, with other elements used to place added value on these - sharp, flat, the length of the note, key, ornamentation. For more details, see the Wikipedia ABC notation page, and the ABC Music Notation site.

For some introductory tutorials on this notation, you can start with:

• learn abc page at abcnotation
• How to interpret abc music notation by Steve Mansfield
• An ABC primer by John Chambers

Once you have an understanding of this notation, you may find the following references useful:

• ABC Quick Reference Card from Stephen Merrony Music
• The abc music standard 2.1 (Dec 2011)
• Frequently Asked Questions about ABC Music Notation by John Chambers

There is a wide range of software available, for most computer and mobile platforms, supporting this notation. One good list is ABC Music Notation Software page. The creators of this site happily use ABCexplorer (Windows), EasyABC (Linux, Mac, Windows) and TradMusician (Android). And this site relies on the abcjs javascript package to render its abc content.

Or you can have a play with our ABC sandbox.