What Is EasyABC?

Updated

EasyABC is an open source ABC music notation editor, developed by Nils Liberg and released around 2014 on his website. Since 2015 it has been maintained by Jan Wybren de Jong and Seymour Shlien and hosted on SourceForge. It is a tool for writing, viewing, playing, and exporting music written in ABC notation — not to be confused with Efficient Approximate Bayesian Computation Sampling Schemes or alphabet learning programs for children.

Who it's for

EasyABC assumes you know the fundamentals of ABC notation. If you don't yet, the built-in ABC assist frame can help you learn the notation as you work. The program is aimed at people who want to edit ABC text and immediately see and hear the result, rather than at complete beginners looking for a point-and-click score editor.

What the interface looks like

The main window is split into either 3 or 4 frames, all empty when you start the program:

  • Tune list (left) — lists every tune in a collection, showing the X: reference number and T: title. Clicking a tune loads it.
  • Musical score (upper right) — the rendered notation for the selected tune.
  • ABC code (lower right) — the editable text of the tune.
  • ABC assist (bottom left) — a helper panel you can toggle on or off by clicking the light bulb in the top menu.

Editing a note in the ABC code updates the corresponding note in the score. Clicking the play icon (a right arrow in a green circle) in the top menu plays the selected tune.

Key features

  • Good ABC standard coverage, because it uses abcm2ps and abc2midi internally
  • Syntax highlighting
  • Zoom support
  • Import of MusicXML, MIDI, and Noteworthy Composer files — the MIDI-to-ABC translator is custom made to produce legible ABC code with more sensible beaming
  • Export to PDF, MIDI, HTML (including interactive HTML), MusicXML, ABC, and WAV
  • Find in files, and an "Import and add" option

Technical background

The program was originally written in Python 2, which is no longer supported. The code has since been upgraded to run with Python 3. It runs on Windows, Linux, and Raspberry Pi.

Should you use it?

Choose EasyABC if you already work with ABC notation or are willing to learn it, and you want a free, open source editor that renders scores, plays tunes, and exports to common formats. Look elsewhere if you want a graphical notation editor that doesn't require learning a text-based format, or if you need a tool unrelated to music — the name overlaps with unrelated projects.