Morceaux

Some traditional music I play or used to play, mainly in the Kazimodal band.

The tunes are written in ABC notation ABC notation standard v2.2 and a Makefile-based build system generates sheet music (PDF, PostScript), MIDI files, audio and HTML catalogs.

Dance types

The repository is organized by dance/tune type, each in its own directory:

Breton dances

• andro -- an dro
• hanter-dro -- hanter-dro
• gavottes -- gavottes (glazik, montagne...)
• dans_fisel -- danse fisel
• dans_leon -- danse Leon
• kaz-a-barh -- kas-a-barz
• kost_ar_c_hoad -- kost ar c'hoad
• larides_6 -- laridé 6 temps
• larides_8 -- laridé 8 temps
• plin -- plinn
• rond_saint-vincent -- rond de Saint-Vincent
• cercles_circassiens -- cercle circassien

Bal folk / French dances

• bourrees_2 -- bourrées 2 temps
• bourrees_3 -- bourrées 3 temps
• mazurka -- mazurka
• scottish -- scottish
• scottish_valse -- scottish-valse
• valses -- valses
• valse_5 -- valse 5 temps

Other collections

• divers -- miscellaneous tunes (galop nantais, cochinchine...)
• catholique -- religious music
• Neketa -- collection from Neketa band
• Skol_Al_Louarn -- collection from the Skol Al Louarn band from the Breton dance teaching association in Plouzané
• Passages -- transition/modulation pieces

Directory layout

Each tune lives in its own sub-directory containing:

• an ABC source file (e.g. tune.abc)

• a local Makefile that sets ABC and HTML_TITLE then includes the top-level Makefile:

  ABC = tune.abc
  HTML_TITLE = Tune Title
  include ../../Makefile
  

• generated files: PDF, PostScript, MIDI (one per voice), HTML

• an all/ directory with a merged MIDI of all voices

Prerequisites

The build system runs on Linux (tested on Debian). Required packages and tools:

• abcm2ps -- ABC to PostScript (with UTF-8 support)
• abc2midi -- ABC to MIDI
• abccat -- concatenate ABC files into a single multi-voice file
• abc2abc -- transpose and manipulate ABC files (part of abcmidi)
• ps2pdf (Ghostscript) -- PostScript to PDF
• timidity -- MIDI playback and audio rendering
• sox -- audio format conversion (for CD creation)

On Debian/Ubuntu most of these are available as packages:

sudo apt install abcmidi abcm2ps timidity ghostscript sox

Usage

All make commands are run from a tune's own directory.

Build everything (PDF, PS, MIDI, audio, HTML):

make world

Play each voice individually (ALSA / JACK):

make play      # ALSA backend
make jplay     # JACK backend

Play the full merged tune:

make playall   # ALSA
make jplayall  # JACK

Transpose up or down by 2 semitones:

make tune+2.pdf
make tune-2.pdf

Generate a bass-clef (F-key) version:

make tune-F.pdf

Deploy to the web partition directory:

make install

Clean generated files:

make clean

File format pipeline

ABC source (.abc)
 |
 +-- abcm2ps --> PostScript (.ps) --> ps2pdf --> PDF (.pdf)
 |
 +-- abc2midi --> MIDI per voice (.mid)
 |                   |
 |                   +-- timidity --> AU audio (.au)
 |                   +-- timidity --> WAV (.wav) --> sox --> CDR
 |
 +-- abccat --> merged MIDI (all/tune.mid)
 |
 +-- --> HTML catalog fragment (.html)

Transposition and bass-clef variants are derived from the ABC source with abc2abc and sed.

References

• ABC notation standard v2.2
• abcmidi (abc2midi, abc2abc)
• abcm2ps
• music_utils (abccat)
• Kazimodal band