ABC Notation Conventions

When adding or editing tunes on this site, the key section of a tune page contains the ABC Music Notation details for the tune (see that page for links to sites with information on this notation). When adding a new tune, the editor will show a template for a tune page with some suggested tags to use, as follows

X:1
T:Tune Title
C:composer if known or trad or anon
S:source e.g. collected by ...
S:source e.g. collected from ...
O:origin
B:book tune published in
D:discography details
F:file URL to online tune info
H:history details for tune
N:other notes about this tune
Z:transcription details
M:meter (nb. C = 4/4)
L:note length
R:rhythm
Q:tempo
K:key
|"D"D D A A|"G"B B "D"A2

The 1st title should match the name of tune page on wiki (with any leading The/An/A moved to end and bracketed), and the name of any related mp3 file.

The origin should be in order Country, State/Region, City/Town/Locality.

Any transcription details should follow our preferred wording (shown below), i.e. transcribed by, arranged by, transcribed & arranged by, converted to abc by

For all tunes added or edited on this site, the following tags are analysed whenever a page is saved to automatically generate or update the categories assigned to the tune, to allow for structured searching for tunes matching specified keys, time signatures or rhythms.

M:meter (nb. C = 4/4)
R:rhythm (use multiple R: lines or separate distinct rhythms with '/')
K:key

Within this notation, bulk tune upload looks for the following specific tag patterns to use to automatically generate links to related people on the companion Related People Archive. Please try to follow this usage for consistency and to support these features.

S:collected from some person
S:from the playing of some person
S:collected by some person
S:XXX Collection
Z:arranged by some person
Z:transcribed by some person
Z:transcribed & arranged by some person
Z:converted to abc by some person

Note: some person is a person's full name, or multiple people denoted as: first person & second person & ...

All these tags may have additional info on the line following either a "," or a "(" that will be stripped out & ignored when extracting lists of related people