This is probably nothing new to most readers on this forum
but it is new to me so I would like to share this with anyone
who has not already become aware of this possibility.
Let's say you are on YouTube and you run across a video of
Sinead O'Connor & The Chieftans doing The Foggy Dew. You
google "the foggy dew" and you find a listing for thesession.org
(session being a term for performing for an audience). Go there
and you see four tabs, clicking on the second gives a sort of
code for the music. Highlight all that and copy. I use a freeware
program for editing text files, Notepad++. I paste the ABC file
from The Session into notepad and click on SAVE As, and I have
to scroll up one to All Types (*.*), what that does is allow you
to just type in whatever ending you want as a file type, and will
save it as that.
Another free program is MuseScore, and in that, go along the top
bar and you will find "Plugins". The drop down menu has "Import
ABC". Having saved the notepad file as ABC, Muse will recognise
it. It takes a few seconds and then a score will show up. Some-
times a title will be built into the coding but in case it is not, you
have to add it by going on the tool bar to "Create" and going down
to "text" and following that to "title". Type in The Foggy Dew and
click on the page or something to stop the cursor and fix it. Save
As, and use the drop down menu at the bottom to find bitmap.
Another yet free program I use is Paint.Net, to open the graphic
file. What you get is a transparent with the lines and notes and
text, in PNG. The plain white for a score hurts my eyes after a
while so I made a green ( CFE1CB ) image as a separate file that
in Paint.Net you can import and layer by going to "layers" and then
"import". Stretch the green layer to cover the score layer, then go
to layer properties and on that drop down menu choose "darken"
and then the black part of the score shows up. Crop and save.
