This library makes it easy to incorporate sheet music into your websites. You can also turn visible ABC text into sheet music on websites that you don't own using a greasemonkey script, or change your own website that contains ABC text with no other changes than the addition of one javascript file. You can also generate MIDI files or play them directly in your browser.

List of Examples

Full documentation is here: abcjs documentation

There is an organization that has a collection of useful projects related to abcjs called abcjs-music. See some examples there. If you have a project that you think would be of general interest and would like to add it to that organization, contact me.

There is a little difference in the generated SVG: Now each line is surrounded with a <g> element. This probably won't affect your program unless you are doing very specific manipulation of the SVG.

There is a brand new transposing feature. This allows you to input an ABC string and get a new ABC back in a different key. See the documentation for details. I'm sure there are ways to expand this - let me know if your use case is missing.

After way too long, abcjs 6.0.0 is now out of beta.

There are only a few bug fixes since the last beta.

The current plan is to continue doing bug fixes and minor features to the 6.x.x branch, but version 7 is already in planning.

There are some minor features that will still be added to the version 6 branch, along with fixing transposition.

There will be some architecture changes which will go in a 7.0.0 release:

• Improve the API for controlling the synth. That is, make the parameters less confusing.
• Create a plugin architecture so that large features that are not widely used can be added without bloating this library.
• Change the build to use typescript while still maintaining legacy browser capability.
• Reduce the size of the library by optimizing code.
• Control the spacing of the elements on the line better: support equal size measures, and support allowing control of the spacing between notes.
• Improved documentation, particularly for synth.
• Bug fixes.

I anticipate that for a user that wants the most common functionality, the size of the library might be cut in half.

Thanks, Paul

String tablature is now available by adding an option to the renderAbc parameters. See tablature documentation

If you are using an octave clef (for instance K:C clef=treble-8) it will now sound an octave different. The octave calculation was happening twice.

The file abcjs version supporting midi.js is the last version of the old style of sound production that will receive updates.

The default branch is now named main. If you have cloned this repo previously, you can change it with:

git branch -m master main
git fetch origin
git branch -u origin/main main

Be sure to download the latest abcjs-audio.css file if you are using it. If you are styling the audio control with your own css, add the rule:

.abcjs-css-warning {
	display: none;
}

Old versions of abcjs have been removed from this repo. If you are looking for them, you can find them here: Historical Versions

The midi.js package is no longer a direct dependency, it is now a peerDependency so it is not included by default. That way, users who aren't using the old style of sound generation won't need to load the package. If you are using the old style that uses midi.js, include this line in your package.json file:

"midi": "https://github.com/paulrosen/MIDI.js.git#abcjs"

Note that if you are using the minified version of the library with a <script> tag this does not apply to you.

There have been some tweaks to the way wrapping is calculated. Hopefully this will make your music layout a little better. If you start seeing odd results, let me know.

The files in /bin are being phased out. You can get the executables from /dist and the file names will not have the version number attached.

Many of the old versions that were in /bin are no longer kept in the active branches. If you need a particular old version then you can go to the branch with that tag to get it.

The last version in each major version number is still available in the active branch as well as many recent versions.

In this beta the default soundfont was changed to https://paulrosen.github.io/midi-js-soundfonts/abcjs/ Hopefully you will find that sounds better. If you set the soundfont directly then you won't notice any change. If you prefer the old soundfont, use the soundFontUrl: "https://paulrosen.github.io/midi-js-soundfonts/FluidR3_GM/" option when calling the synth functions.

Thanks so much for the bug reports and feature requests that are pouring into the issues. I appreciate you taking the time to help improve abcjs. This is not a full time project, though, so I can't promise a quick turn around on the issues. I am going to attempt to be caught up on responding once a week at least.

And I would love some help on this project, including documentation, bug fixes, testing, refactoring, modernizing tools, and adding features. If you are so inclined, please get in touch.

If you aren't using the same browser and machine that I use, you can thank BrowserStack for their support of this open-source project.