An ABC is an alphabetically based music notation system - Ie it is sheet music in text form. This allows us to create ABC (music) files which may be recognised and played using the LotRO in-game music system. If you are musically minded it shouldn’t be too difficult for you to pick up the basics. If not, well we provide tons of already created ABCs for you to enjoy!
This website offers you two choices for acquiring ABCs. The first is where you can manually make the file by copying what appears in the text boxes after choosing to view the song. Each part should be saved as a different ABC. The other is by using the download cart, which will download all your selected files as a .zip. All you need to do is ensure the file is saved to your music folder, which you should find in the same location your screenshots get saved (usually C:\Documents and Settings\<owner>\My Documents\The Lord of the Rings Online\Music). Once you have saved the file to the right place, all you have to do is equip your instrument in-game, type /music to toggle music mode and type /play <filename>.
Many of the ABCs you will find on this website come in several parts, each played with different instruments. To play the same song with your friends you can sync your ABCs to start at the same time. To do this type /play <filename> sync. Then when everyone has done the same, type /playstart to start the song.
Please note you must be in a fellowship or raid to gain the ability to sync ABCs with others.
Press ~ (American) or ¬ (UK) to stop an ABC part way through.
....COMING SOON
A few people have been asking for a tutorial or lessons on how to make ABCs, so here I shall lay bare my secrets and teach you how easy making ABCs can be.
All I do is convert Midi files to ABC files (and mess around with them) which almost anyone can do. Please keep in mind that the ABCs can only be as good as the Midi unless you want to do it by hand...and I'm not the one to teach you that.
Every thing that I write here I have found out by messing around. Others will use different programs which work for them, or write ABCs by hand. This is just the way that I have been doing it and it works well for me. There may be better methods and programs out there; it’s all about finding what works to you.
The Midis
What a good place to start! There are various free midi sites lurking in the depths of the internet, which can provide a large selection of genres and titles for you to play with. My favourite by far is
http://www.freemidi.org/ There are tons on there, but the quality may fluctuate from song to song, as does the presence of vocals.
For this Tutorial, I am going to start with very simple song to translate into ABC:
Bron-yr-Aur by Led Zeppelin.
The Processes:
I have 3 main processes I put the midi files through before you get the nicely playable ABC:
Editing the Midi
Midi to ABC
Editing the ABC
Editing the Midi
Midis have a different track for each instrument and part. The limited amount of instruments available in LotRO means that sometimes you have to edit the Midi before creating an ABC; whether that be merging tracks to lessen the number of instruments used, or deleting them if they're unnecessary, or just won't work in an ABC. I like to get the Midis as tidy as I can before converting to ABC and this is how I do it:
http://www.anvilstudio.com/
Anvil Studio is a program which lets you edit the Midis. Occasionally you'll get one which has all the tracks merged into one so you can't make the ABC until you get Anvil to split them automatically.
What I like about this program is that it it's relatively easy and intuitive to use. It has the added bonus of the composer view mode, which will let you see the notes of the song as it plays. You can even transcribe some of your own sheet music into Midi format using Anvil Studio.
Now for this song in particular (Bron-Yr-Aur) there are 2 tracks. When I made the ABC I decided I wanted it to stand alone as a single part so I merged the tracks. To do this, you select the track you want to merge both parts into, find the 'Track' button in the top left corner, and from the drop down menu select 'merge...' This will bring up the option to select the track you want to merge. To check that it sounds ok, I'll mute the now obsolete part and play the track as solo.
You can rename the parts if it's got lots of them to make it easier to decipher in the next step. Don't worry if the song sounds a bit messy here - the more editing you do, the weirder it sounds - but it's all about making it translate into an abc well rather than sounding like a proper midi.
Once you've saved the midi file, it's time to move onto the next step.
Midi to ABC
I like to use a program created by one of the
members of the community. It's incredibly easy to use and for the most part works very well for it's purpose.
Lotro Midi Player
Once you've downloaded and installed the program, open it up and drag and drop your newly edited midi file into it.
You'll see all the different tracks pop up on the screen for you to start playing with. All the parts that can be made into a good ABC will be pre-selected. At this point any drum parts will be in red...those don't convert well and are an entirely different ball game (I'll come to that later).
You want to make sure that you have ONLY the parts you wish to turn into an ABC selected. At the bottom of the midi-player you'll see the play options. Here you have the opportunity to transpose the files. What this means is that the notes will shift up or down on scale to try to fit the most in the range of the LotRO musical instruments. It will automatically choose the best transposition for the files you have selected...and it's important to only have the tracks you're going to use selected so you can get it transposed better by omitting the unused parts. It's also very important to have all the files transposed at the same number (except drums). If you don't it will sound terribly out of tune. Don't worry if you have some notes out of range. It's bound to happen. You won't know until you play it whether it's going to be a success though.
Once you've transposed the song you get to create the actual ABC files. You want to check each part individually and go File >> Export to Midi and choose your filename. Selecting more than 1 part will merge them into the same ABC.
Editing the ABC
This is the easiest part. The midi-player names the ABC after the song file itself, so it's nice to go through and change the titles. Instead of opening them all up by hand, you can get a rather nifty program called the
Lotro Music Manager (LOMM), another
Community-made program.
This will allow you to quickly snap between all the different ABCs you have made, to edit them easily and to even toggle music mode, play the files in-game, and sync them up. It's a wonderful program!
So, open up LOMM, find your file and take a look.
This is what I see with mine:
X: 1
T: bronyraur (1:56)
Z: Transcribed by LotRO MIDI Player: http://lotro.acasylum.com/midi
% Original file: bronyraur.mid
% Transpose: -7
L: 1/4
Q: 86
K: C
z7/4 D/4 [F5/8z/4] c/4 [f3/4z/4] F,/4 [F5/8z/4] [cz/2] D/4 [F5/8z/4]
c/4 [f3/4z/4] F,/4 [F5/8z/4] [cz/2] D/4 [F5/8z/4] c/4 [f3/4z/4] F,/4
[F5/8z/4] [cz/2] D/4 [F5/8z/4] c/4 [a3/4z/4] F,/4 [F5/8z/4] c/4
[f3/4z/4] D/4 [F5/8z/4] c/4 [a3/4z/4] F,/4 [F5/8z/4] c/4 [f3/4z/4]
Because I'm cheeky and like it to be tidy I play around with the titles etc. so the above turns into this:
X: 1
T: Bron Yr Aur - Led Zeppelin - LUTE
Z: Figgy - Elendilmir
L: 1/4
Q: 86
K: C
z7/4 D/4 [F5/8z/4] c/4 [f3/4z/4] F,/4 [F5/8z/4] [cz/2] D/4 [F5/8z/4]
c/4 [f3/4z/4] F,/4 [F5/8z/4] [cz/2] D/4 [F5/8z/4] c/4 [f3/4z/4] F,/4
[F5/8z/4] [cz/2] D/4 [F5/8z/4] c/4 [a3/4z/4] F,/4 [F5/8z/4] c/4
[f3/4z/4] D/4 [F5/8z/4] c/4 [a3/4z/4] F,/4 [F5/8z/4] c/4 [f3/4z/4]
The only thing I changed here was the two lines:
T: Is the title. This is what you will see when you are syncing up with everyone else. It helps to add the part instruments here so you know everyone is playing the right part.
Z: Just who made/transcribed the song.
oh, for those of you musically inclined but who do not have a clue how this will help you in ABCs, the other bonus of the LOMM is the Quick reference guide to ABCs. It'll tell you exactly what you're seeing in plain ol' music language.
Help >> ABC Quick Reference
Love it!
So now you've edited your midi, turned it into an ABC and readied the parts. Now it's time to play!
Now if you don't mind playing parts without drums STOP HERE. The next part is a headache to do, but if you’re a bit of a Masochist, follow on to the next step.
(Note: Keep your eyes peeled for the Drum Conversion Project. It’ll make this 100x easier!)
Drums
This for most people will be very confusing and not worth the time. But if I don't put it up people are going to ask, and think that it can be done with a few clicks of the mouse, so I shall.
Yeah, so Midi drums to LotRO ABC drums doesn't convert. If you just try to play the drums file in a song exported straight from midi to ABC it'll have the rhythm but the notes will be completely wrong. They have to be edited to work…By hand. This requires basic knowledge of ABC language, something which I learnt by trial and error and I am by no means an expert.
So here's how I do it:
Save the drums ABC like all the others and open it up in LOMM. This'll be your reference to what the file looks like before you start messing with it. You can have a play with the raw ABC file in-game to see how it sounds if you want. What I do is then go back to Anvil studio, select the drums track and look at the composer view (which lets you see all the musical notes). If you hover your cursor over the notes you get to hear what it sounds like without playing the whole song. I then go through the different sounds on the in-game drum and find what matches best. Bear in mind there are vast differences in the sounds between the two. WTB [Cymbals].
Once you find a note you like the sound of, open up your key-mappings and find out which note it is. Here's a basic translation between LotRO IG music and ABC language.
The Low Octave:
lotRO : ABC
C2 - C,
C#2 - ^C,
D2 - D,
D#2 - ^D,
E2 - E,
F2 - F,
F#2 - ^F,
G2 - G,
G#2 - ^G,
A2 - A,
A#2 - ^A,
B2 - B,
The Normal Octave
C3 - C
C#3 - ^C
D3 - D
D#3 - ^D
E3 - E
F3 - F
F#3 - ^F
G3 - G
G#3 - ^G
A3 - A
A#3 - ^A
B3 - B
The High Octave
C4 - C'
C#4 - ^C'
D4 - D'
D#4 - ^D'
E4 - E'
F4 - F'
F#4 - ^F'
G4 - G'
G#4 - ^G'
A4 - A'
A#4 - ^A'
B4 - B'
C5 - c'
So, you've found which note you want to use in LotRO, then look at the above list and find it's ABC counterpart. Now, here's where it gets fun:
Look at the notes in your ABC and figure out which one you're trying to change. chords are played within brackets like [^C/4^A,/4] it takes a bit of working out, but you can figure out on the ABC what note you want to change...throughout the entire song.
Say the first note of the ABC is ^F, and I have figured out that the C#3 note on lotRO sounds better (^C)....So I open up notepad and use the "replace all" feature. Make sure you type in the symbols too or it'll get messy. The more complicated the drum part, the more fun you're going to have editing this >.< If you're using the replace all feature, once you know which notes you're going to be replacing it can happen pretty damn fast, but it's practice that'll help you here.
So then match the next note between Anvil and IG drums, find it, replace it, rinse and repeat until you have the whole thing done.
NOTES:
The LotRO community created programs are works in progress. They are not flawless. I know LoMM crashes for some people and Midiplayer can create the ABCs strangely. If you find an error in the ABC you can open up LoMM and find exactly what is the problem. The most common reasons are below:
You'll find floating brackets within the ABC.
Usually before or a rest ie, ] z/4 ] z/4. You can take these out by hand and it wont effect the sound of the ABC at all. All you need to do is remove those extra floating brackets...but be careful you don’t remove brackets that are really supposed to be there.
It won't stay synced.
You need to look at the speeds in Anvil studio to make sure there are no tempo/timing changes throughout the song. If most of your parts are 4/4 then that 6/4 section is going to mess you about. You can change this in Anvil. Sometimes I haven't been able to fix this for no good reason. :-/ I’m still learning.
Note is still sounding
Funny note lengths will do this. Unless you know kinda what you're doing with ABCs it'll be a pain in the backside to fix. One of those things you have to do by hand.
Well I think that's about it. Some of it is confusing, I know. Trial and error is the best way to figure it out so you can get comfortable with it. I'm still learning now after making a ton of these files.
If you've got any questions please post them here. If you try and get frustrated with the drum part of a particular song, as long as it isn't insanely complicated you can cross my palm with silver and I can give it a go. Also if there’s something wrong with the ABC and you can’t figure out what it is then feel free to send me a PM on the official forums and I’ll take a look at it (username: Bob).
Thanks for reading!
…COMING SOON.