Presently it is primarily used for notating and playing back traditional tunes such as jigs and reels but has been already been used to transcribe music from Japanese Koto to Scarlatti. Using ABC Programs Just as you don't have to write music in order to read it, you don't have to understand ABCs in order to use them. Most programs support many tunes per file. You don't need a particularly powerful computer to import 100 tunes with the click of a mouse. There are a few caveats.
Files are tiny because the bare minimum amount of information is given.
This means some formatting and playback details are defined by the user within his program preferences. Assumption of default values can cause surprises. Care has been taken to provide abcs scores proofed in both Barfly and abc2win. We have added forced line breaks, extra headers, simplified details to avoid potential problems and ordered the headers in such a way that visual display will be optimized for both of these programs. Barfly is the hands-down winner for playback and interactive editing.