Play ABC files in your browser
The plain text folk musicians write their tunes in. Open a tune or a whole tune book right here, see it as sheet music and hear it play. Nothing leaves your device.
Or drop it anywhere on this page
What you'll see
Your score opens on white paper, in notation and tab as it's written, and plays with the bar it's on followed.
- Play • Half to 1.5× speed
- One track, or all of them
- Notation, tab or both • A page or one long line
- Export • Save as MIDI or Guitar Pro
About ABC
Chris Walshaw came up with ABC so tunes could be written down in plain text, and folk musicians have shared reels, jigs, hornpipes and songs in it ever since, in tune books, mailing lists and sites like The Session.
Each tune starts with X: and a header of its title, meter, note length and key, then its notes as letters: lengths as numbers after them, bar lines and repeats, chords in quotes, and the words under the notes after w:. A file holds one tune or hundreds.
Filepeek reads ABC in your browser after the 2.1 standard, voices, triplets, grace notes, endings and all, and alphaTab draws it on white paper, then plays it with General MIDI sounds, the bar it's on followed. A tune book's tunes follow one another, each with its title. Save as MIDI or as a Guitar Pro file.
ABC notation
.abc
Format
- MIME type
- text/vnd.abc
- Made by
- Chris Walshaw
Inside the file
- Holds
- Tunes, voices, chords and words
- Text
- Plain text
- Tunes
- One or many in a file
- Standard
- ABC 2.1
Opens in every browser
Filepeek draws ABC as sheet music and plays it in Chrome, Edge, Firefox and Safari. On their own, browsers show it as plain text or download it.
- YouChromePlays through Filepeek
- YouEdgePlays through Filepeek
- YouFirefoxPlays through Filepeek
- YouSafariPlays through Filepeek
Apps that open ABC
- WindowsEasyABC, free
- MacEasyABC, free
- iPhone and iPadNo app built in opens it
- AndroidNo app built in opens it
Questions
How do I open an ABC file?
Drop it on this page or press Peek an ABC. The tunes open as sheet music and play in your browser, with nothing to install.
What happens to a file of many tunes?
They open one after another in one score, each with its title over its first bar. A very big tune book opens its first 4,000 bars, and the subtitle says how many of its tunes those hold.
Why are some decorations missing?
Staccatos, accents, fermatas and trills show, and segno, coda and the like are written as words. Rolls, mordents, bowings, and the drums and drones %%MIDI asks for aren't drawn or played.
Is an Alembic .abc file the same?
No. Alembic, the 3D animation cache Blender and Maya write, uses .abc too. Filepeek tells them apart by their first bytes, and an Alembic file shows what it is on its About card.
How do I convert ABC to MIDI?
Open it, choose Export, then Save as MIDI. Every voice goes into the MIDI file.