Melody Playground | Mainsail Café

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Welcome to the new Mainsail Café! We've rebuilt the site from the ground up for a better experience and easier maintenance. Please let us know if you spot some formatting issues or broken links. We've also worked through a backlog of over 10,000 messages. Thank you for your patience, and apologies for the long silence!

Mainsail Café
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Melody Playground

When contributing tunes, please transcribe and source a melody if possible. For example, use Whall, Colcord, or Doerflinger. See Print Collections for more options.

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ABC Quick Reference

Type ABC notation to see the score

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ABC Quick Reference

Header Fields

`T:`	Title
`C:`	Composer
`R:`	Rhythm (e.g. `jig`, `reel`, `shanty`)
`M:`	Meter (e.g. `4/4`, `6/8`)
`L:`	Default note length (e.g. `1/8`)
`Q:`	Tempo (e.g. `1/4=120`)
`K:`	Key (must be last header)

Accidentals, Rest

`^A`	A sharp
`^^B`	B double sharp
`_C`	C flat
`__D`	D double flat
`=E`	E natural
`z`	Rest

Octaves

`C,`	Low octave
`C`	Lower octave
`c`	Middle octave
`c'`	Higher octave

Note Lengths

`C`	Default length (L:)
`C2`	Double length
`C/2`	Half length
`C3/2`	Dotted (1.5x)

Bar Lines

`\|`	Bar line
`\|]`	Final bar
`\|\|`	Double bar
`\|:`	Repeat start
`:\|`	Repeat end

Other

`(3CDE`	Triplet
`C-C`	Tie
`(CE)`	Slur
`w:`	Lyrics line
`%`	Comment

Note Names

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