   ABassC is a freeware viewer/player for Palm and PocketPC devices
   that displays and plays music in either treble or bass clef. The
   ABC notation format is used to show melody or bassline with any
   accompanying harmony (chords or figured bass). The music can be
   played through the internal speaker. The idea is to have an easy
   to read partition on the small size screen.

   When the program is started, you must enter the reference number
   of the ABC tune that you want to view. This is the number right
   after X: on the first line of the tune. For example if the line
   is X:145 you would enter 145. If the ABC file does not exist,
   ABassC will create a "demo" file containing X:1 that you can look
   at, modify and listen to. This piece is the bassline from the 1st
   J.S. Bach chorale. He harmonized several hundred of these. Since
   they are public domain and may be studied to learn harmony, many
   of these beautiful basslines are included with the ABassC program.
   Scrolling through the music is done by clicking on the right hand
   side of the screen. The lower left quadrant gives a dialog box for
   a new piece. To play the music, touch on the upper left part of the
   screen. To stop playback press anywhere. On the PocketPC you should
   click on Exit to quit the program in order to release memory.

   On the Palm, music may be entered and edited with the built-in
   Memo Pad application. It is easier though to transcribe on the PC
   and then perform a HotSync to copy the Memo Pad file to the Palm.
   On the PocketPC the tune collection is contained in a single ASCII
   file named "ABC.txt" located in the "My Documents" folder of the
   PocketPC. This file may contain hundreds of sequentially numbered
   tunes with CR/LF at the end of each line and an empty line at the
   end of each tune. Double clicking this file opens it with the pre-
   installed Pocket Word application for excellent editing and entry.
   **Warning** rename the "ABC.txt" text file to another name before
   uninstalling ABassC, otherwise the tunes it contains will be lost!

   Note that the program is limited in its interpretation of the ABC
   language and is only intended to give a readable display of this
   particular type of music. For example, only common major and minor
   key signatures are supported. A whole lot of things such as ties,
   slurs, mid-tune changes of key, meter or default note length don't
   work. And to save space the program doesn't even display the time
   signature. But that won't stop a musician from having a Real Book
   with a hundreds of songs in his pocket with him at all times!
   
   The author plays Fender electric bass and wrote ABassC in order to
   read charts and figured bass on a PDA. Good books on figured bass
   include Niedt's Music Handbook and J.-S.Bach's General Bass Rules.
   To learn more about ABC music notation check out Guido Gonzato's
   excellent manual here.

   Author: Norman Schmidt MD
   E-Mail: abassc at normanschmidt dot net