BarFly for Mac

User Reviews

• Useful tool for .abc file editing

  ElfBardOctober 27, 2010

  Pros

  This has many useful features for a musician manipulating abc files. I particularly like how easy it is to not only transpose pieces, but also to do things like changing modes (especially useful when comparing variations of tunes.)

  Cons

  Barfly can be much more finicky when it comes to the abc formatting that it can use compared to the other abc app I use, Skink- particularly when working with multi-staff formats. The sheet music rendering isn't as elegant as most notation software.

  Summary

  This is a must-have for anyone who arranges sheet music from .abc files, an easy to learn format which has a huge online repository of free tunes, especially for Celtic and other traditional and folk music. This program is ideal for all abc needs, but it has certain functionalities, mentioned above, that both other freeware and most commercial notation programs (among those that can use .abc files) can not. The GUI is not very mac-like, and the sheet music rendering is functional at best, so I would recommend using other apps for printing purposes.

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• One of the great apps

  dajJuly 30, 2003

  Pros

  Cons

  Summary

  This review was originally posted on VersionTracker.com.<br />Phil has created a marvel, the split and join file functions seem to work seemlessly, creating crib sheets for gigs is a breeze, it is like an itunes for musos, it's just that Barfly was around long before itunes! Printing is sufficient- but you can use one of the abc to ps convertors- again been doing that for years, easy enough to then create pdfs for the rest of the band!

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• Absolutely indispensible

  gwyshamJuly 29, 2003

  Pros

  Cons

  Summary

  This review was originally posted on VersionTracker.com.<br />for anyone doing abc on a Mac! Each version just gets better and better, and I couldn't *wait* for the Carbon version to come out, as it and Finale were my last two Classic holdouts. Much more strict in its adherence to the abc spec than most Windoze abc apps, which can can cause some headaches with files generated by (for example) abc2win, but worth it. Not really intended for printout, but perfectly functional as it is. Now if only he'd port it to the Palm! ;-)

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