I'm writing up a sheet of music for bass guitar in Abc notation and I'm getting irritated by having to type so many commas to place the notes in the range of the bass. Is there any way to set the octave (have an octave displacement apply to every note I write automatically) so I can write
ABcd
instead of
A,,B,,C,D,
and have it render in the correct octave?
X:1
M:C
K:Cmaj bass
L:1/4
A,,B,,C,D,
Based on this abc primer, it appears you can specify which note is the middle line and then your notes are relative to that.
X:1 K:C bass middle=d ABcd
X:1
K:C bass middle=d
ABcd
Based on the documentation for yaps which is part of abcmidi, there is an alternative way that may work for some software. You can add octave=+2 or octave=-1 to the key/clef (K:) line or separately on an I: line.
X:1 K:C clef=bass octave=-2 ABcd
X:1
K:C clef=bass octave=-2
ABcd
Doesn't work here, apparently, but may be needed for certain software.