Alf's Place

Playing tunes on a Palm Pilot

I know quite a lot of tunes but I can't always remember what I know. For years I have used cheat cards with the music for the first two bars of each tune in the set stuck on the card. I can pick a card at random and play whatever is on it. Often someone suggests a tune by name but no-one can remember how the melody starts. Cheat cards don't help with this. You need alphabetically sorted lists of the first couple of bars.

If you have a Palm Pilot, PalmABC is a great program. You can read or edit the abc or play the melody at whatever speed you choose. Tunes that you want to play can be added on the Palm or on your PC. The current version of the program only looks at a single Palm database of abc tunes but that can be several hundred tunes. The search function in the program is case sensitive. You can also keep an index in a memo or in a MobileDB file. Then the Palm global find will work.