Choon Player Overview

Choon Player is a simple audio player that allows looping of MP3 recordings and a slow down feature with no pitch change. It was developed for learning Irish Traditional music. There’s also options to display and playback ABC files. ABC notation is used extensively for Irish trad music e.g https://thesession.org

You can find the WordPress plugin at Choon Player. Or if you prefer, you can find the code for the plugin at https://codeberg.org/isnz/choon-player

The supported shortcodes are:

1. A player for MP3 files. To display the player, put a valid URL pointing to an MP3 or M4A recording between the shortcodes [choon] and [/choon] on your page or post.
   • For an example see: Choon Player
2. To simply produce sheet music, put a valid ABC notation string between the shortcodes [choon-abcjs-music] and [/choon-abcjs-music] on your page or post.
3. You can display the musical notation derived from ABC notation combined with a player. Put valid ABC notation between the shortcodes [choon-abcjs-player] and [/choon-abcjs-player] on your page or post.
4. If you want a simple ABC editor on your WordPress page then including the tag [choon-abcjs-editor] will draw a ‘textarea’ on the page where you can input ABC notation.
   • For examples of Options 2-4 see: ABCJS Tools

As an alternative to Option 3 you can use:

• A player for ABC notation. To display the player put ABC notation between the shortcodes [choon-abc] and [/choon-abc]. This option is based on an older now unsupported library called ‘musical.js’ which may have issues in future. This is still included for now – you may want to replace any current use with [choon-abcjs-player].
  • For an example see: Choon ABC Player

Previous versions of this code had shortcode tags of [abcjs-tools-music], [abcjs-tools-player] and [abcjs-tools-editor].
These are retained for backwards compatibility but have been superceded by options 2, 3 and 4 above. Use the new codes!

Examples

Using these building blocks, we can create pages for individual tunes etc e.g.

• Mountain Road
• Ballymagan Fairies
• ABC Editor

More details

• How to add a new tune page

Uploading MP3 Files

I use the standard Media options in ClassicPress or WordPress to upload MP3 files and then extract the URL of the MP3 from there for insertion in the [choon] shortcode.

Thanks

Special thanks to Paul Rosen for all his work on abcjs. The WordPress plugin parts of this code were based on his excellent ABC Notation plugin. Any bugs or features are all my own work!

The javascript code for the [choon] player was based on the player used on the New Zealand Irish Sessions site.