Thread: .ABC File Troubleshooting

Hmmm, I am stumped with this one, sounds like u have everything right, and since the files are popping up on /playlist, I can't think what else would be wrong.
You have the right folder if /playlist works, try to save another file, but in the save window in notepad, change the file type window to "all" then save as a.abc <filename>.abc, See if that works,

Anyone else have a thought on this one?

PS Thanks for the compliment!

Are you literally typing "<filename>" or "filename"? Maybe a screen shot of you attempting to play a song as well (as well as /playlist)? It could be a Vista thing. I wish I could help with Vista issues but I've had the luck of not using it yet. I've heard a lot of issues, game-wise, have to do with administrative settings and the user profile that you are on.

I have the same as above. I followed all the step. I named my file like it said- scotbrave.abc followed all the steps but if I go into details it says scotbrave.abc.txt but I can't remove the txt.

You no longer have to add .abc at the end of the file. The game now recognizes .txt files and can play them. In your situation, however, I have a feeling you are not changing the "Save As Type" option.

I am with everyone else on this one. I have Vista 64 bit. I have followed all the instructions to the letter.. I have even tried saving the file without the extension as someone said to try... it still gives the "Cannot find file" error. I have no idea what to do because I've tried everything.. sucks because I am a Minstrel and have all the instruments.

Originally Posted by Korrgoth204

I am with everyone else on this one. I have Vista 64 bit. I have followed all the instructions to the letter.. I have even tried saving the file without the extension as someone said to try... it still gives the "Cannot find file" error. I have no idea what to do because I've tried everything.. sucks because I am a Minstrel and have all the instruments.

Make sure u don't have any spaces in the name of your saved files.

Thanks to Vista's paranoid security system, I can't open My Documents and have yet to figure out how to edit security settings. I recall a workaround to be able to use Ventrilo--ok, Vista is a four letter word but I have to live with it for now. Can anyone help with the right object names and whatever else one has to do to security settings in order to get into their My Documents?
Fenweigh

I'm having the same problem. New LoTRO player, using Vista, getting

"Couldn't open file C:/Users/Brian/Documents/The Lord of the Rings Online/Music\bachmin.abc"

I find it odd that the folder slashes in the address are all forward leaning until just before the abc file, when the last slash faces backward...any chance that's part of the issue?

Success! I spent a while on the phone with a microsoft tech support guy, who couldn't figure out how to open .abc files. Then I tried a google search and got a hit on the site of an outfit called RegCure. Various testimonials from Vista-users saying how this product helped them open abc files. You can get a scan from RegCure for free. That indicated several hundred problems in registry. Then you can buy RegCure's gizmo that fixes problems, about $39. So I downloaded that and shazaam! songbook downloads popped open. In the Save As tab I was able to navigate to LotRO and the music folder. The path in Vista is not the same as the XP-based path that has been posted here.
There may be a way to open your abc files in Vista without dropping $39; I have no idea what RegCure did that made this happen.

I'm getting the same as most folks seem to be getting, and i'd be willing to put money on it that its somthing to do with the glourious creation of Windows known as Vista. (Oh sweet blissful sarcasm)

I get the error message:

C:/Users/user/Documents/The Lord of the Rings Online/Music\song.txt.

I dont actualy call my song 'song' but you get the idea. I keep getting it, i do everything im supposed to, copy and paste to Notepad, change to All File types at Save As. I tried leaving it with no filetype at some point, others with .abc at the end of the name. All the times i've tried it, i get the same error message. Just refuses to work, and yet other people seem to get it to work just fine.

Has anyone found a solution to this problem, because my patience is wearing fun.

Luckily however i don't intend to stick with this Vista malarky anymore, i intend to get Windows 7.. unless that just turns out to be its evil twin.

Originally Posted by BlameThemElves

I get the error message:

C:/Users/user/Documents/The Lord of the Rings Online/Music\song.txt.

Should there be /Users/user there, I thought it should be only /Users?

I use my wife's laptop from time to time to play music, and she is running Vista, I never had the problems that people are always having finding the right folder. I went to her start menu, clicked documents, found The Lord of the Rings Online folder, made the music folder in it, and it has worked fine every since....

Ok, so i have a song called "Mountain". I did every singly step correctly and it still says i cant find the file. Now, i have windows 7, and i dont have this path:

"C:/Users/Steven/Documents/The Lord of the Rings Online/Music/Mountain.txt"

which is what the game says it is looking for when i type in "/play Mountain". So the game cant find my file because the path to my song is:

Computer/Windows 7 (c/Users/Steven/My Documents/The Lord of the Rings Online/Music/Mountain.abc"

Does anyone know a way to fix this problem? I dont know if the different folder names is really the problem, but no matter what i try i cant seem to fix it. I have tried changing folder names to make the path closer to the one the game is looking for, but there is no way to change the "Computer/Windows 7 (c" part. and i think that is the problem. Help please?

The game reads correctly on Windows 7 (as I am currently running it myself). Are you sure there are no separate folders in between the music folder and to My Documents? And I would definitely suggest not to change any of the folder names. That would most likely just cause more problems for you.

If the game is telling you that the paths are not correct, then I would suggest to double-check to make sure the paths are indeed correct.

I've been having some issues getting songs to run. I am following this guide exactly. I've tried saving as both a .abc and a .txt. Neither seem to have worked. What keeps happening is when I go to play a song or even type /playlist, it keeps saying that I don't have any songs. When I try to play a specific song, say the song is called "potato", it will say "Couldn't open file C:/Documents and Settings/The Dragoness's Lair/My Documents/The Lord of the Rings Online/Music\potato.txt." I've searched through my folders and I found a folder titled "The Lord of the Rings Online" and it has similar files to that shown in the pictures, but I also have a folder called Turbine which contains all of the Lord of the Rings Online files. I'm wondering if that has anything to do with it. I've tried pasting the Music folder in both, and neither seem to work. I run Windows XP. I'm not sure where the "\" is coming from. There have been no rogue spaces to my knowledge. I'm not sure what the issue is.

I am having this freak'n "txt" issue myself, for the last year, (since I been on).

1 Word pad wont let me save as anything but text.
(sure I can name it ".abc" but what does that help)

2 My choices are; Rich Text, text doc, MS DOS and Unicode.

Why is it so flipping hard to figure this out?

3 Will someone please do a complete post on how to do this?
Everytime I get into trying to fig this out all it does is piss me off.

Sorry for being so pissed off, this has been going on for a year now.

Originally Posted by DreadfulBride

I am having this freak'n "txt" issue myself, for the last year, (since I been on).

1 Word pad wont let me save as anything but text.
(sure I can name it ".abc" but what does that help)

2 My choices are; Rich Text, text doc, MS DOS and Unicode.

Some things are Caps, I'm not yelling, just important things that are the most common problems when trying to get songs to play in game.

Getting Started

The first thing you'll need to do is locate your The Lord of the Rings Online folder. in most cases this will be located in the "My Documents" folder on your PC. There are a couple LOTRO folders floating around on your computer so in order to make sure you're in the CORRECT FOLDER, take a screenshot in-game. If the screenshot was saved to the folder you're looking at, you're in the correct folder, IF NOT, keep looking.

Once you have the correct The Lord of the Rings Online folder and have it open, you need to create a new folder inside it, right there WITH the screenshot. Name this new folder Music. This is where you will be saving your ABC files to. If there is already a Music folder there with the screenshot, dont make another. Open the Music folder. If you already saved files to it you should see them there. But since you say they are not working in game either delete them all or just ignore them.

If you MUST use Wordpad, then,
1. copy and paste the ABC you want into wordpad.
2. click "save as" from the file tab.
3. Click "save as Type" window.
4. Choose "Text Document"
5. Type a file name, DO NOT ADD ANY SPACES TO YOUR FILENAME OR ANY FILE EXTENSION, NO .txt or .abc Wordpad (or Notepad) will do that for you.
6. Don't save yet!
7. Click the "Save in" window and navigate to your Music folder that you have open.
8. Now click save.

You should now see this new file in your Music folder that is open. If not you did not save it to the correct folder. Start again and on step 7 make sure the path is the same as your open Music folder. This may confuse some that are not knowledgeable about Windows and opening up folders. Should this be the case I will post another reply explaining this if needed.

If using Notepad all steps are the same except,

4. Text Document should already be chosen for you, leave it set to that.


Now go in game and try to play it.

Equip instrument
enter music mode ( I click my avatars portrait and choose play music)
type /play filename
your file name should be ONLY your filename, ie. /play yesterday (NOT /play yesterday.txt)

Song should play.

If you still are having trouble, let me know!

Here is a tune I've transcribed for the lorto bagpipe.

At the beginning of each line, I have a chord being played to simulate one bass drone and one tenor drone to go anong with the melody that looks like this:
[C,32C32a2]

This works fine except for the last two lines, where the drones cut out, and it beats me why that is happening.

Anyway, here's the full tune:

X: 2
T: The Irish Guards Welcome to Toronto 4/4 March Angus J MacDowell
L: 1/8
Q: 120
K: Cmixolydian

| [C,6C6z2] g2 f3/2 g/2 |
| [C,32C32a2] ga b2 a3/2 b/2 | c'3/2 b/2 a f B2 d f | c2 f3/2 g/2 a2 g a | b3/2 a/2 g f g2 f3/2 g/2 |
| [C,32C32a2] ga b2 a3/2b/2 | c'3/2 b/2 af B2 df | c2 f2 a3/2 g/2 f e | f4 f2 a3/2 b/2 |

| [C,32C32c'2] c'2 c'2 a f | B2 c d c2 a3/2b/2 | c'2 a3/2g/2 f d b3/2a/2 | g4 g2 f3/2 g/2 |
| [C,32C32a2] g a b2 a3/2 a/2 | c'3/2 b/2 a f B2 d f | c2 f2 a3/2 g/2 f e | f4 f2 c3/2 f/2 |

| [C,32C32a3/2]g/2 ac b3/2a/2 gb | a/2c'3/2 af d2 Bd | cf f3/2g/2 ac a/2c'3/2 | b3/2c'/2 ba g2 c3/2f/2 |
| [C,32C32a3/2]g/2 ac b3/2a/2 gb | a/2c'3/2 af d2 Bd | c2 f2 a3/2g/2 fe | f4 f2 a |

| [C,32C32g2] g3/2a/2 b2 c'3/2b/2 | ag ab c'2 c | d2 Bd ca b3/2a/2 | g4 g2 c3/2f/2 |
| [C,32C32a] g ac b3/2a/2 gb | a/2c'3/2 af d2 Bd |c2 f2 a3/2g/2 fe | f4 f2 |

If anyone can figure out why my drones are cutting out, I'll be very grateful.

thanks in advance

This was posted month and half ago, did you figure this out yet? I am wondering because, this played fine in ABC player, drone was played though full tune. But if you mean why the drone kinda skips, (which I think sounds like it should sound) then I may have a answer. let me know.

nice thread thank you

I use LOTROmidiplayer and ABC Player to create and test music files for the game. Since the latest update, any new tunes I create start off fine, but become a jumpled mess the further they progress in-game. They sound fine in ABC player and my old files continue to function fine in-game. Does anyone else have this problem or understand what is causing it? It really has me frustrated.

Originally Posted by Summer_Beor

I use LOTROmidiplayer and ABC Player to create and test music files for the game. Since the latest update, any new tunes I create start off fine, but become a jumpled mess the further they progress in-game. They sound fine in ABC player and my old files continue to function fine in-game. Does anyone else have this problem or understand what is causing it? It really has me frustrated.

Have you tried playing them in game more than once? Recently when I tested music in game they sounded pretty jumbled the first time we tried playing them, but got better when we tried playing them a second time.

We'll try that - thanks!

Had a friend tear the abc apart bit by bit - nothing wrong on that front. What an odd glitch!