Re: tab

[David Raleigh Arnold]

On Wed, 21 Aug 2002 10:35:30 Laura Conrad wrote:
> >>>>> "Anna" == Anna Langley <address@hidden> writes:
> 
>     Anna> I would suggest that one could look at the program Tab by Wayne 
>     Anna> Cripps from Dartmouth College for some inspiration in a flexible 
>     Anna> system for typesetting tablature.  If you're interested in seeing 
>     Anna> some examples of these different types of tablature then I suggest 
>     Anna> obtaining tab and processing some of the examples.  Tab can be 
>     Anna> obtained from ftp://ftp.cs.dartmouth.edu/pub/lute
> 
> Another program that's worth looking at is abctab2ps by Christoph
> Dallitz.  http://www.lautengesellschaft.de/cdmm/ has both the program,
> and several pointers to examples of its use.

I disagree with the proposition that the lute is a living instrument.
It is dead as a doornail, regardless of the fact that it has a few
thousand players worldwide.  The guitar had two million in Japan alone
40 years ago, so I'd make a snap guess at 100,000,000 worldwide
now, give or take a few tens of millions.  Maybe 10,000,000 banjo
players?

Tab is a fatal poison to an instrument, because ambitious composers
won't waste their time on it.  Writing in tab is to think fingering
instead of thinking music, which is mind-numbing to composers and
songwriters.  The decent writers in tab were not ignorant of notation,
and without noted versions for voice or other instruments the
interpretation of much of the repertoire in tab would be much more in
doubt than it already is.

My concern is to have "line number one" correspond to the first
string.  Line number one should be the top line of the staff.  If someone
were to want to put the tab upside down (Lamy described it as
upside down, do not fail to note.) for the six string guitar, then
instead of the default:

\stringDef e' b g d a, e,

you would have:

\stringDef e,=6 a,=5 d=4 g=3 b=2 e'=1

and of course \fretDef 0 for all strings.

\stringDef e,=6 sets the e, string as the top line and indentifies
it as the 6th string, so you have the lowest pitched string
on the top line but still enter
it as e,4-6.  All done.  Yesterday.  You're welcome.  :-) 

\fretDef could even be used to get German lute tablature.  I'll
bet lots of people are really great at reading that.  You could
use caps as an alias for the Hebrew letters and LaTeX can
handle the Greek i'm sure.  Or did that go from letters to numbers?  It
could be done easily anyway by defining every fret on every string.  ;-)

I wish that more respondents would bother to mention that
the first string is the first string which should be the line
number 1 which should be the top line by default.  No one
has disagreed with that yet, they just think that it should
be possible to invert the tabStaff.  That was never in doubt.

When tab appears with notation and there is only one instrument
the stems are clutter.  I doubt there was ever any music
published until recent times for a solo instrument with both tab and notes
in score, but fortunately there were often parts for other
voices|instruments.  In those editions the lute part did
indeed cut the representations of the time values in half,
but to do that in a score for a solo instrument is a very
bad idea, totally without historical justification.  That
is not to say that it has not and will not be done.

It is customary to use piano notation for noting lute
music, BTW.  I mean noting, not tabbing.  That may not
go without saying.
 
So the stems should be omitted in tab appearing in score
with notation for the same instrument.  I would guess that
most of the other notation programs out there that do not
do standalone tab have no stems on the tab.  Of course
most of the tab programs have stems.  *Please* make it easy
to leave the stems off the tab part, especially since many
apparently wish to have all sorts of new marks duplicated in the tab
instead of being in the notation, where they belong.

Roll your own instrument.  Suppose you tune the 6th
string down to D, which accounts for a big chunk of
the classical guitar repertoire.  Someone estimated
it as one third of it years ago, which seems high, but
I think you want this user definable before the \score
block in the .ly file.  A duet for two guitars might
have different tunings for each instrument, too:

\guitarOneDef {  % tuning (6) down to d,
\stringDef e' b g d a, d,
\fretDef 0
\fretDef 0
\fretDef 0
\fretDef 0
\fretDef 0
\fretDef 0
}
\guitarTwoDef {  % tuning (6) up to f,
\stringDef e' b g d a, f,
\fretDef 0
\fretDef 0
\fretDef 0
\fretDef 0
\fretDef 0
\fretDef 0
}

(Guitar tab fans like different tunings a lot.)

defaultTabDef = {  % generic guitar c = true middle C
\stringDef e b, g, d, a,, e,,
\fretDef 0
\fretDef 0
\fretDef 0
\fretDef 0
\fretDef 0
\fretDef 0
}

5-string banjo varies a lot with the \stringDef,
but not at all with the \fretDefs:

banjoDef = {
\stringDef d' b g d g'
\fretdef 0
\fretDef 0
\fretDef 0
\fretDef 0
\fretDef 0 6
}

English renaissance lute of seven courses:

luteDef = { %English renaissance lute of seven courses
\stringDef g' d' a f c g, d,
\lineBelow  % \lineOn is default
\fretDef a
\fretDef a
\fretDef a
\fretDef a
\fretDef a
\fretDef a
\fretDef a
}

German lute tablature.  I don't recall it in detail,
but this is the general idea, and it varied a lot:

germanLuteDef = {
\lineBelow
\stringDef g' d' a f c
\fretDef A B C D E F G H
\fretDef z 1 2 3 4 5 6 7
\fretDef r s t u v w x y
\fretDef i k l m n o p q
\fretDef a b c d e f g h
}

balalaikaDef = {
\stringDef e' e' b
\fretDef 0
\fretDef 0
\fretDef 0
}

dulcimerDef = {
\stringDef e'=3 e'=2 b=1
\fretDef 0 x 1 x 2 3 x 4
\fretDef 0 x 1 x 2 3 x 4
\fretDef 0 x 1 x 2 3 x 4
}

Yes there is no way of playing c or f on a dulcimer.
The above is the actual standard tuning and fretting,
but they vary in tuning and number of
strings and fretting.  Since it
is a zither, you play it flat on the lap with the first
string closest to you.  IOW upside down.  I don't know
how much dulcimer tab is upside down, but the important
thing is that it's easy to do.

For archlutes the open strings could be defined in the
last \fretDef and the line hidden.

So I think my proposed syntax fulfills everyone's wildest
dreams, and it provides for everything presently existing,
and does not change the basic syntax in the notes although
it provides alternative identifiers for the strings.  That
could be used for fingering in the notation:

c4-d^S or c4-d^""^S would [additionally] print a D in small caps in a ring 
above the
note in the notation.  (S or I for string identifier.)  It could be
worth it to set up tab just to get the string indication syntax, and not even
have the tabStaff!

The point is that I think that having the strings indicated
in the *notation* with the smallcapped but otherwise same string
identifier as in the tab might make both easier to work with.
I think most people would stick with the string numbers, but
only if the first string is the physical first string.

BTW ^"\\textcircled{\\textsc{g}}" looks *wonderful*.  If
numbers are used they have to be reduced a hair in size.
(1.4.13.)

It makes an instrument easy to set up, and easy to understand
what you did if you come back to it after a long while.

------------------------------------------------------------
Information is not knowledge.           Belief is not truth.
Indoctrination is not teaching.   Tradition is not evidence.
         David Raleigh Arnold   address@hidden