I see a lot of interest in guitar tablature, and although I hate it, I
would like to see an ability to generate tab as a staff below the
notation and without stems for banjo. There is no reason why
the thing couldn't work for any fretted instrument, (including
the saz, which has 14 frets to the octave since it is Turkish.)
Tablature is a minus for guitar playing in general. It is a shortcut to
nowhere. For banjo it is a virtual necessity.
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The way to get efficient generation of valid tablature is to attach a
string indication to whatever notes are necessary to render the
tablature unambiguous.
(I mean unambiguous as tab, not as an alternative notation. Tab never
conveys sufficient information by itself to infer the way the music
should sound.) The default string for any note should be the highest
string *in pitch* on which the note can be played, except as configured
differently, in case of several strings of the same pitch (saz,
balalaika, colascione, mountain dulcimer, samisen(?) etc.) or strings
of different length (chitarra battente, banjo, theorbo, chitarrone,
etc.). Simply by attaching the string indication to the note, it would
be trivial to produce the fret number on the correct line of the tab.
The extra indications in the original guitar music would often not be
so excessive as to render it unusable, but with banjo, the string
indications would have to disappear from view as a part of the process
of generating the tab, or the clutter would be so great as to render
the notation unreadable. This has nothing to do with the actual right
or left hand fingering, which is more necessary high on the neck than
low, and must be used more when there are more string indications.
Fingering should be unaffected. A string indication is in a ring,
whether it be a number or note name, but of course I have always
considered string indications to be fingering also, and I fear that my
previously referring to string indications as fingering confused some
people. :-)
If the music were written in one part, every note high on a string
would have to have its own string indication. A square bracket to the
right can sometimes be used to span several notes or measures. The
more parts in the notation, the *fewer* string indications would be
needed! (Ties do not exist in tab, so the program would have to use the
total time values of the note(s)). I doubt if this approach has ever
been taken, because the people who have done tab before *have not been
interested in good notation*. I think that this is the only way to
get anything good. Good notation is encouraged by this method, because
one gets the best result by writing the music according to how it
should sound rather than according to the way that is most similar to
the tablature. Other methods discourage good notation if they don't
make it impossible, trust me, I've been there. Published banjo music
with notation and tab usually does not contain enough information to
render it playable by anyone who has never heard it, because the
notation is not done with parts, so you can't find the melody in either
staff.
I want to emphasize that I am absolutely against the use of tablature
as an alternative to notation, and I hope that no all tab version of
lilypond will never exist. That would be a different project, and one
which would be worth *less* than nothing, both to students and
accomplished musicians.
--
Peace, understanding, health and happiness to all beings!
U U u ^^ ` 'U u U ''`'`
_-__o|oO|o-_|o_o_-_MN[-->mm@_-_--___o|o|oU_|o_o__lilypond
dave N Va USA David Raleigh Arnold [EMAIL PROTECTED]
