David Raleigh Arnold wrote: > Thanks much. The scholarly poster is right that there are > historical instances of putting the first string at the > bottom, but English renaissance lute tablature and all > modern tabs have the first string at the top so the > low notes will be on the bottom. *No one alive* is really > used to the upside down systems. > > Of course the lute isn't around much any more, largely > on account of tab. > I suspect I may be 'the scholarly poster', and regret that my post went to Mr. Arnold alone, a byproduct of the way my mailer chooses the to whom for a reply. Here is the text of my post: [begin quote] It is worth noting that a single approach to tab is a Bad Thing(TM) regardless of _which_ approach it is. Those of us who use tab a lot know that there are many different ways of tabbing even for a single instrument. Specifically, the lute: Modern tab notation, especially in ASCII form, tends to use numbers in the spaces between lines. The spaces, therefore, represent the strings. In general, they are high-string to top space. This is quite easy to do with ASCII, although tiresome to try to read. French tab uses letters, laid on lines which represented strings. The highest pitched string is on the top space. a is an open string, b is the first fret. This was popular amongst the English Lutenist Songwriter's school as well, so most lutenists who were exposed to tab via that literature will want to see it. Spanish tab uses numbers, usually laid over the line rather but also in spaces. The highest pitched string is on the bottom of the tab staff. These latter two standards alone (and I think something that has persisted for a few hundred years probably deserves the honor of being called a standard, certainly, if modern notation, a mere baby, does) lead to an immense number of systems: Letters or numbers as fret indicators; top pitch on top or bottom line; fret indicators on the lines or in spaces between the lines; whether to have lines encompassing highest and lowest strings if they are on spaces... Now add timing (which much modern tab does not, making it almost useless unless the person reading the tab already knows the music entabbed, ie, useless for newly-composed music). Because of the difficulty of notating long periods, most tab that notates time at all does it with duration-indicators that are divide-by-2, 4 or 8 of how the music might 'normally' be notated. Thus contemporary scores exist in keyboard notation with minims (look like diamond-shaped half-notes) and in lute tab with single-flag stems, a 4:1 time-notation difference. Whole notes floating over a tab staff ... well... look silly. An additional difficulty is how to deal with 'extra strings'. If the strings aren't fingered, they are traditionally notated by a single character or set of characters under the bottom string's area. In french tab, the general tendency was to treat the seventh string and even the eighth as if it were just another fingerable string. (ie, 'a' for the open string on a line of its own). More strings were treated a bit differently, often by a/ a// a/// or a\ a\\ a\\\ notations in the space below the staff. When the lute grew more strings (in the baroque period) numbers were used, usually starting with 4. This can get quite out of hand, by the way, especially since the counting of 'diapasons', the extra courses, can start at the seventh or the tenth or... well, anywhere. Now, the tendency might be to say, "Lily is for notating modern stuff", and dis the entire subject. As a counter to this, I note that Lily is perfectly good for notating Bach's concertos, cantatas, overatures and sonatas... even the violin partitas. But it cannot properly notate the lute versions. It is my belief that a system within lilypond for sensibly making tab notation is possible. However, I have to admit that my years of FORTH, various basics, and C have not prepared me for C++ and the incessant object oriented paradigm. So if someone who is able to read lily's internals and code, and who wants to have some fun implementing tab so that it is as versatile and functional as tab has been for centuries, I'd love to collaborate. raybro [end quote] While it is easy to wave a hand and dis the lute and all tab systems other than banjo and guitar, it is the aim of Lilypond to typeset beautiful music notation, and anything that makes that goal easier should be appropriate to consider. The claim that nobody alive reads spanish notation is erroneous, at least from a few moments ago when I checked my pulse. More importantly, it addresses the question of whether printing and presenting early music is appropriate in any form. Can it be that we should only print renaissance music in score or piano-reduction form? Perhaps it is desirable that all music only be published in one or the other of those forms. On the other hand, Lilypond _does_ have fonts and clefs for printing white mensural notation and neumes, and now can also do tab. Perhaps it is as viable an approach to tell the folk wanting to print tab that they should just be using modern staff notation? I still feel that the question of being able to print tabs appropriate to different instruments and different styles of tabbing is desirable, and my offer is still open if someone who can deal with the code wants to discuss it. raybro _______________________________________________ Lilypond-user mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/lilypond-user
