On Friday 21 January 2005 20.57, David Raleigh Arnold wrote: > Quoted w/o permission: > > [quote][i]Originally posted by donaldsauter[/i] > [br]Jan de Kloe's article "A House Style for Engraving > Guitar Music" in the most recent Soundboard > prompted me to get some more thoughts down on the > subject of guitar fingering notation. > ... > Richard Long, > editor of the Soundboard, told me the Letters to the > Editor column is "defunct" because of the potentially > large lag between a letter and the article it responded > to. He suggested I put my thoughts on the web, and I > appended them to my page: > > http://www.geocities.com/donaldsauter/gfing.htm
Looks interesting at first glance; I added this link to the previous report in case someone will want to implement those rules sometime. There might be some copyright problems; that page states explicitly: "UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES SHOULD YOU EVER USE ANY ASPECT OF THIS FINGERING NOTATION PROPOSAL ON YOUR OWN GUITAR MUSIC. GOT IT, PAL?" but I guess this isn't legally binding since (AFAIK) a method cannot be copyrighted. > I looked, but not very far. You don't have anything. You cannot > justify the notion that fingering "note stacks" is the best way. You > should look at engraved guitar music pre-1880, or faithful copies. No > forward progress has been made since well before that time. Before > 1880, guitar music was extremely important in music publishing. By > 1890, there was practically none published at all. The Reads and > Stones, the notation police, having never looked at any of it, know > nothing of the rules of fingering any of it, because piano fingering > is such a rare occurence that the knowledge just disappeared with the > engravers. Furthermore, the Reads and Stones are blissfully unaware > that guitar music *formed* fingering practice. Consequently none of > their pronouncements on the topic are worth spit, and mid-twentieth > century practice is not worth much either. Modern practice is a > disaster. > If you are not using the first finger, your hand is not in a position, > so a string indication should be used instead of a position > indication. You ought not to base practice on finger placements that > don't happen. These things were thought through long ago. A careful > study of scores will reveal what rules there were. One, right off, is > that a finger indication *never* directly follows a note. Some > editions liked fingers at 4:30 to 5:00 instead of 6:00 when the stem > was down, but even that did not become best practice *IMO*. > > A few of the rules appear to be, in no particular order: > > 1. A finger indication should be as close to its note as possible. > > 2. Better close to note head than stem. > > 3. The fingering indications should lead the eye from one to the > next. This is the part a computer will never do satisfactorily, so it > should not even be tried until everything else works for all cases > without problems or errors. Flow is difficult for rests, let alone > fingering. > > 4. Fingering on staff lines is fine, but never on leger lines. > > 5. A finger never directly, meaning at 3:00, follows its note. > > 6. You can stack two numbers above or below thirds on the same stem, > not > otherwise, but it is better before the notes if there is room. > > Often, as now, fingering was an afterthought, and that is a source of > many errors of all sorts. The space should be allotted in advance of > the notes being placed horizontally, whether done by hand or computer. > > I would have much more toleration for stacking right hand fingering > than left, because correct assumptions about it can quickly and easily > be made, because it is one-dimensional, not two-dimensional. I > didn't find this reflected in old music to any degree, but that means > nothing. I haven't looked at enough of it. > > I want to suggest that you trash all your work so far, and Jan de > Kloe's, and start over with some research to see what *was* done. > Sometimes the baby has to be thrown out with the bath water, or it > just dies and rots. Welcome to the world of creative people. "Kill > your darlings", as Mencken said. If you do otherwise, you are > rejecting at least a century of tradition and expertise in favor of > twentieth century ignorance and know-nothingness. Certainly it is > possible to suss out the rules and prioritize them. It needs doing. > You appear to be interested, bless you for it. Do it. I can only speak for myself, but I don't have the time & motivation for it right now. Fingering notation is on the long-term todo, but much more urgent issues exist IMHO. If you need these features very much, you are very welcome to start hacking lily & implement the system you propose. It would be appreciated. Thanks, Erik _______________________________________________ lilypond-user mailing list [email protected] http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/lilypond-user
