>easier than straining the eye to see if that little black >circle is an A or a C and how do I then find that pitch on the >spot.
Fair enough, but for someone whose vision is as bad as mine, it's easier to see where a blob is (on which line or between which lines?) than to discern the precise shape of the blob (which gives no additional information anyway, so why bother?). And why should shape be easier to correlate to a given pitch than vertical position? The notes in conventional notation (which is identical to shape-note notation minus the shapes) give the visual aid of "going up and down on the stave" while the shapes could be interchangeable by applying different conventions. Note for nothing is a scale called, literally, a "tone ladder" in, for example, Dutch and German. I personally also have a problem with tablature. Conventional notation is like a picture of the music; tablature only a picture of the instrument. All this FWIW, as ever. C To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
