Re: Odp: fingering

[David Raleigh Arnold]

On Wednesday 12 January 2005 10:34 pm, Albert Einstein wrote:
> Do you know something about marking barre ?

I know that a vertical bracket is very popular in Germany
for marking a barre, but I have never been tempted to
adopt it.  Extra verticals are a problem when the hspacing
is tight.

As you know, in English we use "C" for the Spanish "ceja", bar.  Much less
often "B" for the French, "barre".  The problem is indicating how
many strings to bar, and also that Roman numbers are used with it.

Two ways of indicating how many strings to bar are current:
1/2CIII = bar less than all the strings at the third fret.
3/6CIII = bar three strings at the third fret.  This is
very popular, and absolutely horrible to read.

I indicate the lowest string barred instead, using a
left bracket character:

[3g = bar the third fret to the (G) string.  See

http://www.openguitar.com/arrangements.html

2nd measure.  I'm pretty happy with it.  I can't imagine anyone
capable of playing the music having any problem in understanding
it because a left bracket looks like a C without risk of
being confused with a C if you have chord names, and someone
used to brackets shouldn't have any problem understanding it either.

Old ways to indicate barres are to finger some first finger notes
and give position, like "3 pos." or to use an old fashioned piano
pedal mark for position: *3.  That would tempt me but I need
asterisks when I write by hand.  

For flamenco, I wouldn't use an arpeggio bracket at all, I
would write out rasgeados and use t, i, m, a, or q for a single note and
T, I, M, A, Q or U, N, W, V for a chord, so there are no arrows either.
My point is that the arpeggio bracket in guitar music always refers to the 
right hand.  No one will miss it if you use it for the left, but
are you sure you really want to do that?  daveA