Re: major feature request (tablature)

[Danalute]

Reinhold Kainhofer wrote:
> 
> 
> You mean one tab staff and one mensural staff above each other? What's the 
> problem with LilyPond? Maybe I'm misunderstanding you here, because you
> can 
> have a tab staff and a mensural staff in a staff group in LilyPond.
> 

I understand I can mix stave types, that was not my point.
My point is that tabstaff is needed, but isnt up to the task.


Reinhold Kainhofer wrote:
> 
> 
> Unfortunately, you don't give any concrete problems with the TabStaff of 
> LilyPond. Can you elaborate a little bit on what is not acceptable and
> what 
> could be improved? 
> 

I wanted to keep that message short, I was asking if the members of this
development team would welcome this issue, at least for discussion, if not
eventual implementation.

There are issues with both the printed results and the grammer for
inputting.

Please do not assume this list is exhaustive.

For background, many historical plucked instruments had multiple strings
arranged in courses, some used single strings, many a mixture of both
(citterns often had tripple and guadrupple strung middle courses).  For
those of you who are unfamiliar with  historical tablature, I will begin
with a breif overview.

Tablature abstracts music by telling you where to place your fingers to make
the notes of it.  For a plucked insturment, a list of glyphs may be used to
label nut&fret/string intersections (german), or a shorter list of glyphs
may be used to lable the nut and frets, and course is implied by which line
or space the glyph is placed on (french, italian).  Some instruments are
incompletely fretted (diatonic citterns).  Some instruments have numerous
bass courses, some of which are not stopped but only sounded open.

Rows of fret glyphs surmounted by a row of flags make a matrix which defines
chords and gives minimal duration between them.  Duration of individual fret
glyphs beyond the flag indications is a matter of players choice.  It should
be noted that most of these plucked instruments have limited sustain, more
percussive than sustained, so this limitation in the notation is usually not
an issue for the music.

German tablature  labels each fret/course intersection uniquely emplying an
extended alphabet which is used non-intuitively.  Rows of fretglyphs present
strands of musical polyphony.  Horizontal lines are sometimes printed to
visually seperate the rows, but have no musical significance.

French and Italian tablature labels the frets, and presents rows of
fret-glyphs for the notes on each course; with chords aligned vertically. 
Italian tab present the first course on the lowest row, french places the
first course in the higest row (just under the flags).  Lines are printed
between or thru the glyphs depending on the source.

Historical tablature always seperates the rythmic flags, in many cases they
are used sparsely (omited when duplicating previous value).  Flags are
presented in their own row above the staff, vertically aligned with the fret
glyph(s) they begin.  The tablature editions of Otaviano Petrucci have a
unique way, flags float one space above the fretglyphs, rising fast, but
falling slow - avoiding collision with the fretglyphs below them, but also
leading the eye horizontally.

Present scheme of entry requires (pitch/duration) pairs, this works well for
mensural staff notation and is natural for the musician and composer both in
entry and editing, perfect for \staff.  

Not for \tabstaff tho, the player of a plucked instrument who is using and
editing tablature is thinking of where his fingers are, not what the notes
will be; for \tabstaff it is most natural to think in terms of the fret and
course, not the pitch, and what is thought should be wat is entered, the
computer can and should deal with the conversion (and only as it needs to).

Freted plucked instruments provide multiple ways to play most of the notes
possible on them.  fret/course pair data is unambiguous are should be what
is recorded.  A table of open course pitches and simple calculations allows
lookup of the pitch for each glyph when its musical semantics are required. 
This table could be specified as a parameter to the \tabstaff tag as a list
of the glyphs for each course (for german), or (for french and italian) as a
list for courses i-n.

Barogue lutes often had several extra bass course which are are only played
open (not stopped).  These are commonly treated as if they were stops on the
lowest fingered bass course, and need a seperate list of fret glyph with its
pitch (not always tuned chromatically).

As the flag and fretglyphs are presented seperately, so should they be
entered.  Musical semantics can (and should be) be derived from stored
information.
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