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Missing fretboard orientation option
From: |
John Sellers |
Subject: |
Missing fretboard orientation option |
Date: |
Sun, 21 Dec 2008 07:37:30 +0000 (UTC) |
User-agent: |
Loom/3.14 (http://gmane.org/) |
> I'm not top posting.
There is a problem with landscape orientation of a fretboard in 2.11.65.
% begin sample
s1^\markup {
\fret-diagram-terse #"x;3-3;2-2;o;1-1;o;"
" normal"
}
s1^\markup {
\override #'(fret-diagram-details . ( (orientation . landscape) ))
\fret-diagram-terse #"x;3-3;2-2;o;1-1;o;"
" landscape"
}
% end sample
This is literally a matter of point of view because if a regular guitar player
who bends his/her head forward and down to look over the instrument back at
his/her own fretboard, the 2.11.65-landscape most closely matches what will be
seen.
However, a very useful orientation, and perhaps, the most useful orientation is
not allowed.
To explain:
The Fretboard orientation allows two options: normal and landscape.
The normal view is with the nut at the top, just as if a guitar were placed in
the same orientation of the printed Fretboard. The 2.11.65-landscape
orientation is similar to the 2.11.65-normal orientation rotated 90 degrees in
the sense of a clock facing the observer.
Unfortunately the 2.11.65-landscape option produces a image that is upside down
to how a conventional guitar play plays a conventional instrument. You see,
for most guitarists, a printed fretboard in 2.11.65-landscape the lowest string
on the bottom instead of the top, thus possibly causing confusion. On the
other hand, a left-handed guitar player with a regular guitar would not be any
better off with the notation since the fingerings would have to be different
from most players.
The practice of one fine, world-class Jazz guitar player is to write the
fretboard notation with the nut to the right. This notation would be the same
as rotating the current landscape notation by 180 degrees about an axis
perpendicular to the paper.
This approach makes good sense because Jazz players often play by ear, and they
often teach each other by showing each other new fingerings while playing.
When the fretboard of another player is observed in this way, for almost all
players the nut will appear to be on the observer's right, with the lowest
string on the top. From the standpoint of an observer of a guitar player, this
most closely matches the before mentioned orientation of rotating the
landscape-2.11.65 orientation 180 degrees about an axis perpendicular to the
paper.
Such players will have long experience in interpreting another players
fingering in exactly this orientation, and that experience would make the
suggested orientation much easier for them to read.
- Missing fretboard orientation option,
John Sellers <=