Re: guitar tab feature request

[David Raleigh Arnold]

On Friday 13 February 2009, you wrote:
> Anyone who would like to be involved in documenting/discussing 
features 
> missing from LilyPond's guitar tab support,

The more features are added, the harder it is to get rid of them.
Perhaps a \plaintab command?

All I ever use with tab is lines and numbers. All of the rest is
on the music staff above. To me, and to many others, tab is merely
an orderly way to present part of the fingering information. Fret
and string and that's it. That is one of the few things that Passport
"Encore" did right. That presentation is more serious, and as a default
it would make LilyPond seem even less of a toy.

When the music is in more than one part another notes block has
to be made reducing all notes on the staff to a single voice. Most
banjo music is published with the notation staff having one voice,
which makes it almost useless. It would be a serious help if lilypond 
made that extra typing unnecessary by lining up all the notes in all 
the voices on the staff with their corresponding fret numbers on the 
tab staff. Maybe it can do that now? How?

When you really only intend to write one voice on a staff, two staves
are not needed.  See "Juba".  Such foolproof pieces are rare, to say the 
least.

http://www.openguitar.com/files/juba-short.pdf

Here is what decently (lilypond) printed music with tab looks like. If 
there were three voices, could I get as good a result?

http://www.openguitar.com/files/tomdooley.pdf

The top staff shows what the music sounds like, including where the
melody is. In tab alone the melody is impossible to find by even
an accomplished banjoist unless he already is familiar with the tune.
Not good.

It used to be standard practice to write lute music in piano
notation when transcribing it. The ability to combine parts
to make a tab staff would be the best way to publish lute music, but I 
think there is no software that can do it yet. (?) Lute
music that is published with tab alone is essentially a puzzle
that only those steeped in arcane 17th C. lore can decipher (or one
who finds the vocals). I don't know how long that state of affairs will 
be tolerated.

I only have two uses for guitar tab:

1. In instruction, to show where the notes are to beginners:

http://www.openguitar.com/pdf/gnotes.pdf

2. Or to deal with the many variant tunings.

Regards, daveA

-- 
Free download of technical exercises worth a lifetime of practice:
http://www.openguitar.com/dynamic.html :::: You can play the cards
you're dealt, or improve your hand with DGT.  Very easy guitar
music, solos, duets, exercises.., To contact, visit openguitar.com