Re: Proposal for resolving Half/Quarter note ambiguity on pure tablature staves (with partial code mod)

[Ian Hulin]

Hi Ric,
Ricdude wrote:
> Quick intro: Mediocre guitarist/composer, Lilypond newbie,
> Professional programmer.
>
> I've got lilypond 2.10.33 (cygwin version), and, as some others have
> noted, there is no way to resolve whether a straight stem on a
> tablature staff refers to a half note, or a quarter note.
Although there's stuff missing in the default lilypond Tab, this is 
already fixed.  Lily uses beamed, flagged staffs for the tab stems 
already, so there's no ambiguity between quarter notes (crotchets) and 
eighth notes (quavers).

> I've seen this ambiguity handled in some tablatures by adding a short
> straight line perpendicular to the end of the stem for half notes.
> The result looks kind of like the letter L (sans-serif, and inverted
> for upstems), about as wide as an eighth note flag.  Quarter notes
> retain their "normal" straight staves in this notation system.
So a down-beam half-note tab for A major looks a bit like
        ---
        -2-
        -2-
        -2-
        ---
        ---
         __
         |
         |
         |

and a three-beat note would just have dots after the string number. 
indicators.

This works around the case nicely where standard notation uses black and 
white note heads to differentiate between quarter and half-notes.  How 
does this notation system handle whole notes, where standard notation 
has unstemmed symbols? Or even breves (double notes?)

Cheers,

Ian

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