Re: quarter-tone tablatures notation

[Thomas Morley]

2015-10-25 13:00 GMT+01:00 David Kastrup <address@hidden>:
> Thomas Morley <address@hidden> writes:
>
>> 2015-10-25 8:34 GMT+01:00 David Kastrup <address@hidden>:
>>> Thomas Morley <address@hidden> writes:
>>>
>>>> Hi Bernardo,
>>>>
>>>> please see attached. Does it fit your needs?
>>>
>>> What's the essential difference to the current code?
>>>
>>> --
>>> David Kastrup
>>
>> Current `determine-frets' from scm/translation-functions.scm checks
>> whether the calculated fret is an integer. If not, it throws a warning
>> and doesn't print it.
>> At first glance this makes sense, because there are no frets for
>> quarter-tones on a fretted instrument like guitar (in standad-tuning).
>
> Well, "in standard-tuning" is the point.  As originally requested, the
> idea was to have some strings tuned to a quartertone offset, and then
> determine-frets was supposed to use those.

Well, I tested the following code with default `determine-frets' and
`my-determine-frets' from my recent post, output attached.

custom-tuning = \stringTuning <eeh, a, d ges beh eeh'>

mus = \relative {
  eeses'
  eeseh
  ees
  eeh
  e
  eih
  eis
  eisih
  eisis
}

tst =
<<
  \new Staff << \clef "G_8" \mus >>
  \new TabStaff \with { stringTunings = \custom-tuning } \mus
>>

\score {
  \tst
  \header { piece = "default-determine-frets" }
}

\score {
  \tst
  \header { piece = "my-determine-frets" }
  \layout {
    \context {
      \Score
      noteToFretFunction = #my-determine-frets
    }
    \context {
      \TabStaff
      \override TabNoteHead.before-line-breaking = #my-format-tab-note-head
    }
  }
}

The second score looks nicer.
In a local branch I ran it against our regtest, without result (maybe
we don't have a regtest with quarter-tone-tuning, didn't check)


@users:
In general, I am a professional guitarist in the classical domain
never using tablature myself, although I'm able to read most historic
and modern tablatures.
(Apart from "deutsche Tabulatur" - for an image see:
http://www.lautenmusik.net/media/lautenmusik/dt_tab1.gif )

Meaning I'm not very interested in TabStaff. I'll work on it, if users
say what they want/prefer, where are bugs etc.
In other words: I need feedback from users, otherwise I'll focus on other stuff.

So far only Federico and BB (as I first posted the code) reported back.


Please test against real music!!

Cheers,
  Harm

>
>> Though, ofcourse you can produce the quarter-tone pitch via bending,
>> which then is not represented in the tab.
>>
>> Basically I changed it to check for (truncate fret) and removed the
>> according warning (letting the warning for negative frets in place).
>
> But that would then _not_ pick quarter-tone tuned strings unless it
> happened to find them before the others, right?
>
> I don't think that we can solve this satisfactorily without _scoring_
> found combinations and picking best score.  Or at least make separate
> passes with increasingly relaxed conditions, only taking the next pass
> when the previous one fails.
>
> Issue 703 suffers from the same problem: I found a viable solution
> (patch is in the issue) that would always work as opposed to the default
> solution, but that was not accepted by banjo players since the default
> is the better solution _iff_ it works.
>
> The fallback solution as opposed to a finer-grained scoring solutions
> would have the advantage that it is pretty much predictable, so the
> danger that the unhelped fingering is given a different assignment from
> one version to the next is slim.  Of course, with the disadvantage that
> a scored version will usually be better.  Particularly if there is a
> score for fingers retained from the last chord.
>
> --
> David Kastrup

fretless-tab-03.png
Description: PNG image