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tablature notation tautology
From: |
David Raleigh Arnold |
Subject: |
tablature notation tautology |
Date: |
Thu, 26 Sep 2002 11:31:37 +0000 |
"Tablature notation is used for notating music for plucked string instruments.
It notates pitches not by using note heads, but by indicating on which string
and fret a note must be played."
Seemingly a minor matter, but troublesome, producing wrong thinking, and
leading to mistakes already. Tablature is not notation. Better something like:
"Tablature does not give pitches, but instead indicates how notes are to be
played. In the case of plucked stringed instruments, it gives string and fret."
There was such a thing as keyboard tablature, for one thing, when the keyboard
was first invented. I'll have harmonica tablature pretty soon, or rather a
helper for it. It can be done now, without great difficulty. Some
wind instruments give fingering by a diagram of the holes. Producing the tab
is simply a matter of putting
little black and white circles in as fingering. If it's on a single line staff
instead of a regular one, it's
tab, otherwise, it's notation.
Actually, all drum notation is tablature, strictly speaking, but there you
don't have both tablature and notation to cause confusion, so "drum notation"
makes sense. "Tablature notation" does not. DaveA
- tablature notation tautology,
David Raleigh Arnold <=