Re: Add option to indicate frets by letters in tablature (issue164063)

[Trevor Daniels]

Thanks for this, Dana.  We're some way off implementing
fonts, or whatever means we select for rendering specific
lettering, but I shall carefully file all this information
away and draw on it at the appropriate time.  For now I'm
more concerned with understanding the internal mechanisms
of LilyPond and implementing some rather basic facilities.

Trevor

----- Original Message ----- 
From: <address@hidden>
To: "Carl Sorensen" <address@hidden>
Cc: "Ian Hulin" <address@hidden>; "Trevor Daniels" 
<address@hidden>; <address@hidden>; 
<address@hidden>; <address@hidden>; 
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Sent: Tuesday, December 08, 2009 12:23 AM
Subject: Re: Add option to indicate frets by letters in tablature 
(issue164063)




> > Fret 3 was lettered as ɣ, which was rendered in some 
> > contemporary
> > engravings
> > to look a bit like a fancy r, so some modern transcriptions of 
> > the
> > tablature
> > turn it into an r. If we're going to re-render ɣ, why not do it 
> > as c,
> > and
> > keep the logical letter sequence.Â
>
> My preference would be to render it as gamma.  Let's do it 
> correctly.
> Thanks for pointing this out.

'c' marks fret 2 in French tab.

Correct is to think of it as 'c', employ that concept internally, 
and in
any documentation.  Draw it as a gamma-like glyph in fonts emulating 
those
hands and fonts which do so historically; but encode it in those 
fonts as
the 'c' it is.

This list is the first place I have seen mention of the concept of 
it
being a gamma, the citations i gave in an earlier email are the 
scholarly
references for tablature notation, I own Apel and have it open now, 
but
Wolf is hard to come by outside of a good music library.  Apel takes 
time
to discuss the development of some symbols, clefs for instance, but 
not
these, no mention of gamma at all in his discussion of the symbols 
of
french tabulature.  He illustrates Granjons pretty font in a 1568
publication, the 'c' in that font is a combination of both, the 
lower
curve of a 'c', the upper flattened arm of a gamma.  The hand  of 
gaultier
as seen in the Hamburg codex is also shown, there the 'c' (as 
labeled by
Apel) is indeed a gamma, very rectilinear modern 'r'.  But, my point 
here
is that Apel labels it 'c', and says nothing about it resembling a 
gamma.

The omission of j will be curious to anyone writing analytical 
software,
but that is enough strangeness (gotta have at least one point of
strangeness).

Please note that Pierre Attaignant (first printer of french 
tabulature
notation) used ROMAN MAJISCULE letter forms in his 1528 and 1530 
editions,
C was a C for his readers.  I wish I had the material from my survey 
of
french tab printers fonts handy, I am sure there are others whose 
letter
forms were more italianate than courthand.

--
Dana Emery