Re: Lute tablature

[Taco Walstra]

On Friday 16 May 2003 23:14, Laura Conrad wrote:
> >>>>> "Rune" == Rune Zedeler <address@hidden> writes:
>     >> I don't think any tab format does distinguish cis from des.
>
>     Rune> No, exactly! This is why you cannot turn a tab into music.
>     Rune> A tab is performance-notation and not music-notation. Hence I
> don't Rune> see any point in making lily convert tabs into its internal
> music Rune> representation.
>
>
> I was just asking lily to print tab; I didn't say it should convert it
> into anything.
>
> It can consider it a funny kind of lyrics, for all I care.
>
> The abctab2ps tab output is really good, but the staff notation of the
> vocal line reminds me of why I switched to lilypond.

Laura, you're fully right. I maintain an archive with early music typeset in 
abc (or perhaps better abctab), mostly lutemusic + some figured bass pieces. 
(www.wins.uva.nl/ABCArchive). The nice characteristic of abc is the easy 
entering of the music (it takes about 50% of the time to typeset a piece in 
abc compared with lily). abc is however very primitive (I saw some nice dutch 
remarks about the syntax in the abc2ly python script, which are indeed true). 
For lute tablature it's ok, but for more complicated scores it's not. I moved 
over to lily for my figured bass scores, especially because singers always 
want to transpose a piece to a different key. for combinations of lute 
tablature + voice / simple staff I still use abctab however, because lilypond 
support for tab is still very incomplete for lutetablature. Would be nice 
however if support is improved. About your Dowland edition: EVERY luteplayer 
prefers the lutetablature to some modern notation. A tablature part should 
exist in every dowland edition.
Taco Walstra