Re: Lute tablature

[William R Brohinsky]

David Raleigh Arnold wrote:

> Guitar tab is utterly beneath me.  I have utter contempt for it.  Banjo
> tab is necessary to supplement notation, not to replace it.  Lute tab
> is the language of a dead instrument, and it is a large part of the
> reason that the instrument is dead.  Of course one needs stems, but tab
> stems aren't worth much because tab only has *one voice*, and that is a
> *serious* limitation in spite of all the braggadoccio coming from some
> other lute players.  DaveA

Now that Mr Arnold has, again, ably disqualified himself from the
discussion of lute tablature, let me point anyone interested in the
truth about lute tablature to a few web pages where (without seriously
denting your wallets and purses) you can see for yourself that lute
tablature does, indeed, carry duration notation in the form of stems,
that the lute is being composed for even today and played by living
people (qualifying it, certainly, as still being a 'live' instrument
with a living repertoir) who are still using tablature to transmit those
compositions.

Note that the music you will see has no accompanying vocal or other
instrumental parts from which rhythmic indications must be gleaned and
brought back to the tablature. Note also that there are (as previously
pointed out) variant forms (high string on the top line/space or bottom
line/space; letters or numbers, placement on line or space, and more
interestingly, portrayal of diapason strings (diatonic scale strings
and/or quart or quint strings which are or aren't fingered, which sit
'above' the normal six or seven fingered strings) takes more forms than
just one, including indication of each string on a line or space of its
own, or expressed in the bottom line or space in a few different
fashions (including a /a //a 4 5 6 etc). For completeness, some way of
indicating what those extra strings are tuned to would be Very Good(tm),
since even the english renaissance lute (with only seven strings) might
have D or F as the bottom string! (and yes, this gets more complicated
as more strings are added.)

These are things that deserve to be addressed in Lilypond, since they
are things that lilypond users are actively seeking to use in editions
they are preparing and new compositions they are writing. 

First, a simple (and really simplistic) tutorial on how to read lute
tab:
http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute/tab-intro.html
showing letters, numbers, highstring-up and highstring-down, as well as
diapason strings (under the heading Bass notes), and even a reference to
German tablature. Note that both the french/english and italian forms of
tablature have stems, even though they differ in form.

Next, a whole page of lute tab produced with Wayne Cripps' Tab program.
This is modern typography, but it preserves the true form of lute
tablature, indicating duration-to-next-event (the purpose of the stems),
notes by fret closure per string, and even (to the extent the originals
did) division by group, rather than 'bar', or even utterly by chance
with vertical lines.
http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/tab-serv/tab-serv.cgi

Both of those links are from Wayne Cripps' web site. Just so it's clear
that it is not just Wayne and me (and Laura) who are claiming stems are
a necessary part of lute tab, vide:
http://www.shipbrook.com/jeff/robinson/05.html a 'schoole of musicke'
facsimile with the text reset in standard modern roman letters (with
semblance of original spelling preserved) and scans of the original
examples;
http://www.orphee.com/trans/trans.html which is a musicology paper, "The
History of Transcriptions of Lute Tablature 1670 to the present", more
useful here for it's scans of original tab than the discourse (which is
also interesting);
and http://yoyo.its.monash.edu.au/~mongoose/lute.html which shows lute
fantasias (Dowland, as it happens) in its background, includes some
informative pages, and also shows what a disaster ascii representations
of lute tab can be.

The Tab program, as I mentioned before, makes beautiful tab. It does not
do a good job of mixing tab with notations, either modern or historical.
Lilypond could be doing this fairly easily.

raybro

David Raleigh Arnold wrote:
> 
> On Wednesday 21 May 2003 01:21 pm, Laura Conrad wrote:
> > >>>>> "David" == David Raleigh Arnold <address@hidden> writes:
> >
> >     David> On Tuesday 20 May 2003 06:21 pm, William R Brohinsky wrote:
> >     >> >> This whole subject would be considerably reduced in breadth
> >     >> >> if one simple thing can be understood: lute tab is not
> >     >> >> banjo tab. It isn't the popular internet guitar tab either.
> >
> >     David> Of course it is.  There is hardly any difference at all.
> >
> >     >> Except that the stems give you some note length information.
> >
> >     David> The stems are on the notation, not the tablature.
> >
> > No, in the Dowland facsimiles, the stems are above the tablature
> > staff, but they're definitely part of the tablature.  They are
> > indications of how many beats between this lute chord and the next
> > one.  This is information that internet guitar tab (as far as I know)
> > doesn't have, but lute tab does.
> 
> Guitar tab is utterly beneath me.  I have utter contempt for it.  Banjo
> tab is necessary to supplement notation, not to replace it.  Lute tab
> is the language of a dead instrument, and it is a large part of the
> reason that the instrument is dead.  Of course one needs stems, but tab
> stems aren't worth much because tab only has *one voice*, and that is a
> *serious* limitation in spite of all the braggadoccio coming from some
> other lute players.  DaveA
> 
> --
> The biggest losers of all are the winners of an unjust war.
> The wars are not over.  Just the winning part is over.
> Bush lied.  Thousands died.  dra@ http://www.openguitar.com
> 
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