Tablature

I would like to request that the ability to write in tablature be included in a future version of MuseScore. Of course there are several forms of this from renaissance lute tablature to modern guitar and banjo tablature.

As a lutenist, I would particularly appreciate being able to write in French renaissance lute tablature (used also in Britain) which, as you may know, used the alphabet rather than numbers to represent the frets although Italian lute tablature did use numbers. And German renaissance lute tablature used another system all together.

Let me take this opportunity to thank the MuseScore team for this excellent open source programme.

The reference work for lute tablature is Diana Poulton's book "A Tutor for the Renaissance Lute"

I am not a professional music historian. The following represents my understanding only.

There is marvellous site at Dartmouth university run by Wayne Cripps which has lots of renaissance lute tablature archived in pdf files. It has lots of info about the lute. There is even a lute tablature typesetting programme created by Wayne Cripps available for download there which is available for use free of charge (but not for commercial use I believe). He may be able to assist a MuseScore developer. See

http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute/

The renaissance lute started out with 5 or 6 pairs of strings or "courses" to begin with--much like a modern 12 string guitar but they used gut strings. The first (highest pitched) "course" was often not a pair but a single string. The bass strings often used octave pairs while the higher sounding treble strings were in unison. The dividing line between octaves and unisons appeared to move down with time. Over time, extra bass courses were added that were often not stopped (fretted), but were there as drones. So for example my lute has seven courses. As time went on, more bass courses were added until we get into the baroque period where enormous lutes were made with very long necks to accommodate the large number of extra drone bass courses.

French tablature (used in Britain too) used the alphabet to show fret positions with the top line of the tablature representing the 1st (highest pitched) course. The lower case letter "a" represented the unstopped string, "b" the first fret, "c" the second and so on. French tablature was the lingua franca of lute music.

Italian tablature used numbers to show the fret position rather like modern guitar tablature, but the 1st course (highest pitched) was written on the bottom line of the tablature not the top. Thus Italian tablature looks somewhat like modern guitar tablature but upside down. The number "0" represented the unstopped string, "1" the first fret, "2" the second fret and so on.

In Spain during the renaissance the vihuela, a 6 course guitar shaped instrument with the tuning of a lute, occupied the place of the lute. The Spanish vihuela players used the Italian tablature system with the important exception of famous vihuela player Luis Milan who inverted the Italian tablature so that the highest pitched course was represented by the top line of the tablature rather than bottom line--rather like modern guitar tablature.

This webpage gives some images of the French and Italian tablature and also of Luis Milan's inverted vihuela tablature:

http://sologuitarist.net/tablature.htm

German tablature was very different and is explained on the Wikipedia page linked above. See also this early music Google group (rec.music.early) for info on lute tablature in general--including a description of German tablature:

http://groups.google.co.uk/group/rec.music.early/browse_thread/thread/b…

It includes this rather entertaining description of the complexities of German tablature (I regret to say I have yet to get my head fully around it).

"TOTALLY different from any of the above. This tablature assigns a
different letter to every fret on every string. Start with a five string
lute, label the open lowest string a, the next open string b,... the
open highest string e, the first fret on the lowest string f,.. the
first fret on the highest string k, (j is again skipped). When you run
out of the alphabet, add two extra symbols called "et" (sometimes sort
of a backwards capital F, sometimes a sort of upside-down 2) and "con"
(sort of a 9). If you need to go to higher frets start the alphabet again
with lines over, or use numbers if you prefer) Now add the sixth string by
labelling it as you would in French tablature, but use capitals. Just in
case any one still understands, use Gothic letters, and print them
upside down when the mood takes you.

This tablature uses no staff; simply write the polyphonic lines on top
of each other. This is a real benefit of German Tablature; it keeps the
polyphony straight better than other tabs (and better than staff
notation too unless a staff is used for each line). It's also compact. "

It also describes the very rare Neapolitan lute tablature:

"Neapolitan Tab.

A six-line staff; the top line refers to the course with the highest
pitch.

NUMBERS are placed on each line to indicate which fret the string is
stopped at: 1 indicates unstopped, 2 indicates stopped at the first
fret, etc.

Very rare, used by Francesco di Milano. "

The tuning of the lute in France and Britain was (from lowest pitched course to highest): GCFAdg. Lute music can be played in this original tuning on the modern guitar by capoing at the third fret and tuning the 3rd string down a semitone. In Italy the lute was tuned a tone higher: ADGbea.

So the MuseScore tablature feature needs to be flexible in terms of the number and pitch of the strings or courses and have the ability to use the alphabet as well as numbers for indicating fret position. The old fashioned shape of the letters of the alphabet letters is explained on the Dartmouth site (see link in previous post).

I will look out for other info on the web and post it when I find it,

One more thing. Because the lute was one of the most important instruments in the renaissance, there is a vast amount of tablature material available compared to the notation material for the modern classical guitar. The serious classical guitar is a relatively young instrument and it does not have a lot of material specially composed for it. For centuries, the guitar was regarded as a crude folk instrument by the musical establishment. Segovia was the person who first established it as a serious classical instrument. But it took a while to get it accepted, Some decades ago, famous classical guitarist Julian Bream who studied at the Royal College of Music in London once took a guitar into the college and was to told to remove it from the premises!

Classical guitarists spend a lot of time trying to entice composers to write material for the guitar to try and widen the amount of material available for the instrument. The point I am making is that the lute did not have this problem because in the renaissance it occupied the central place that the piano does today.

However, the vast amount of lute (and vihuela) material from the renaissance and baroque periods is also potentially playable on the modern guitar and ought ot be an important part of the heritage of the guitar. The problem is that it is written in old tablature scripts rather than modern music notation. These tablatures are not difficult to learn, but in my experience some classical guitarists that I have come across are sometimes reluctant to depart from the familiar modern music notation and are unwilling to make the effort to learn the old lute tablatures. The tablatures thus represent a possible barrier. If MuseScore could include a tablature feature that would also enable instantaneous transcription into modern music notation, that would be a way of getting round this problem.

Lute music can be played in the original tuning on the guitar by capoing at the third fret and tuning the 3rd (g) string down a semitone. However, I have also come across a tendency among some guitarists I have known who find departing from the familiar guitar tuning a pain in the neck that cramps their style. I am not entirely sure how this might be overcome by MuseScore but if lute tablature could be instantaneously transcribed into the modern guitar notation complete with the usual bar position and string indications, that would also help make the vast material for the lute available for the modern guitar player.

As a programmer who also plays the viol (and has some familiarity with viol tabulature), I believe the following details may be useful for implementing a flexible tabulature feature.

Tabulature setup should have the following properties:

1) Number of lines (corresponding to strings or courses); 6 is by far the most common number, but not the only one.

2) Pitch of each line (only in the English viol literature there are ca. 50 different tunings...). This is to allow automated conversion from tabulature to staff notation, if not immediately at least prospectively (conversion from staff to tabulature is much more complex!).

3) Definition of the character used for each step (letters, numbers,...). Simply selecting the range (letters or numbers) is not enough: In Renaissance and early Baroque tabulatures 'i' and 'j' are not used in the same score (they were perceived as two forms of the same letter, as they actually are!), sometime 'y' is used instead and so on. So, for greater flexibility, it should be possible to associate each step with one arbitrary character; at least the first 18 steps should be usable.

3b) In the best possible world, the fonts used for these characters should be user-definable too: readers of early tabulatures are fond of (and also accustomed with) the littera rotunda used in Renaissance or English tabulatures or the littera bastarda used in later French tabulatures. As it is not practical for MuseScore to include all these variations in its own symbol sets, the possibility to reference an external font for step characters would make everybody happy.

4) Possibility to define the symbols used for note duration: simply using the modern values is not convenient, particularly for older sources. This also may require external fonts.

5) Selecting whether to show a duration symbol only when the duration changes or at every note (only the first case is used in historic source, but the second may be useful for didactic purposes).

Other features:

1) Possibility to define arbitrary strings to indicate non-fretted courses. For instance, in some kinds of later lute tabulatures, non-fretted courses were indicated by letters under the tabulature and/or by sequences of slashes (whence real strings are needed and not simple characters only); similar devices were sometime used for the 7-string viol. These additions should be considered real, sounding, notes and not textual additions only.

2) Possibility to add arbitrary symbols between (or below/above) step characters, as ornaments. They often take up some horizontal space and should be considered in the layout. As tabulature ornaments are usually completely different from modern ornaments (and vary widely according to place or time), usage of external fonts may be useful here too.

3) Possibility to add slurs (extensively used in viol literature).

Of course, features could be implemented gradually but, according to my experience, it is better to plan ahead.

Thanks,

M.

P.S.: All the above do not take into account German tabulature, which is a world a part...

But, most important: from your own posts (and with the addition of mine), there seems there is NO technically correct solution.

If practices vary, the best would be to allow any (or at least most) solutions. If setup features 2) and 3) of my proposal above be implemented, you (or I) could do whatever you/I like.

Your setup for a capotasto on second fret would look something like this (if I got your idea and the notes right, as I said, I am not familiar with guitars):
Strings (top to bottom): F#, D#, A, E, B, F#
Fret characters: 0, 1, 2, 3, 4...

My setup would look more or less:
Strings (top to bottom): F#, D#, A, E, B, F# (same as yours)
Fret characters: 0, 3, 4, 5, 6... (skipping '1' and '2', as you rightly noted)

As simple as that. For speed, some of the most common setups could be preset in ready-made 'instruments' (or instrument variants); more could be custom-made using the setup features.

M.

Hi,

In the attached image, a few samples of Renaissance and early Baroque tablatures are shown.

Please note that all these samples are software outputs (made with Django , a tablature-specific program, if you are interested; I'm not connected with it in any way), not reproductions of printed scores.

This should give an example of the kind of flexibility tablatures can actually have and which I expect MuseScore to approach.

Thanks,

M.

I'm just joining my voice to the others requesting that the ability to write stringed instrument tablature be added to future versions of the software, in my case, for banjo. Thank you to the developers for making free music software.