String data for lutes with more than 6 strings/courses in instruments.xml

• Jan 9, 2015 - 12:18

While looking at possibly adding string data for bouzouki (see http://musescore.org/en/node/43786) I noticed that all lutes with more than 6 strings/courses, archlute and theorbo have string data only for 6 strings. Is this intended?

As per http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lute#Tuning_conventions there should be more strings with tuning

Comments

• Jan 11, 2015 - 11:10

Intended? Sort of...

As a general note, several of the 'early music' instruments in MS suffer from the modern perspective of seeing instruments as standardized (in some cases more or less, but in any case much more than once upon a time). Practically all violins currently used are identical down to the mm; any flautist can take a colleague's instrument -- if he agrees, of course! -- and play it on the spot, and so on. Before XIX c. it was not really so; and the earlier we go the less it was so.

Coming to the lute, I'm not an expert of lute playing (far from it), but I frequented lutenists enough to tell that there is no 'standard' tuning of the bass courses (the ones in addition to the first six); sometime is diatonic, sometime is chromatic, sometime is both (!). For instance, sometime the F# is needed, sometime the F natural is needed, sometime both. It all depends on the piece being played and its time.

So, it would be pointless to add tuning for the bass courses, as at least some of it would be 'wrong' in the majority of cases and the user would have to go to the string data and 'fix' it anyway.

As the user has to meddle with tuning in any case, it seems to me more 'clean' to leave those bass courses out in the first place and leave to the user to add the courses he actually needs in the tuning he actually needs.

On a similar plane, it even seems to me pointless to have all these different lutes listed. I agree that the early 5-course lute and the late 14-course lute are different enough to be considered different instruments, at least under some respects. But are all the 10 steps from the 5-course to the 14-course really different instruments? At least, arguable: the intended number of courses for a given piece is rather hard to infer from the music itself alone.

I suspect they have been added only because some repertory listed them and "one never knows"... But the whole matter is foggy. And it is not the only case; in the viol area -- which I know better-- there are several oddities:

  1. The list includes an alto viol which is a musicological myth (not to say a musicological mistake...)
  2. Is the 7-stringed bass viol a different instrument than the 6-stringed one?
  3. Or the 5-stringed pardessus de viole a different instrument than the 6-stringed one?
  4. What about the lyra-viol, with its more than 20 different tuning attested; is different 'enough' from the 'regular' bass viol? (if such a thing does exist...)

and so on...

So, if anybody wants to step in and provide courses and tuning for all those lutes, please go on. I prefer not to...

Thanks,

M.

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• Jan 30, 2015 - 17:24

General point: it is more convenient to change 1 or 2 strings than to add 6 or 7.

The only point of designating different instruments in the lute family is to provide convenient defaults for # of strings and string tunings. Yes, the tunings were non-standard, but not *that* arbitrary. Most lutes, by default, have a G tuning, as is the default on MuseScore. My 14-course archlute, for instance, is tuned with bass strings: F2, E2, D2, C2, Bb1, A1, G1, F1, the top 6 being the same as for a regular lute. An 8-course lute was almost always tuned with bass courses F2, D2, a 10-course with: F2, E2, D2, C2, a 9-course with F2, E2, C2. It would be most convenient if these were the default tunings for these instruments in MuseScore. The 6-10 course instruments rarely have alternate tunings. The archlute usually has tweaks for playing in different keys (usually E--> Eb or Bb --> B and sometimes F --> F#), but most courses stay the same. In the lute repertoire excursions into many flats and sharps are very rare. There was a period of time during the early 17th C when there was a lot of experimentation with different tunings -- scordatura tunings, if you like. These were pretty much abandoned and never had a lot of popularity, I think, because they scramble the brains of the player. At least that is what they do to me.
The theorbo tuning is similar to that of the archlute, but the top string is re-entrant (an octave lower), and the pitch is usually at A rather than G.
Then there is the plethora of baroque lute tunings, the most common of which is a Dm chord, with bass courses leading down from there: F5 D5 A4 F4 D4 A3 G3 F3 E3 D3 C3 B2 A2 G2. And many other lute-like instruments, like the cittern, the bandora, baroque guitar, etc., etc. But if you covered the ones above, that would be a good start.

--Sarge

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• Jan 31, 2015 - 23:13

Thanks for the contribution.

As I said, if anyone wants to step in and add more data to intruments.xml, he is very welcome.

I prefer not to do it: my proposal is to remove all the varieties of lutes, leaving only a 'basic' 6-course variant (whose tuning is reasonable standardized), to which any user can add what he needs, when he needs, where he needs. To my eyes, the current setup looks like an excess of precision, which is actually often imprecise...

For instance, I suspect sgerbode's archlute often has its F2 changed into F# and its Bb1 changed into B... Also, I suspect it does not always need all its 8 bass courses hard-coded; at least not when notating tablature scores (which is where string tuning is really needed): I am not aware of tablature scores notating more than 4 bass courses...

Of course, this is just my opinion.

M.

P.S.: Archlute and theorbo do exist in MuseScore data as separate instruments.

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• Feb 1, 2015 - 22:00

I am not conversant with xml coding but will be happy to take a look and see what I can do about modifying instruments.xml.

Most of the early to mid 16th C repertoire is for 6 courses only. Toward the end of the 16th and the beginning of the 17th Cs more courses were added. As they were added, they had to be notated in the tab. Usually only the 7th and 8th courses had fret designations; the others were played open. So in French tab, course 7 was notated as a letter, a to h, below the staff and course 8 as /a, /b, /c ... /h etc. below the staff. Deeper courses were notated as //a, ///a, 4, 5, 6, 7 below the staff.

In Italian tab, the 7th course was notated either as 0 or as 7 above the staff. The 8th course was sometimes notated as 0_ (0 underlined) above the staff. When notated in this way, other numbers could be put in for fretted positions, like 3, 4, etc., or 3_, 4_, etc. above the staff .
Otherwise, the bass courses were notated as 7, 8, 9, X above the staff, X with one dot above it, X with 2 dots above it, 13, and 14.

Changing the F2 course to F2# was rare. I am hard pressed to think of a single example. Bb changed to B more common. In 8-course instruments, these pitches were very rarely modified. If you had to play F#2 or Eb2, you would finger them on the first fret. E2 on these instruments was fingered on the 2nd fret of the 8th course.

I usually encode an entire document as a time, and I suspect others do as well. So for me it would be inconvenient to always be adding the tunings. Of course I can save a file after encoding it and then copy it to use as a template for the next piece in the series, which will likely have the same tuning. I do that a lot, too.

--Sarge

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• Feb 1, 2015 - 23:16

As Jojo-Schmitz pointed out, you may load a custom instruments.xml instead of the built-in by setting the preference in:

menu "Edit | Preferences",
tab "Score",
entry "Instrument list 1" (and "Instrument list 2", if you want to load two different custom lists; should work, but I would stick to the simple case of 1 custom list!)
_______________________

As I have set to myself the goal to make MuseScore 2.0 as apt for 'early music' needs as reasonably possible, I would welcome any improvement, and we can possibly cooperate to improve the (arch)lute area (I am decently familiar only with some instruments and some repertoires).

Once this definition for the Archute looks correct / reasonable / preferable / whatever to you, we may easily insert it in the program defaults in stead of the current definition.

Same for any other instrument for which you feel confident enough to provide an improved definition.

But, when providing definitions, as you know the repertoire, please think as general as possible; other users (or yourself in another time) may use MS for different pieces than the ones you want to engrave right now.
____________________

Practical (?) Hint:

If you want to avoid juggling with XML syntax, you also may:

  1. Create a score with the instrument you want to customize
  2. Set its string data to your content with the dialogue boxes provided for this (you may also want to set the "Open" flag for non-fretted strings)
  3. Save the score in the .MSCX (non compressed) format

then, looking at the score .MSCX file with a text editor, you'll find the instrument string data spelt for you.

Or, you may simply attach the score itself (.MSCX would still be better, though) and I will extract the relevant data from it.

Thanks,

M.

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• Feb 2, 2015 - 01:03

OK. I attach a revised xml music list with archlute, 10-, 9-, 8-, and 7-course lute entries. However, even when I use this by using edit/preferences/score, I am still coming up with the values not being used. It actually worked once, but then (for reasons I cannot fathom) never again.

So I am thinking there is no point in creating a .MCCX file. But here is one anyway.

--Sarge

Attachment Size
instruments_lutes.xml 418.36 KB
lute_test.mscx 9.63 KB

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• Feb 2, 2015 - 09:42

.MSCX: I see; it looks like you just inserted in the score the instruments as they appeared in whatever instruments.xml was active at that moment, without customizing them in the score itself (info about this are here ).

I am attaching a modified score with definitions from your instruments_lutes.xml (only the modified instruments are in the score); I have also marked all courses above the 8th as open. Feel free to modify the instrument definitions in this score in any way you think suitable and re-send it back.

9-course lute: your 9-course lute is the same of the 8-course lute: possibly a course is missing?

custom instruments.xml: you have possibly found a bug: in my tests, it seems your XML file is not loaded as it has Windows-style line ending; it is true that my system is Linux, but XML line endings should not matter and this sort of incompatibility should not happen in any case. I'll try to understand what is going on.

Just for testing, I'm also attaching an instruments_lutes.xml with Linux line ending. It may be useful to know if this file is accepted by your computer or not.

In the meantime, I think it is better to use .MSCX scores with customized instruments as exchange medium, rather than XML files.

Attachment Size
test_lutes.mscx 14.38 KB
instruments_lutes_Linux.xml 409.18 KB

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• Feb 2, 2015 - 23:29

Yes, your linux-terminated lines worked.

On the above, the 13-course lute is actually a baroque 13-course lute. Tuning is correct. You could add A G1 for a 14-course baroque lute.

The tuning for the 9-course lute on instruments_lutes_Linux.xml only has 8 courses. Probably my mistake. It needs a C2 added at the bottom. Note that E2 is skipped on the 9-course instrument because it is easy to finger E2 on the 2nd fret of the 8th course.

Theorbo (AKA chitarrone) looks right. I don't play theorbo, but I think some of the smaller ones have only the top string re-entrant. This by Linda Sayce at www.theorbo.com:

"If you are already in possession of a very small theorbo, it is possible to make
better use of it by stringing it in a tuning more suitable for its size, rather than
invariably stringing it with two re-entrant strings, in A or G. Examples include tuning
it in A with one re-entrant string, in D with two re-entrant strings, or in G with one re-entrant
string."

--Sarge

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• Feb 3, 2015 - 01:04

Lutes and similar: I think I have all the data for putting a Pull Request together and have them inserted as programme defaults.

Thanks to Sarge and to cadiz1 for the contributions.

instruments.xml: well, this is definitely a bug, line termination should not affect XML readability (I have filed an issue).

Thanks,

M.

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• May 9, 2016 - 14:08

I carefully read all the thread so far but, at the end of the day, I don't know how to do this
in French tab: a, /a, //a, ///a, 4, 5, 6, 7 below the staff.
Some practical hint on how to obtain something like in the attached image, with MuseScore 2.0.3 would be very appreciated.
Thanks

/Silkwood

Attachment Size
Paradisi.PNG 3.66 KB

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• May 9, 2016 - 15:33

True. Simply because this feature has not been merged into the version 2.0.3 :(
You might try with a Nightly version, but for now, they are very unstable, and therefore, it will wait either a stabilization (in a few weeks?) either the release of the major version of MuseScore in several months, at best.

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