Flags/note lengths in tablature, lute and guitar

• Jul 1, 2016 - 00:33

Normally in lute tablature, all musical signs are (on the score) belonging to one voice, the real length of notes isn't given by the flags, but only the beginning point.

As example I have intabulated a Gavotte by Silvius Leopold Weiss.
For easier reading I use normal note heads for the flags.

It would be good, if the flags/note lengths in tablature wouldn't be changed if the tablature is splitted into different voices.
Or in other words: There should be a possibility to decide, if the flags above depend from the first voice or all voices.

The first line shows the tablature, as it was common in renaissance and Baroque times:
All signs are belonging to one voice, the real length isn't given by the flags, but only the beginning point of each note. For easier reading I use normal note heads for the flags and I also added a linked notation line to see the difference.

In the third and fourth line I have splitted the music into two voices, which helps
to understand the music. But this gives wrong values for the flags/note values above.

Indeed there is one manuscript that I know, at the end of the 18th century, that only gives direct length for the highest voice/melody, but this is quite unusal.

I know, that in guitar tablature the second voice's flags could be set below (which isn't possible in lute tablature to my knowledge). But here you also run into problems, as a third voice, which sometimes is necessary to give justice to the music, will be followed by problems here.
So it would be good to have a robust solution for all tablature versions.
testTAB-1-1.png
Done with: 3543170

Attachment Size
testTAB.mscz 16.23 KB

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