On Friday 13 February 2009, you wrote: > Anyone who would like to be involved in documenting/discussing features > missing from LilyPond's guitar tab support,
The more features are added, the harder it is to get rid of them. Perhaps a \plaintab command? All I ever use with tab is lines and numbers. All of the rest is on the music staff above. To me, and to many others, tab is merely an orderly way to present part of the fingering information. Fret and string and that's it. That is one of the few things that Passport "Encore" did right. That presentation is more serious, and as a default it would make LilyPond seem even less of a toy. When the music is in more than one part another notes block has to be made reducing all notes on the staff to a single voice. Most banjo music is published with the notation staff having one voice, which makes it almost useless. It would be a serious help if lilypond made that extra typing unnecessary by lining up all the notes in all the voices on the staff with their corresponding fret numbers on the tab staff. Maybe it can do that now? How? When you really only intend to write one voice on a staff, two staves are not needed. See "Juba". Such foolproof pieces are rare, to say the least. http://www.openguitar.com/files/juba-short.pdf Here is what decently (lilypond) printed music with tab looks like. If there were three voices, could I get as good a result? http://www.openguitar.com/files/tomdooley.pdf The top staff shows what the music sounds like, including where the melody is. In tab alone the melody is impossible to find by even an accomplished banjoist unless he already is familiar with the tune. Not good. It used to be standard practice to write lute music in piano notation when transcribing it. The ability to combine parts to make a tab staff would be the best way to publish lute music, but I think there is no software that can do it yet. (?) Lute music that is published with tab alone is essentially a puzzle that only those steeped in arcane 17th C. lore can decipher (or one who finds the vocals). I don't know how long that state of affairs will be tolerated. I only have two uses for guitar tab: 1. In instruction, to show where the notes are to beginners: http://www.openguitar.com/pdf/gnotes.pdf 2. Or to deal with the many variant tunings. Regards, daveA -- Free download of technical exercises worth a lifetime of practice: http://www.openguitar.com/dynamic.html :::: You can play the cards you're dealt, or improve your hand with DGT. Very easy guitar music, solos, duets, exercises.., To contact, visit openguitar.com _______________________________________________ lilypond-user mailing list lilypond-user@gnu.org http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/lilypond-user
