ok - here is a made up example. Code and screenshot are below.
Let's say I had a very short piece of 5 bars.
4 bars can be played fine on the upper six strings.
But there is one bar that dips down into a couple of lower notes needing
to be played on 7th and 8th strings.
If this were a longer piece I was trying to fit on two pages I would be
loosing a lot of space for the sake of just two bars if I use the eight
string tab all the way through.
In this example I can force the one bar to use eight string tab on its
own tabStaff. But if I had maybe 3 or 4 such bars scattered through out
the piece this starts to defeat my space saving goal. Refer to lines 1
through 3 in the screen shot. Note that second line uses an 8 string
tabStaff.
I have found by changing the string tuning in between notes in the same
Tabstaff it seems to try to work but doesn't quite get there. Refer to
the 4th line in the screen shot. It seems get a little confused when it
tries to connect the bars with different numbers of lines. Line 4 in
the screen shot should have the notes one line lower. It has the notes
incorrectly shifted up one line and doesn't give any indication of what
string is needed for the low notes (i.e. one or two lines below the
TabStaff - similar to the behavior of adding ledger lines below a normal
staff),
Here is the lilypond code.
\version "2.24.2"
steelGuitarSixStringCSixTuning = \stringTuning <e, g, a, c e g>
steelGuitarEightStringCSixTuning = \stringTuning <g,, c, e, g, a, c e g>
%This is musically correct but it forces a separate line
\new TabStaff {
\relative c {
\set Staff.stringTunings = \steelGuitarSixStringCSixTuning
e,4 e e e | e e e e
}
}
\new TabStaff {
\relative c {
\set Staff.stringTunings = \steelGuitarEightStringCSixTuning
e,4 e c g
}
}
\new TabStaff {
\relative c {
\set Staff.stringTunings = \steelGuitarSixStringCSixTuning
e,4 e e e | e e e e
}
}
%This seems to try to work but it gets a little confused becase
%third bar should be one line lower and there is no indication
%whether the lowest note is seventh or eight string.
\new TabStaff {
\relative c {
\set Staff.stringTunings = \steelGuitarSixStringCSixTuning
e,4 e e e | e e e e
}
\relative c {
\set Staff.stringTunings = \steelGuitarEightStringCSixTuning
e,4 e c g
}
\relative c {
\set Staff.stringTunings = \steelGuitarSixStringCSixTuning
e,4 e e e | e e e e
}
}
And here is a screen shot of the result.
On 6/5/2024 11:03 PM, David Kastrup wrote:
Walt North<waltno...@gmail.com> writes:
I occasionally write out Tab notation parts for 6 or 8 string lap
steel guitar. I have created tuning entries for these and it works
well using Minimum fret and max fret difference values. Here is my
question. 90% of the time I only need the upper six strings and just
occasionally dip down to the 7th and 8th strings for a few
notes. Which means most of the time there is unneeded page space used
up. I could use different tab staffs intermittently but that gets
pretty cumbersome when it is only be an occasional note or two. And
I've never been able to get things realigned vertically when going
back and forth between 6 string and 8 string tabstaff.
Is there any approach that would add just a lower tabstaff line for
the 7th or 8th string as needed - similar to the way ledger lines are
added to regular staff when the notes go down to middle C or lower?
Maybe something with markup?
Have you tried adding the Ledger_line_engraver to your TabStaff ?
Do you have any example code to work with?
