Dear Doctor Oakroot, Yes, I agree. Guitarists have a tendency to do what you say, perhaps because it is sometimes difficult to cram several independent parts onto one stave. How far you go along that road is a matter of personal preference, balancing the need to show the polyphony and the need to make it easy to read for the player. Taken to its extreme though, you would end up with something looking like one of those dreadful "literal" transcriptions of lute music, where all notes are automatically given the value of the rhythm sign directly above, willy nilly. They help no-one. Yet those who zealously espouse polyphonic transcriptions will also come unstuck, if they try to impose strict polyphony on say a freely-composed toccata. As Monica Hall says in her recent e-mail, the tendency over the years has been to favour the needs of the player rather than the score-reader, and there is a lot to be said for that.
Partisan arguments in favour of one particular system of notation can be futile, because we all have our own preferences, and there is no one right answer. Ideally we should be fluent in more than one notation, so that we may choose whichever one best suits the music and instrument we are playing. For example, if I have to play continuo on the theorbo, I would normally read from figured bass; yet if the harmony is very complex, with a host of figures to interpret, I might write it out in tablature instead. Horses for courses, and all that. Matanya Ophee has argued that reading from tablature is like playing by rote. I wouldn't quite put it that way, because playing from staff notation can be much the same, if you are on auto-pilot. What I think he means (please correct me if I'm wrong, Matanya) is that it is easier to see and understand musical things like harmony and counterpoint when reading from staff notation. I would agree with that, but I would also say that it is often easier to see technical things like chord shapes and finger patterns when reading from tablature. Both systems have their strengths. One important factor in all this is the tuning of the instrument: 1) Renaissance lute or modern guitar tuned in 4ths with a 3rd in the middle. The strings are reasonably distant from each other in pitch, and the decision of which string to choose for a particular note is usually straightforward. Either staff notation or tablature would normally be fine. 2) Violin or cello tuned in 5ths. The interval between the strings is wide, and so staff notation would normally be preferable. There are only four strings, so chords are comparatively rare. It is not surprising that 17th-century attempts to write music in tablature for the violin never caught on. Even with Biber's funny tunings, staff notation is preferable, because with virtuoso music the eye needs to scan it very quickly. Tablature is too cumbersome for that. 3) Instruments with re-entrant tunings, like the cittern, the theorbo, the baroque guitar (without a bourdon on the 5th course), or the five-string banjo. For these instruments tablature really comes into its own, because with staff notation there would be too much uncertainty in the mind of the player about which string to choose. 4) Instruments with variable tunings, like the lute in the 17th century, baroque guitar (Campion), lyra viol. Tablature is generally more practical than staff notation, because it saves having to learn each tuning (over 50 lyra viol tunings). Best wishes, Stewart McCoy. ----- Original Message ----- From: "Doctor Oakroot" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "Lute Net" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Wednesday, December 10, 2003 3:33 PM Subject: Re: Tabs, Staff and the rest of it. (for Stewart McCoy) > > The example does not show an advantage of tab over staff notation... you > could just as easily write the bar in staff notation as 4 quarter notes > (expecting the player to figure out which notes to hold), with no less > simplicity nor less accuracy than the tab. In fact, such simplifications > are common in guitar staff notation. > > > Stewart McCoy wrote: > > Here's a simple example. (You will need a monospaced font like > > Courier to get the vertical alignment correct.) The inner part has a > > bit of syncopation: > |\ | > |\ | > | | > _______________________ > __a___________|_c___||_ > __c__d_____c__|_d___||_ > __c___________|_____||_ > ______________|_a___||_ > ________a_____|_____||_
