At 11:08 AM 12/11/2003 +0000, Stewart McCoy <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: >Dear Matanya, > >Yes, I do seem to be contradicting myself, so perhaps I may >elaborate a little. I think a lot depends on how much experience one >has with any particular notation. For a complete beginner tablature
No argument here, except to say that I doubt very if there are "complete beginners" who come to the lute without first having played another instrument. At the 1998 Colloque de Luth en Occident, Xavier Cahuepe presented a paper on his experience in teaching the lute to children who have not been introduced to other instruments, something like the Suzuki-tablature approach. Whatever the merits of the experiment, I am not aware of anyone else working in this area and even Xavier's work has not been mentioned by anyone in the literature that I know of. Do you have lute beginners who have never played a musical instrument before? >will be easier to read, because it by-passes the concept of pitch >and goes straight to the fingerboard. And this is the main point here: since the majority of lute beginners are people who are already well conversed with pitch notation, tablature may, or may not be easier to read. And the real obstacle is not so much the relative ease of either system, but the experienced notation reader to accept a new method of reading music. > There are no sharps and flats >to worry about. But there are new symbols to worry about, symbols which are not in the current vocabulary of the new lutenist. > However, with time and lots of playing, those >tablature letters acquire a meaning which embraces pitch as well as >position on the fingerboard. An experienced player can sing from >tablature or (if he is a pianist) play it straight onto the piano. >The tuning would have to be a familiar one, otherwise he will be >back to square one as a beginner, deducing a position on the >fingerboard, but not pitch. > >My own experience is that the same thing happens in reverse with >staff notation. For a beginner the notes of staff notation represent >pitch only, and he has to learn where those notes are on his >instrument. That would be true if your beginner was someone who is already familiar with pitch notation. But in the case of a guitar beginner who has not learned pitch notation on another instrument before, the notes represent location on the fingerboard, exactly as tablature ciphers do. The more common 19th century guitar tutors approached the fingerboard as if it was a piano, teaching the white notes first, then introducing accidentals according the circle of fifth. This approach was radically altered by Sor an Aguado who treated the fingerboard as one linear unit, not divided by positions. If you are interested in some of the issues involved here, you might wish to read this: http://www.orphee.com/pick/handout.htm > Eventually the idea of pitch and position on the >fingerboard become so intertwined, that staff notation becomes a >sort of tablature. A notation designed to show pitch ends up being >one which the player eventually associates with the lay-out of his >fingerboard. Exactly my point. With all the exhortations by knowledgeable teachers, few guitarists can actually sight sing a musical score. Thus pitch notation, as complex as it might be, remains basically a pseudo-tablature, particularly when it is adorned with the clutter of thick fingering layer. The difference is that in pitch notation a good reader can recognize instantly the rhythmical values of all the voices in a polyphonic work, and instantly determine, based on the context, where to stop a particular note or chord. Whether this is done by reference to the visual appearance of the notation only, or by reference to the aural significance of the notes, is really not all that important. Matanya Ophee Editions Orphe'e, Inc., 1240 Clubview Blvd. N. Columbus, OH 43235-1226 Phone: 614-846-9517 Fax: 614-846-9794 mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.orphee.com
