[abcusers] ABC as Tablature; being my entry in the Obfuscated ABC Contest

[Jack Campin]

I have been trying to transcribe a rather obscure, and as far
as I know never-before-transcribed, piece of tablature from a
Scottish manuscript of about 1680.  The MS gives no clue as to
what instrument it's for or what the tuning is, except that it
had four strings - the tab is written on four of the five lines
of ordinary music paper.

Here's the tablature from the MS.  This tune only uses the top
three strings so that's all I've written.  The parens represent
a bracket drawn over a group of notes.  I don't think occasional
bits of horizontal space mean anything, but I've included them
anyway.  Line break as in the MS.  For lute-type tab, a is an open
string, then b, c, d,... move down the frets.  Not all lute-family
instruments use semitone frets: the Skene MS, one of the best-known
early Scottish tune manuscripts, is for the mandour, a ukelele-like
instrument (usually tuned A,DAda) which was fretted in major
pentachords (or at least that's what the tablature describes) and
I'm assuming such a system here.

   Cowgate gigue
   2
   ---ba---cb--e--|c|-dcbb:||:b
   dcb--d-|dcb--|c:||:cde--bb(cbabc)
   -dd|-|-:||:-

   --b--bcabbbcde--b-|]]
   a--cde-bbcde--bb-c(abc)a--de--dcbb|]]
   -cc-cc---c|]]

Step one in interpreting this: replace - by x, replace a by A and
b by B, make each string a separate voice, and make a plausible
guess as to where the midpoint of the second part is:

X:1
T:Cowgate gigue
M:none
L:1/4
V:1 
V:2 merge
V:3 merge
K:none
[V:1] xxxBAxxxcBxxexx|c|xdcBB:|
[V:2] dcBxxdx|dcBxx|c:|
[V:3] xdd|x|x:|
%
[V:1] xxxBxBxxBcAB
[V:2] cdexBBcBABcAxxcdexBB
[V:3] ccxx
%
[V:1] xxxBxBcdexxBx|]
[V:2] cdexBBcABcAxxdexxdcBB|]
[V:3] xxxccxxxc|]

Now we just have to make a guess at the rhythm and the tuning.
Without altering any pitch names:

X:2
T:Cowgate gigue
M:6/4
L:1/4
Q:3/4=100
V:1 middle=G   transpose +4  % c string
V:2 middle=d merge transpose -3  % F string
V:3 middle=a merge transpose -10 % Bb string
K:G Minor
[V:1] xxx BAx|c2B   exx|xxx xx   c|xdc B2B:|
[V:2] dcB xxd|xxx   xxx|d2c B2   x|cxx xxx:|
[V:3] xxx xxx|xxx   xdd|xxx xx   x|xxx xxx:|
%
[V:1] xxx Bxx|xx   xxxx|xxx Bx   x|BcA B3  |
[V:2] cde xBB|cB/A/B/c/ Axx|cde xB   B|xxx xxx |
[V:3] xxx xxx|xx   xxcc|xxx xx   x|xxx xxx |
%
[V:1] xxx Bxx|xx x  xxx|Bcd ex   B|xxx xxx|]
[V:2] cde xBB|cA/B/cAxx|xxx xd/e/x|xdc B2B|]
[V:3] xxx xxx|xx x  xcc|xxx xx   x|cxx xxx|]

which translates as:

X:3
T:Cowgate gigue
M:6/4
L:1/4
Q:3/4=100
K:G Minor
BAG dcB|e2d   gEE|B2A G2e   |Afe d2d:|
ABc dGG|AG/F/G/A/ FDD|ABc dGG   |dec d3  |
ABc dGG|AF/G/AFDD|def gB/c/d|DBA G2G|]

The experimentation which produced that was not too difficult using
BarFly, except for that insane numerical transpose notation; keeping
the middle= and transpose directives consistent is a huge pain
in the arse.  Nobody but a guitarist ever thinks of intervals by
counting semitones, and in this case (unlike a lute) there is no
advantage to be gained by any matching with the tab formalism.

The title is the thing about the tune that caught my attention -
it's the oldest tune to be named after an Edinburgh street by
about thirty years.

-
Jack Campin: 11 Third Street, Newtongrange, Midlothian EH22 4PU; 0131 6604760
http://www.purr.demon.co.uk/jack * food intolerance data  recipes,
Mac logic fonts, Scots traditional music files, and my CD-ROM Embro, Embro.
-- off-list mail to j-c rather than abc at this site, please --


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Re: [abcusers] ABC as Tablature; being my entry in the Obfuscated ABC Contest

[Phil Taylor]

Fascinating!

I always knew that somebody would come up for a use for the middle
directive which involved shifting the notes by an amount different
from an octave.

The experimentation which produced that was not too difficult using
BarFly, except for that insane numerical transpose notation; keeping
the middle= and transpose directives consistent is a huge pain
in the arse.  Nobody but a guitarist ever thinks of intervals by
counting semitones, and in this case (unlike a lute) there is no
advantage to be gained by any matching with the tab formalism.

Transposing by a fixed number of semitones makes sense in the normal
situation, where you want to keep the tune in the same mode, but simply
have it played in a different key.  In this case, what you need is
for the program to play the tune as it appears in the music, and there's
no way of doing that using a straightforward transposition.  Shifting
the note pitches by means of the middle directive is like putting a
capo on an Appalachian dulcimer - you change the mode as well as the
pitch.  You can't make your X:2 version play the same as the X:3 version,
even though they produce the same staff display.

The second part of the tune sounds good, but I'm not convinced by the
first part.  It's mainly the big interval from g to E which sounds odd.
Then again, we're used to hearing tunes composed for the fiddle, where
that would be a difficult interval to play.  On a diatonically - fretted
instrument tuned in the way you suggest it would be perfectly easy,
and might have been common in tunes of the day.

How many more tunes are in the MS?  Does the same logic produce reasonable
sounding music from the others?  What you really need here is a program
which would accept the original tab and convert it to abc given a set
of assumptions about the tuning and fretting of the instrument.  You
could then experiment with different tuning and fretting schemes until
you find one which produces consistently meaningful results for all
the tunes in the MS.

Phil Taylor




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