Approach to allow for Banjo tab (and other instruments with out of order strings, like Uke) #1031
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jeremy9959
changed the title
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I've been thinking about banjo tab and I'd love to have it. I was thinking about a little bit different approach, though. I think some software allows the decoration Then only two things need to change:
One common thing is to play the drone string and the first string at the 5th fret at the same time - that is, doubling the "g" note. That would be notated |
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Not all banjos have 5 strings. Please allow for banjo5 and banjo4 options.
…On Sun, Jun 30, 2024, at 13:39, Paul Rosen wrote:
I've been thinking about banjo tab and I'd love to have it. I was thinking about a little bit different approach, though. I think some software allows the decoration `!5s!`. If that is put before a note, it puts that note on the fifth string. And that would allow creating tablature outside of 1st position in general. And it would work on all instruments.
Then only two things need to change:
1. abcjs should allow string tunings to be out of order, but it would still try to place each note on the highest pitch first. (That means that no note would accidentally be put on the 5th string - it would always be put on the first string.)
2. abcjs should support the `!5s` decoration.
One common thing is to play the drone string and the first string at the 5th fret at the same time - that is, doubling the "g" note. That would be notated `[!5s!gg]`, I guess.
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@paulrosen it seems like your (1) and (2) together would require changing the ABC parser and making pretty substantial changes to the existing tablature logic. Also as long as you go down that road, you might want similar tools for, say, ukelele (but then it's the fourth string) and as @asjl mentions maybe also for other banjo configurations. Most of the ABC repositories are full of music written for fiddle so they aren't annotated in this way, your approach would be great for tunes specifically written out for banjo style. I'm still super interested in this project but I'm a little intimidated. |
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A clarification: when I said "banjo" I was talking about supporting any string instrument that has the strings out of order. So the same technique would also support ukelele. I'm not sure I know of others but it would work for them, too. Four string banjo is usually not tuned "out of order" - it is usually tuned like a viola, an octave mandolin, or 4 strings of a guitar so it is already completely supported by the existing tablature. My goal of the tablature is to expand the definition so that you can specify any number of strings and specify that each string is tuned to any note you want. That will take care of a lot of cases. Then there are shorthand definitions, like "mandolin" so that most users don't have to specify the details. |
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I just thought of another complication with 5 string banjo: the numbering starts at the 5th fret so a "g" is open and is marked as "0" but a "^g" is on the 6th fret and should be marked as "6". |
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I agree it is a little intimidating to jump in. I think the solution won't be very many changes but they will be spread out over a number of areas. There is also a little bit of refactoring needed, I think. I have one other feature I am in the middle of, but I'll study this right after that - hopefully within the week. A flaw in your approach is seen on measure 7 of your example: it shows the "a" played on the fifth string at fret 2 - first of all, that should be fret 7, but second of all, no one would play it there, they would play it on the first string. |
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Yes, no doubt my approach is a hack and the issue with the note you point out makes that pretty clear. |
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Having thought about this a bit more, it seems like a good strategy would be to allow for the author of the abc file to explicitly give string numbers. (In other words, not just the !5! notation for the special case of the banjo fifth string). This is possible in lilypond and I was able to take advantage of that to generate nicely typeset tab using this preprocessor that I wrote. So abcjs could try to "guess" the correct string when it's not specified, but use the provided string if one is specified. If I understand the ABC standard correctly, the !n! notation is supposed to reflect fingering rather than string number, so stealing it for strings might produce strange conflicts. But if you were going to steal it, then you could allow !n! for a range of positive integers. |
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I wasn't aware of the way lilypond did it - that seems confusing to me because it is so similar to the duration notation. That is, (assuming The notation that I've seen for the string adds the character "s" in. So that if you wanted to indicate the second finger you use |
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Having the !ns! option available seems like a good solution, though I didn't see that in the ABC standard. I might have just not known where to look. |
Re Issue #1021
This is a very basic approach to allowing for tablature where the instrument has strings that don't lie in ascending order (for example, the 5-string banjo). The approach is:
After the already existing tablature logic, working with the string tunings in their ascending configuration, has worked out the tablature, apply the str_order permutation to get the notes on to the right physical string.
This doesn't do any analysis of appropriate fingering, and it doesn't treat the fifth string appropriately (there needs to be some kind of way to de-prioritize the fifth string and treat it mostly as a drone) but it does seem to generate correct note<->string/fret combinations.
I've also added a default tablature instrument called "banjoOpenG". It's easy to add other banjo tunings if this actually works.
Curious to know your opinion of this approach, and any suggestions (or bugs, obviously, I don't know the software well enough to do comprehensive tests).