New Tablature Program

DroopyPawn · Post by **DroopyPawn** » 17 Nov 2000 9:29 pm

I've decided to start on a tablature program for steel guitar (or any other instrument.) It will read and print in ascii format. I mentioned this in another section of the forum but I though it might be better here.

I'll put a picture of the screen here

The program will have a "drum machine type" editor. I'd like to hear all your ideas for featuers. I'll do my best to get them in the program.

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www.16tracks.com [This message was edited by DroopyPawn on 17 November 2000 at 10:21 PM.]

Jim Smith · Post by **Jim Smith** » 17 Nov 2000 10:09 pm

Your link doesn't work.

Ricky Davis · Post by **Ricky Davis** » 18 Nov 2000 4:14 am

I got the link and it's interesting.
Jim you got the link now? It's not opening in another window; but it did work for me.
Is this program pasteable? Copyable? Printable?
Would this be a program for purchase and when put on the section here for one to learn from; would it apply to my above questions?
Just wondering what you have intended for this and us.

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Ricky Davis

My Homepage
Rebel™ and Ricky's Audio Clips
www.mightyfinemusic.com
Email Ricky: sshawaiian@aol.com

[This message was edited by Ricky Davis on 18 November 2000 at 04:15 AM.]

Mike Petryk · Post by **Mike Petryk** » 18 Nov 2000 7:23 am

This looks like a good idea. It's pretty straight forward. Here are some ideas for you.
You might want to include an area for specifying the neck, pedals, levers, tunings being used. Also, some playing techniques should be included. For example, muting and harmonics. Define how you represent these some where.
Also- a side note: There was a guy out in Washington (?) who was building a real time Pedal Steel tab device. It had senors that read the bar position and string pitches. I don't if he got the kinks out of it or not. With todays cheaper computer hardware this might be doable (think affordable) now.
M.

DroopyPawn · Post by **DroopyPawn** » 18 Nov 2000 8:32 am

I was considering offering the program for sale at a cheap price. (Cheap because I don't want to mess with all the graphics stuff involved with standard notation.) But I could also offer a free version that would only read tablature files. Right now, I just want to get it working. There are a lot of things to consider. (Thanks for the tips above. I hadn't considered slides and harmonics.) But this program will work for any number of strings once I get it going. And I'm still open to suggestions.

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www.16tracks.com

Bill Crook · Post by **Bill Crook** » 18 Nov 2000 9:04 am

Looks sorta an Excel spreadsheet to me......

DroopyPawn · Post by **DroopyPawn** » 18 Nov 2000 10:18 am

Excell? Yes, sort of.
Now I need to know what goes in steel tab besides numbers. I plan to put A,B & C buttons. What else will I need? How do you note knee levers? Is it D, E, F, G? What about steels that have 7 or 8 pedals? Are those pedals D, E, F, G? If so, how then do you note the levers?
So far I have the input grid, a pop up menu for entering frets on the strings and a print button. (I have other stuff but haven't written the code for it yet.)

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www.16tracks.com

Jim Smith · Post by **Jim Smith** » 18 Nov 2000 12:55 pm

The link works now, but I only get the infamous red X in a box?!?

Ed Meadway · Post by **Ed Meadway** » 19 Nov 2000 5:00 am

Click on Tunings at the top of this page to see how pedals and levers are designated.

Jim Cohen · Post by **Jim Cohen** » 19 Nov 2000 12:11 pm

You might want to consider putting the information within the spaces, rather than on the lines themselves. That way, you can use lines between the fret notations to indicate a slur. (Or if you can use curved lines, then you can keep it this way, and put the curved lines in the space above or below the fret numbers).

Graham · Post by **Graham** » 19 Nov 2000 7:12 pm

A vertical line for marking out the measures would be helpful.

This looks like a very nice program, Droopy, easy and simplistic from the looks of it.

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Rebel™
ICQ 614585
http://users.interlinks.net/rebel/steel/steel.html

Jim Smith · Post by **Jim Smith** » 19 Nov 2000 7:23 pm

I can see the picture now. Why bother with the letter buttons? I think you could let the user enter that himself and use the buttons for slurs, harmonics, 1/2 pedal, etc.

David Bieling · Post by **David Bieling** » 19 Nov 2000 7:47 pm

I would suggest a provision for entering R,
RR, L, and LL for single and double raise and lower.

DroopyPawn · Post by **DroopyPawn** » 19 Nov 2000 8:57 pm

The program will enter measure bars automatically. Every measure will have its own grid view. When you print the tab, string numbers and measure bars will appear.

I can put in buttons for "L", "LL", etc. But I'm not familiar with those things. What are they?

The user will be able to type anything into the grid. This includes things like "3A" or "6B". But for those of us who like using the mouse, I'm trying to make the program completely "mouse driven."

Thanks for all the tips. But I still want more. Anything eles?

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www.16tracks.com [This message was edited by DroopyPawn on 19 November 2000 at 09:05 PM.]

Steve Feldman · Post by **Steve Feldman** » 19 Nov 2000 10:04 pm

A,B, & C pedal notation is standard, but some other pulls or levers - e.g., 4th and 8th string raises or lowers - are often called by different letters. For that reason, it might help to just specify 4L for 4th string lower one-half step, or 4R for 4th string raise. I call those changes D and F levers, respectively, but not everyone follows that convention.

Larry Bell · Post by **Larry Bell** » 20 Nov 2000 10:43 am

Droopster,

I'm a programmer too, as is b0b and several other Forumites. This is certainly doable -- and has been done. ClicTab (may not be the right spelling) is a very full featured application, from all I've read about it. Sounds like you're shooting for 'ClicTab Lite'.

I've thought of doing this too, but have opted to just use Excel with a template that shows 8 notes per measure (can be modified for 16ths but I don't play that quick very often

) and use the drawing features to show slurs and things I can't do with just the keyboard. Works good for me. My students don't complain.

To satisfy most users you will need to be able to show:

* note durations from 16th notes to whole notes (makes your objective of automatically adding bar lines much more difficult).
* triplets (of all types)
* pedal and bar slurs
* harmonics
* from 6 to 14 strings
* from 0 to 10 pedals and from 0 to 12 knee levers
* any possible combinations of raises and lowers on any given pedal presented in a way that the player understands

The last one is pretty easily accomplished, borrowing from Jimmie Crawford's MuSymTab system. I just use # for 1/2 step raise; X or ## for whole step raise; ### for 1 1/2 step raise; b for 1/2 step lower; bb for whole step lower; bbb for 1 1/2 step lower. Works for me, but some users want to know if it's A, B, C, P4, P5 or RKL, RKR, LKR, LKV, etc). That gets much more difficult. You gotta draw the line somewhere or you'll end up re-inventing a wheel that's already been invented.

I'm sure that others will have more requirements that will turn your simple little project into a much more daunting task (NOW I remember why I never did it myself). I don't think it's really necessary (for this 'lite' version) for the program to remember which pedal or lever does what, but that adds substantially to the complexity -- as does any programmatic understanding of how the mathematics of music works -- like scales and sharps and flats and stuff).

(Also, FWIW, the A pedal acts on the FIFTH string and the B pedal on the SIXTH)

Good luck (you're likely to need it).

LTB[This message was edited by Larry Bell on 20 November 2000 at 11:13 AM.]

DroopyPawn · Post by **DroopyPawn** » 20 Nov 2000 12:38 pm

I've added a slider that will change the number of columns (beats) in each measure. This will allow keeping each measures as short as possible horizontally. I plan to add a vertical slider to add and remove rows (strings). It will go from 3 strings to 14 strings. This will accomodate players of many instruments. I also intend to add one or two extra rows for documentation.

Another thought is to have a few (maybe 10 or so) buttons that are assignable. This way, if a button that's needed by a user is not available, the user can add it. If he wants a button to add "¾", it could be done.

It's going pretty well, but I still look forward to more ideas. Also, the picture link in my first post here is still good. I'll upload new pictures of the program as I add things to it.

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www.16tracks.com