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on the physical constitution of the instrument: it
is not about “what to play” any more, but about
“how to play”.
A drum tablature is constituted of horizontal
lines; each line is associated to one of the instruments
of the drum set. On the left of each line, the name of
the corresponding instrument is identified by one or
two letters, for instance “C” for the cymbal, “HH”
for the hi-hat, “SD” for the snare drum, “BD” for the
bass drum, etc. Then, on each line, symbols depict
how the corresponding instrument must be played:
for the cymbal and the hi-hat, an “x” indicates that
the player has to beat, like an “o” for the snare drum
and the bass drum. A double stroke is denoted by
“dd”. Bar lines can make it possible to delimitate
the content of one tablature measure.
The developed system enables the user to
draw as many tablatures as necessary, and each
of these tablatures can be constituted of as many
lines, that is, instruments, as necessary. All the
symbols presented above are available and can
be drawn in any order. Table 6 presents some of
these symbols and the corresponding interpre-
tation rules; in order to lighten the figures, the
document structural contexts are not represented.
A screenshot of the developed system is given
on Figure 16.
Less than 10 rules have been necessary to
develop this prototype. Its performances are of
the same order than the other ones. We would
like to emphasize that, although this composi-
tion and editing system is so far quite simple and
only adapted to drum, it can easily be completed
with other symbols and adapted to other types of
percussion instruments.
“how to play”; a stringed-instrument tablature
tells the player where to place his fingers.
A tablature is constituted of horizontal lines
representing the strings of the instrument. On the
left of each line, the pitch of the corresponding
opened string can be specified. Figures located on
a line correspond to the fret of the instrument that
the player must press down to produce the awaited
sound, and “0” denotes an opened string. More
complex notations can be introduced. Rhythm
can be written under each figure thanks to sym-
bols coming from the classical representation: a
quarter-note is limited to its stem, two flags are
indicated by a beam, etc. Other symbols make
it possible to express particular playing modes,
for instance “H” to represent a harmonic, “T”
for a thumb, that is, a slap with the thumb, “P”
for a pop, that is, a slap with another finger, and
so forth.
We would like to note that, when limited to
the most common symbols, stringed-instrument
tablature notations are very close to drum tabla-
ture ones. As a consequence, it is easy to derive
one from another, and to obtain a system with
quite the same performances. Figure 17 presents
a screenshot of a simple composition and editing
system for stringed-instrument tablatures and
whose interpretation rules are very close to the
ones presented Table 6.
This basic prototype can be enriched with
more symbols, for instance to model rhythm and
particular playing modes. Table 7 presents some of
the interpretation rules modelling the interpreta-
tion of such a document, and a screenshot of the
corresponding system is on Figure 18.
stringed-Instrument tablature
notations
conclusIon and
future trends
We now present another example of modern tab-
latures, adapted to fretted stringed-instruments,
like for instance the guitar. As defined previously,
a tablature does not represent “what to play”, but
In this chapter, we have faced the lack of software
taking advantage of pen-interaction in order to
compose and edit online structured documents
with musical notations. We have presented a new
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