Modified Schoenberg notation for m3guitar
ole
open strings are E-Ab-C-E-Ab-C-E. This makes shapes and patterns
symmetric everywhere on the neck and as an added bonus octaves repeat
in frets three strings apart. I can read and write standard musical
notation only in slow-motion and with great difficulty. For years I
have been thinking about how to combine the logic of the major third
tuning with the musical notation, and it was not until recently I
found out that Schoenberg had almost exactly the same idea almost 100
years ago! That is just amazing. Below I describe a modified Scoenberg
notation suitable for 7-string guitar.
With a tablature editor such as Guitar Pro or TablEdit the program
automatically produces standard musical notation to go with the
tablature. Here is an example from my site,
http://v2p0.m3guitar.com/examples/pentatonic/pt19_large.png
In practice, most guitarists get the notes from the tablature at the
bottom and the rythm from the musical notation at the top. Here is a
way to put the two on the same diagram, using the example above, pt19.
http://www.m3guitar.com/temp/m3schoenberg.png
(Please try to ignore the amateurish appearance and focus on the
concept instead). The solid lines represent the open strings, E
(thick), Ab (thin), and C (thin). Thus, the lower two-thirds of the
staff correspond to the range from the open 7th string (low E) to the
open 1st string (high E two octaves above). The top third of the staff
corresponds to the notes available on the 1st string up to, and
including, the 12th fret. Ledger lines can be used for higher pitches
if necessary. The dashed lines, Gb, Bb, and D, are used to make it a
little easier to see where the notes fall in between the solid lines.
The rythm is indicated in conventional notation. Now for the two text
rows below the staff. The lower row, with the numbers one to four
inside a circle, is the standard way to denote left hand fingerings.
The upper row contains the fret number, in outline font, and the
string number, in subscript. Strictly speaking only one of them is
necessary (the string number OR the fret number) but I find the
listing of both very helpful, particularly when you have to play
several notes at the same time.
My knowledge of Lilypond is limited but it looks versatile enough that
it should be relatively quick for somebody familiar with the program
to write a plugin that can convert a tablature file, for example in
Music XML format even though it does not allow left-hand fingerings,
to modified Schoenberg notation. I might have a go at it myself at
some point. If anybody is interested in writing some code, or
developing the concept further, please contact me.
ole
Doug Keislar
Nice work. Thanks for describing it. I think it deserves to be
documented on the MNP site. Your solution for the notating the fret and
string numbers could be applied to any of the chromatic notation
systems, I believe.
Your notation system, in addition to being related to the major-third
systems like Schoenberg's, could fit with these, because of the
whole-step spacing of lines:
http://musicnotation.org/musicnotations/6lines.html
You're right that adding the dashed lines between the major-third string
positions helps clarify the position of the notes between the solid
lines. Some systems, like Panot:
http://musicnotation.org/musicnotations/2linesmajorthird.html#panot
haven't worried about that, but most do.
An alternative solution is vary the notehead shape, as Schoenberg did,
or color, as the Pot and Beyreuther systems here do:
http://musicnotation.org/musicnotations/3linesmajorthird.html
That approach has the advantage of making the page less cluttered with
lines, so that arguably the eye can discern the notes themselves (and
other markings like slurs and accents) more easily. And if you turn one
line into an "invisible line," meaning the notes on or next to that
position have ledger lines, you end up with these systems:
http://musicnotation.org/musicnotations/2linesmajorthird.html
which are even less cluttered, and which can be transformed if desired
into the more compact versions here:
http://musicnotation.org/musicnotations/2linesmajorthirdcompact.html
I'll be interested to hear more about your system. Do you have any
examples of printed or handwritten music that you could scan and post to
the group?
Doug
Paul W Morris
Welcome to the group! Thanks for the information about your notation
system. I play guitar as well, and the (near) symmetry/isomorphism of
the guitar (in standard tuning) has definitely been an influence on my
interest in alternative notation systems that also have this property.
Twice now I've tried to adjust to playing in straight 4ths tuning, but
it didn't stick... I liked the consistency, but I found the chord
fingerings to be more difficult, which was the biggest drawback (along
with the standard tuning being ingrained in my fingers after many
years with it!). So I'd be curious to hear your thoughts on the
straight major third tuning, especially the chord shapes as compared
to standard tuning and straight fourths.
I assume it would work as well on a 6 string guitar, rather than 7.
How much trouble/expense is getting strings that are the right
gauge/weight? I guess I just need to spend some time on your
website...
Interesting that you chose to emphasize the fret numbers over the
string numbers in your tablature system. I'd be curious to hear your
thoughts on that.
You mentioned Lilypond. Have you seen our work towards adding support
for chromatic staves for it?
http://musicnotation.org/software/lilypond.html (Scroll down to see
images...) Kevin Dalley who wrote the code for this has moved on to
other endeavors. Mark Hanlon and Andrew Wagner have done some work to
help keep Kevin's patches working with more recent versions of
Lilypond, but no one is actively working on it right now. But we're
definitely interested in this, and would welcome help with it if you
might be interested.
All the best,
Paul M
ole
As much as I would like to see the modified Schoenberg notation
described on the MNP site I think it might be too instrument-specific.
I would like to expand it to cover other string instruments that also
have symmetrical tunings, for example bass (fourths) or violin
(fifths). The reason tablature works so well in practice is that it
effectively shows the notes as they look on the instrument. There is
no abstract part to it. Regarding the rough drawing I made as an
example, http://www.m3guitar.com/temp/m3schoenberg.png, it would be
nice to display the top third de-emphasized somehow, so that the seven
real strings, which make up the lower two thirds of the staff, stand
out. The alternative noteheads don't appeal to me, I must admit, and I
haven't really experimented with them. However, I have thought quite a
lot about the use of colours. For example, you can make strings with
the same pitch the same colour. Thus, the E-strings 1, 4, and 7 could
be black, the C-strings 2 and 5 blue, and the Ab-strings 3 and 6 red.
So we can immediately improve my diagram by listing the fret and
string number in the appropriate colour. That would work for bass and
violin as well, with four colours instead of three. We could even
colour the note itself but I think it would be confusing. The reason I
prefer to display the fret number more prominently than the string
number is that the string number is not listed explicitely in
conventional tablature, only the fret number is.
I don't want to turn this into an advert for my website but I have a
lot of material that is relevant to this discussion so I am going to
sneak in a few links as discretely as I can. For abstract
visualisation of notes, not specific to a particular instrument, I am
completely sold on the clock notation,
http://v2p0.m3guitar.com/html/clock_notation.html.
The system I am promoting for a 7-string guitar tuned in major thirds
is essentially aiming to make it as easy as possible to translate
shapes on the clock into shapes on the fretboard. Here are the
appearances of three symmetric scales on the clock,
http://v2p0.m3guitar.com/html/scales_symmetric.html,
and here is an example of how you can visualize the patterns of one
them, the pentatonic, on the fretboard,
http://v2p0.m3guitar.com/html/fretmaps_pentatonic.html.
The following is copy-pasted from an email I sent in reply to a
question about using the major thirds tuning on a 6-string. "On the 6-
string you are without two features of the 7-string: the range of the
instrument is decreased, from 24 semitones to 20, and the wonderful
symmetry that comes with having E in both the top and the bottom is
lost. The loss of the symmetry is probably more of an aesthetical
problem than a practical one, so at this stage I wouldn't worry too
much about it. The loss of the range, though, you have to deal with.
The most obvious solution is to leave out either the top E, giving you
a range from low E to high C, or leave out the bottom E, giving you a
range from low C to high E. At some point I actually tried a tuning on
my Line6 modeling guitar which goes from low Gb to high D which means
you loose two semitones in both the top and the bottom but it kind of
warps my mind to figure out which key I am playing in, so I quickly
gave up on that. Personally, I prefer to leave out the high E because
when you run out of notes in the high register you can always move
further up the fretboard. If you run out of notes in the lower
register, on the other hand you are stuck. So my advice is to go for,
low to high, E-Ab-C-E-Ab-C."
Gauges, see http://v2p0.m3guitar.com/html/strings.html.
I am afraid I haven't made any transcriptions in the modified
Schoenberg notation. The amateurish drawing is all I've got. I use
Guitar Pro only. I tried Lilypond about a year ago, and some low-
budget version of Finale that was supposed to have some fancy notation
feature, but I couldn't make it work. Nevertheless, I am quite happy
to make any solo arrangements from my site available if we can find a
convenient way to convert them. They are listed on this page,
http://v2p0.m3guitar.com/html/soloarrangements_examples.html
The advanced version of Dolphin Dance is the most difficult, and the
simple version of Turnaround is the easiest.
ole