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How to add Gary Coover tablature in MuseScore


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Purely by chance, last week I re-visited this problem and tried again to add Coover tabs to an ABC file.

 

I got a little further than I did before, but wasn't able to reproduce the tablature exactly. It's not a big deal

for me as I don't use Mr. Coover's system in the first place, and am really only interested in adding tabs to

existing files using a computer program, but it was an 'interesting' exercise.

 

I used 'Amazing Grace', the first tune in Civil War Concertina as a test-bed. I've attached the ABC and the

resultant score (I used EasyABC 1.3.7.7). If you compare the score with the one in the book, you will see

that it is close(-ish) - but not close enough. The solid lines above the staff and the dashed lines below the

staff are both missing - and I can't see a consistent, reproducible way to add them...

 

So, it looks like it's MuseScore (or lilypond?) to do this job...

 

---------------------------------------------

 

Here, for my fellow geeks is what I did: The button numbers which go above the score in a Coover-tabbed tune have to

be inserted in the ABC file using s: lines ('symbol'  lines); The button numbers which go below have to be inserted using

w: lines ('lyric' lines). Because the accompaniment chords are placed at the 'top' of the tabbed score, they also have

to be transferred to an s: line. Button numbers in the s: lines have to be inserted as 'symbols' which basically means

using faux-accompaniment chords or text annotations. If you use text annotations, they are not lined up horizontally.

Below the staff, the  button numbers can go in as 'words'. The effect is  that above the score, button numbers are encoded

in quotes,  below the score, they are not. Both w: and s: lines are parsed by ABC as if they were w: lines, so bar-lines,

rests and grace notes can be ignored. If a note is present in the score, but not explicitly assigned a button number,

an empty string (ie: a space) must be explicitly used for that note - a 'null' value will not do. At this point, I gave up.

The solid 'over-lines' above the staff, and the dashed lines below the staff defeated me. I really don't think it's feasible

within ABC.

 

Once I 'got my eye in', it took 10-15 minutes to encode each line of music - far too slow for practical purposes.

 

At this point, I gave up and pulled a beer out of the 'fridge...

 

ag.abc Amazing Grace.pdf

Edited by lachenal74693
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Since this thread is getting some activity again, I might as well share the progress I've made since my original post. I've put together a MuseScore3 plugin, which you can find here: https://github.com/schult/anglo-tab

 

MuseScore still doesn't have support for adding lines/spanners from plugins, so for now I'm just using staff text elements. This means that the pull lines aren't continuous across consecutive notes, and there are no hold lines. Someday if I have time I'll add the feature I need myself (it's an open source project after all), but the current implementation might be enough for simple music. If anyone gives it a try, I'd love to hear your feedback.

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9 hours ago, schult said:

...This means that the pull lines aren't continuous across consecutive notes, and there are no hold lines...

Sounds as if you may be hitting the same sort of problem as I did with ABC?

 

I'm not a MuseScore user. Any chance you could post a PDF of one of the tunes you have treated in this

way for the purposes of comparison?

 

Thanks.

 

Edit, a few minutes later: I've now briefly re-visited the rest of this thread, and it looks very much as

if other folks have had similar problems with the solid and dashed lines, and also with the actual

placement of some of the lines of button numbers..

 

-------------------------------------

I'm also not a user of GC's tablature. I use a 'terser' system which has allowed me to create a program  which does the tabbing

for me while I relax with a cup of tea and a biscuit. This is what I set out to do in the first place, so I'm happy..😎

Edited by lachenal74693
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2 hours ago, lachenal74693 said:

Sounds as if you may be hitting the same sort of problem as I did with ABC?

 

I'm not a MuseScore user. Any chance you could post a PDF of one of the tunes you have treated in this

way for the purposes of comparison?

 

Thanks.

 

Edit, a few minutes later: I've now briefly re-visited the rest of this thread, and it looks very much as

if other folks have had similar problems with the solid and dashed lines, and also with the actual

placement of some of the lines of button numbers..

 

-------------------------------------

I'm also not a user of GC's tablature. I use a 'terser' system which has allowed me to create a program  which does the tabbing

for me while I relax with a cup of tea and a biscuit. This is what I set out to do in the first place, so I'm happy..😎

 

MuseScore can do nice continuous lines (as in my original video), it's just that the plugin API doesn't expose them yet. So you can do it manually, just not from a plugin.

 

Here's Amazing Grace again, slapped together in about 5 minutes with my plugin. As you can see, it's a bit of a mess - I never got around to keeping vertical alignment consistent between notes, since I'd probably have to redo it once line support comes around anyway.

 

And just for fun, here's what the plugin looks like in action:

95325546_ScreenShot2021-03-10at12_51_14AM.thumb.png.5440b8272d6af46ee50d908d15b900c0.png

Amazing Grace.pdf

Edited by schult
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1 hour ago, schult said:

MuseScore can do nice continuous lines (as in my original video), it's just that the plugin API doesn't expose them yet. So you can do it manually, just not from a plugin.

 

Here's Amazing Grace again, slapped together in about 5 minutes with my plugin. As you can see, it's a bit of a mess - I never got around to keeping vertical alignment consistent between notes, since I'd probably have to redo it once line support comes around anyway...

Thanks! Looks as if my 'hand-crafting', and your plug-in are both hovering at approximately the same height

above this problem. I'll have a look at the video again later. As I implied in what I said earlier, it's not a problem

for me as I don't use GC's tablature and don't use MuseScore, but it is interesting. It would be nice if it could

be sorted.

 

The lack of horizontal alignment is what I would expect to see if I used text annotations rather than 

accompaniment chords in the ABC

 

As far as the horizontal bars above the notes are concerned, I tried using a macron at first, but that only works

for a small sub-set of letters, and not for numbers at all. I also thought about adding a separate 's:' line with

only underscores in it, to create the continuous horizontal line, but LMF defeated me...

 

I wonder what lilypond would make of the problem (no, I'm not even thinking about trying that one myself...).

Edited by lachenal74693
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6 hours ago, lachenal74693 said:

As far as the horizontal bars above the notes are concerned, I tried using a macron at first, but that only works

for a small sub-set of letters, and not for numbers at all. I also thought about adding a separate 's:' line with

only underscores in it, to create the continuous horizontal line, but LMF defeated me...

 

Lately I've been contemplating the use of violin bow direction symbols to indicate bellows changes. The problem is I'd have to explain it every time I shared something. (And does the world really need yet another concertina notation system?) But what I'm thinking about is using a separate staff for each hand with the only extra notation being for bellows changes - button choices would be mostly implied by bellows direction, and the few remaining choices would be at the player's discretion. Surely somebody else has already used this approach, right?

 

 

7 hours ago, lachenal74693 said:

I wonder what lilypond would make of the problem (no, I'm not even thinking about trying that one myself...).

 

Having used lilypond before, I'm sure it can do a beautiful job for anyone willing to spend the time. I'm with you - I'm not touching that!

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Gary uses the 'line' notation for the LHS of the tune, but he does not for the RHS where he relies on the standard musical notation to show the duration of notes.

 

One way out of the missing line dilemma would be to use a separate staff for the LHS and simply put the tab number notation below the notes.

 

This would have the added advantage that the score would be useful to instruments other than the Anglo concertina.

 

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31 minutes ago, Don Taylor said:

...One way out of the missing line dilemma would be to use a separate staff for the LHS...

 

1 hour ago, schult said:

...But what I'm thinking about is using a separate staff for each hand ...

Ooh! Doesn't it start to get horribly complicated with two staffs - it's complicated enough already.

 

I'm not sure I can visualise what that would look like.

 

Question I meant to ask earlier. Can schult's MuseScore approach handle tunes in 'batches' or is it a

'one-at-a-time' approach? I'm not even sure this is a sensible question in  MuseScore context...

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25 minutes ago, lachenal74693 said:

Question I meant to ask earlier. Can schult's MuseScore approach handle tunes in 'batches' or is it a

'one-at-a-time' approach? I'm not even sure this is a sensible question in  MuseScore context...

 

I'm not sure if MuseScore has a way to do batch processing. Either way, my plugin is one-at-a-time. It's meant for manual entry, not automatically generating tabs from standard notation. The latter doesn't work for the way Gary presents arrangements in his books, where the harmony isn't shown in standard notation. Plus, auto-generating tabs for a harmonic-style arrangement is a tougher problem. It's one that I'm interested in, but I'm not working on it at the moment.

 

 

25 minutes ago, lachenal74693 said:

Ooh! Doesn't it start to get horribly complicated with two staffs - it's complicated enough already.

 

I'm not sure I can visualise what that would look like.

 

I figure pianists manage, so it's at least possible. Here's a score that I did (for G/D) with dual staves and Coover tabs. I still used a hold line in one spot, although it isn't strictly necessary. What I was proposing was taking this and dropping all the Coover tabs, and then adding a bow direction symbol above each note that has a change in bellows direction (down bow for pull, up bow for push?).

All_Glory,_Laud,_and_Honor.pdf

Edited by schult
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2 hours ago, schult said:

Here's a score that I did (for G/D) with dual staves and Coover tabs. I still used a hold line in one spot, although it isn't strictly necessary. What I was proposing was taking this and dropping all the Coover tabs, and then adding a bow direction symbol above each note that has a change in bellows direction (down bow for pull, up bow for push?).

All_Glory,_Laud,_and_Honor.pdf 41.15 kB · 2 downloads

Yes!  Another big advantage of this approach is that if you use the concertina sound font linked to in my signature below then Musescore will give you a nice sounding play-along where you can do things like play the LHS separately from the RHS.  Plus there are tools for transcription, changing speed, adding a metronome, looping, changing 'swing' settings, and so on.  You also get a really good looking printable score, especially with the latest 3.6 version.  It might sound counter-intuitive, but Musescore is a good tool for learning a tune by ear.  

 

I gave up using things like EasyABC on Windows because the instruments used for play-back are really horrible.  I mostly cut and paste ABC text into the ABC import plug-in in Musescore and then use Musescore from then on.

 

Shult: As a not very good music reader who does not play Anglo I suspect that your plug-in could be changed so that instead of Coover button numbers it would show the actual ABC letters.  This is how Gary notates for his Jeffries Duet Tutor book and I find it useful.  Here are some examples (note that Gary does not use a second staff here either):

 

 

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3 minutes ago, Don Taylor said:

As a not very good music reader who does not play Anglo I suspect that your plug-in could be changed so that instead of Coover button numbers it would show the actual ABC letters.

 

Yes, I think that would be relatively straightforward. Thanks for the suggestion! That actually gets me thinking that ABC letters should be one of the options to show on the buttons. I was planning to provide various options for that anyway (e.g. Wheatstone vs Jeffries, C/G vs G/D, etc.) and that would be a good addition.

 

Thanks for pointing out that sound font also. I'll definitely give it a try. The built-in accordion sound has gotten me by, but I can't say that I love it.

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I'm just highlighting short extracts from the recent posts to keep it short:

 

Schult said:

I'm not sure if MuseScore has a way to do batch processing.

Yes, I thought that might be the case. My own approach is quite deliberately ABC-oriented, and geared to

'batch processing'.

 

I figure pianists manage, so it's at least possible. (wrt two staves)

Good point! I hadn't thought of that!

 

Don said:

> ...if you use the concertina sound font linked to in my signature below then Musescore will give you a nice

> sounding play-along...

> I gave up using things like EasyABC on Windows because the instruments used for play-back are really horrible.

Yes! That sound font is really nice. I wish it were possible to load sound fonts into ABC! As Don says, the

MIDI sound in ABC is pretty scratchy, but if you tweak it a bit, it can be improved (I use Tango Accordion

to simulate a concertina). I think I may be fortunate in having quite a good sound card in my machine,

and it doesn't sound quite as 'orrible as I've heard on some machines.

 

Schult said (in response to Don's suggestion):

That actually gets me thinking that ABC letters should be one of the options to show on the buttons.

The 'batch-oriented' program wot I wrote was initially written to add ABT tabs to existing ABC files (using

the different button numbering associated with the ABT system). It does that job reasonably successfully,

and that's what I mostly use it for. I have however added various options as I gained more confidence. One

which I added about a fortnight ago was to display the ABC code for a note below the  note, and I'm quite

pleased with it. The point being not that I did it, but that I did it and thus  confirmed that it is a viable option.

If a berk like me can do it in ABC, I'm sure you'll manage to do it in MuseScore - good hunting!

 

Time for a large whisky!

Edited by lachenal74693
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  • 2 years later...
11 hours ago, Cathasach said:

All I can find is one that has a very weird layout coded into it and a bunch of js files that don't work now.

I can confirm that this is the case. I tried to get these concertina plugins to work satisfactorily when MuseScore 4 hit the streets - having tried (and failed) three times prior to this (once with MS2, twice with MS3). I very quickly gave up on MS4, and won't be bothering with MS again. I've deleted it from 2 of my 3 machines and am only keeping the 3rd copy for 'reference'...

 

To get at GC-style tablature, the route suggested by Michael Eskin is probably your best option (though I haven't tried it myself)...

Edited by Roger Hare
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  • 3 weeks later...
1 hour ago, polk90 said:

Hi, can you please tell me, right here https://musescore.com/user/37659330/scores/8404724
- what does it mean when several digits are used for one note. Above and below the note (e.g. for the first note) ?
- what do the numbers with a letter mean (e.g. 5a; 1a; 2a) ?

If there's more than one digit it means that youb are playing more than one button at a time.

Numbers with an 'a' are on the accidental row(top row)

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