E---------------------------------------------------------------- Here I've used q for quarter note, e for 8th note and t for triplet quarter note. <*> Continued in the next message... --- TriToss (tm) Professional 11.0 - #229 * Origin: * Dynasty BBS * The Musician's Source (1:110/1065.0) --------------- FIDO MESSAGE AREA==> TOPIC: 209 TABLATURE Ref: EEK00013 Date: 10/09/97 From: RONALD SCHLEGEL Time: 07:52pm \/To: ALL (Read 0 times) Subj: How to... 11/12 Continued from the previous message... <*> If you want to send in a TAB with rhythm information like this then it's *essential* to explain the system you use. I've seen a lot of different systems of letters and numbers of varying degrees of simplicity and readability. Whichever you choose to use, you'll have to explain all your symbols to make sure others can work out what the hell you're on about. If you want to give a few clues as to the rhythm of the TAB, but don't want to get too involved, use of bar lines is an effective way of conveying timing information. Simply insert a vertical line of |'s to indicate the end of a bar. So using the national anthem example I had before, with bar lines it looks like this : E--------|---------------|0--------4--2-|0--------------|-------- B---0----|----------0----|--------------|---------------|0------- G------1-|-----1---------|--------------|-----1----3----|-------- D--------|2--------------|--------------|---------------|-------- A--------|---------------|--------------|---------------|-------- E--------|---------------|--------------|---------------|-------- -- 7 -- Lyrics It's a lot easier to follow a piece of TAB when you've got at least some of the lyrics to follow, and you can match up the notes/riffs in the TAB to the lyrics. Try to include lyrics for at least the first verse and chorus. If you're not sure of the words you can ftp cs.uwp.edu - there is a large collection of song lyrics held there. Failing that a request to the newsgroups along the lines of " Please mail me the lyrics to such and such so that I can make a proper job of the TAB I'm working on" will usually get a sympathetic response. As a final note on writing TAB I should say that whenever you post to the newsgroups ALWAYS cross post to both guitar groups, and also mail a copy to guitar@nevada.edu so that it can be included in OLGA. For more information on posting to the guitar newsgroups and OLGA see the other FAQs regularly posted to the guitar newsgroups. ******************************** *** 3.3 THINGS TO AVOID *** ******************************** -- 1 -- Tab Wraparound One of the most common problems in writing TAB is text wraparound. This makes the TAB almost impossible to read but is very easily avoided. The problem occurs when you write a line of TAB which is maybe 80 or 90 characters long. For a lot of people this is too wide for their screen, so what should be a single line of tab ends up being split onto two lines. Here is what it looks like : E---------------------------------------------0------------------------------- ---------------- B---------------------------------------2--4-----4--2-------------------------