Course Content
-
0 / 10
Overview
-
Introduction to Musical Notation and Tablature and Computer Software
-
A. Notation to Tablature
-
B. Tablature to Notation
-
Mountain Dulcimer Tablature Explained
-
Mountain Dulcimer Tablature Examples-A
-
Mountain Dulcimer Tablature Examples-B
-
Hammered Dulcimer Tablature Explained
-
Hammered Dulcimer Tablature Examples-A
-
Hammered Dulcimer Tablature Examples-B
-
About the full Course
-
Mountain Dulcimer Tablature Examples-A
I've got several different examples of tablature that I would like to go through with you now so that you can see various ways that this might show up.
First up, I've got a piece of tablature that came from one of Neil Hellman's books for many years ago.
And in this one you can see there's a series of numbers with that are sitting above the lines.
There is a a time signature that says 3 fourths or 3 over 4 or 3 4 time, waltz time, and you have the eulberg.
And on the bass string it says play a 2, on the melody string it says play a 0.
Below that you have some musical notation to tell you how long to hold each one of the notes.
But there's no there's no musical notation to tell you what pitches are being used.
You have to do that by hearing.
This particular one also says capo at the 6th fret and then the capoed fret is going to be the 0 and 2 will be 2 away from the capo.
Now let's take a look at, this comes from a Cary Crompton book of, Renaissance tunes, I believe, called Hunt the Squirrel.
You can see here that there are that since 6 eight time it tells us it's in 158 tuning, which is became known for a while as Mixolydian tuning.
Often in this particular day and age it's DAD tuning, but it could be any root, 5th, and octave tuning.
In this case, it says 0 on the first beat and then it goes to a half note that lasts for 4.
And there are little flags and stems to help us know how long we're going to hold these.
But once again there's no musical notation to give us a clue.
Now, let's take a look at another piece of tablature from another Neil Hellman, early arrangement.
One of the earlier books I had this one has a combination of musical notation at the top and it shows all that the key signatures and everything you need.
The TAB stands for is a short name for tab and then you see the numbers as we've as we've talked about before 5.
And I always call the tab numbers from the bass.
There are other people who do it other ways, but that's just the way I do.
And it says 5.
It tells us we're an ionian tuning down below and we're starting at the 5th fret.
And, we're gonna hold that.
You'll notice that the musical notation below that tells us the timing matches the musical notation above, which shows us the the pitches as well as the timing.
Because that's what musical notation does, it tells us pitch over time.
Now let's take a look at another variation.
Here's one from Larry Conger from one of his books.
This one tells us we're gonna put the capo on the first fret and you can tune into the capo lesson to find out how what capo is and how it works and and all the benefits that come from it.
Because we're originally tuned to DAD, when you put the capo on that gives you the pitches E B E.
And you'll notice there's 2 E's right there indicating that if you have doubled melody string you're gonna have 2 E's right there on the first the first string.
Now you have the musical notation above.
I'm just a poor EEBB with an Em chord above.
The chord above, that E with a small m, means we're playing an Em chord.
Now in this particular one, which is typical of a lot of what Larry does, you'll see quarter notes with stems and this time instead of the numbers going between the lines, they're breaking the line and sitting right in the middle of the line of the string they represent.
5.
And in the next measure, even though you're holding poor for a whole, a whole note, you're seeing 8 different notes that are played.
5 in the melody, 0 in the middle, 0 in the bass, 0 in the melody, 5 in the middle, 5 in the melody, 0 in the middle, 0 in the middle, 0 in the bass, 0 in the middle.
So this would be a flatpicking or fingerstyle way of playing while that note is being held.
You're filling in the gap by playing within the chord.
And then you get to the next measure, the 3rd measure.
That musical notation has a tie from the whole note B in the second measure over the word poor that goes to the quarter note in the first beat of the third measure.
In musical notation you would not replay that note because it's being held as part of a tie.
But in this particular tablature that note is played again.
You've gone through the 50 middle, 5 middle bass middle 5 middle bass middle 5.
And then it's time to go on and play the next note.
0 comments
Leave a comment
Please log in or register to post a comment