Half Notes in Tabulature

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geleybou
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Post by geleybou » Thu Apr 25, 2019 6:14 pm

Is there a good way to distinguish half notes from quarter notes?
banjo samples.png
The first chord here is a half note, the following is a quarter note, but they look the same.

Thanks,


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Peter Thomsen
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Post by Peter Thomsen » Thu Apr 25, 2019 6:40 pm

1) You can add a circle around the TAB half notes.
Create the circle in the Shape Designer, and add it to the score as a shape expression or as a shape articulation.
* See the attached Finale document
GranVals2014.musx
2) In your example the stems go through the TAB numbers.
I would not do so, since the stems obscure the TAB numbers.
To can change the stem settings, go to
Staff Attributes > Stem Settings…
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Bill Stevens
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Post by Bill Stevens » Thu Apr 25, 2019 8:30 pm

You might not want to do it this way, but my solution to this is to have both a TAB staff and a regular notation staff.

Bill
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geleybou
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Post by geleybou » Thu Apr 25, 2019 9:02 pm

Thanks for the solution!

And it is banjo tabulature, so standard notation won't really help very much in this situation.

Bill Stevens
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Post by Bill Stevens » Fri Apr 26, 2019 12:26 am

I agree that standard notation is not particularly helpful for banjo music, especially in alternate tunings, other than it provides some note values that are not obvious in tablature. In some pieces I've written that include a clawhammer banjo part I have had the TAB written out but simplified the standard notation.

Bill
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miker
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Post by miker » Fri Apr 26, 2019 12:27 am

I don’t know why standard notation won’t work with banjo.
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geleybou
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Post by geleybou » Fri Apr 26, 2019 4:16 am

It's not really that it won't work necessarily, but when you're tabbing out Scruggs style or melodic style banjo, the standard notation won't give you enough information about where to play the notes. You could have a lot of options, comparing single-string style to melodic style. And standard notation is especially obtuse for Scruggs style, but tab is very precise, and you can easily see the right hand motives.

That said, it couldn't hurt to have it for instructional materials, but I'm creating parts to be used on a music stand, so less staves also means less page turns.

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