Comments on: (Original) Guitar Notation and Tabs

By: Dave

Dave — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 08:20:27 +0000

Nah, Nathan – it wasn’t he. The guy was an English friend who lived in Germany (Bielefeld) and who kick started my European career by arranging gigs in Belgium and Germany in ’76. Berlin was an ad hoc, spur of the moment thing because we had free time.

By: Nathan Kentucky

Nathan Kentucky — Mon, 24 Mar 2008 15:51:57 +0000

I’ve been doing the exact same thing here, as far as bouncing around playing quick sets and moving on. Just out of random curiosity, was the guy’s name Maciek Pietrajo? Because he’s been doing that here and around Europe for the past 40 years, and it’d be slightly ridiculous if it was the same guy that I’ve been playing with. Anyways, random thought

By: Dave

Dave — Sun, 23 Mar 2008 12:44:15 +0000

Ah, Berlin! I was there only for a week in ’76 but I remember it well. I was on a tour in West Germany (as was) and was taken on a trip by a friend through to Berlin basically to visit some people he knew. While we were there he took me on a “tour” of some venues and I got to play in some. My abiding memory is very late nights jumping in and out of the car to do twenty-minute spots in each of the places he knew. I don’t recall the names of the venues now but I do recall one with TV monitors around the bar showing the performances on the stage. Very advanced for the time and extremely cool. Berlin did seem like a lot of hard work if you wanted to make a living playing guitar there. Is that still the way it happens – twenty-minute spots and off the next place? Anyway, I have wanted to return for a long time – maybe next year if I can set up some gigs in Germany. Very cool offer, Nathan, and I’ll definitely let you know when I get something sorted out.

I can imagine it takes ages to tab stuff out. I’m lucky, I guess that I can write standard notation and drag and drop onto the tab stave in Finale. I reckon one simple song might take me half-an-hour plus whatever for manual annotation of fingering, etc. I’ve toyed with the idea of compiling a “book” of the songs on the CD and selling it, but, on balance, I’m happy if folks just download and play around with them. Which one’s have you done? Are there any mistakes you’ve found?? Don’t forget to change ‘em round – there’s probably better ways to play that stuff!

Cheers, Nathan!

By: Nathan Kentucky

Nathan Kentucky — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 12:18:35 +0000

I’ve grabbed a couple, and I have to admit, I’ve had to put in a little work to get them up to snuff, but now they make some great sitting around the circle show off bits.
It takes for bloody ever to tab out any piece, but knowing what you’re doing with the program helps a lot.
I’ve played with Sibelius, but never in a solo guitar context, always working on orchestral or choral compositions. It’s bloody powerful, but you know, the best program I’ve ever found for any kind of composition, guitar, Rock Band, Symphony Orchestra, or anything inbetween – the Windows 3.1 version of Musiktime (I think it’s like version 1.3. For reference, they’re now on version 7 or something like that)
It doesn’t have any autoarranging tools, you can only use one MIDI voice at a time, but for rough composition, you can do whatever you want to with it, and it’ll play it. And then for final print, same thing – it’s a WYSIWYG kind of composer, which is something I’d never seen before, but I really like it. Dunno, I mean, if you’ve got it in your head already, it’s amazingly easy to get what you wanted on paper with that beast.
Anyways, not sure where that spontaneous recommendation came from, but – hey, I read you’re looking for places to play in Western Europe. If you end up in Berlin or the area, drop me a line, I can set you up some shows, no problem, long as you don’t mind some random guy from Kentucky opening for you!

Cheers,

Nathan

By: Dave

Dave — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 10:08:39 +0000

Hi Nathan,

I’ve used Finale for a number of years and, yes, I appreciate the productivity through familiarity. Once key commands and shortcuts are committed to memory, a score with lots of repetitive bits which can be copied and pasted can be pushed out very quickly. The only time consuming part is editing tab, manually adding fingerings and any other anotations.

Sibelius is Finale’s main competitor and is highly regarded but I’ve not tried it out.

My webstite tracking tool tell me that lots of people are donwloading the PDF’d scores! What they do with with them I can’t tell, but I flatter myself that some are taken with the pieces to the extent they learn them. Who knows?

Cheers!
Dave

By: Nathan Kentucky

Nathan Kentucky — Wed, 19 Mar 2008 12:31:31 +0000

Dave! Good to see ya back among the living. I suppose the question here to be asked is, which program are you using these days? I’m partial to Guitar Pro, honestly, but that’s because that’s what I started with, and I haven’t gotten around to trying to get as comfortable with anything else. Cheers,

Nathan

- Be sure to check out Berlin’s only true Kentucky Bluegrass Picker @ http://www.nathankentucky.com ! -