Sharing Musical Ideas Here

[mahayana]

Well, it's still kind of a trip to put a chord diagram or a melody on the forum, sans software. Look at this

C11 F#+5 F#9-5
x C F Bb D G x x F# Bb D F# F# Bb E Ab C F#

| | | | | | | | | | | | | (1) | (1)(1) |
+--+--+--+--+--+ +--+--+--+--+--+ +--+--+--+--+--+
| | | | | | | | | | | (1) (2) | (3) | | (4)
+--+--+--+--+--+ +--+--+--+--+--+ +--+--+--+--+--+
( )(1)(1)(1)(1)(1) | | | (2)(3) | | | | | | |
+--+--+--+--+--+ +--+--+--+--+--+ +--+--+--+--+--+
| | | | | | | | (4) | | | | | | | | |
+--+--+--+--+--+ +--+--+--+--+--+ +--+--+--+--+--+
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |

That's what this program does to chord diagrams! So you have to "modify" to get them to look right. Here's what I meant

C11
X C F Bb D G
X 3 3 3 3 3
-(R)11b79 5

F#+5
X X F# Bb D F#
X X 4 3 3 2
----(R)3 5# (R)

F#9-5
F# Bb E Ab C F#
2 1 2 1 1 2
(R)3 b7 9 b5 (R)

Will try again later.

[mahayana]

I suppose the broader topic is how do you share musical ideas?

I usually just am playing something and when someone asks "what was that?" I show them. But I get a lot of stuff from books and magazines, playing along with recorded stuff.

All you really need is a chord pattern and a melody, to get started. Then you can jazz it up.

[mahayana]

Now that "the Team" is back, maybe we can change the forums, add some easy way to put notes on a music staff, post chord diagrams, and so on.

[mahayana]

Well, things have really changed since May. Now there are music scores, tabs, and quite a few examples to play here. Still scattered around, but that's not a real bad thing.

I just spent about 3 hours making up tab to Stella By Starlight, whew! I know we'll wind up with easier ways to do this. Maybe links to some of the programs people are using could go here?

Another frontier is picture-type chord diagrams. We've gotten used to the 3X2233 kind, but a lot lof folks would follow the regular kind easier. Also, the picture kind can indicate which fingers to use, by putting finger numbers where the dots go. Far as I know, we've only used img to put in these illustrations, so far. And there aren't many. Any ideas?

[jazzalta]

Hi M. A question: did you not get the tabledit program I sent? If not, you can download from their site tabledit.com/ and then chart out stuff from there. Pinsk can then post to his site. Might make life a lot easier.

[Professor1]

Is there a way we can post a melody? or part of one, in notation?

[kawe]

powertab (freeware)

www.power-tab.net/information.php

[Professor1]

So, how would you post that here? Can it be used without the tablature, which I don't like to use at all?

[mahayana]

I'm kind of in the same boat, Prof. Not understanding how to create standard notation on the computer, or confident about using unknown programs. Pinsk and JA and kawe will have to lead us through it a few times.

I think just faxing or scanning/e-mailing a score to pinsk is our best bet, for now, since he's offered to help.

There's still the problem of getting it to display properly, large enough to read, few enough measures so that it fits the screen horizontally (no scrolling). But I think it's almost here, I'm hopeful.

Tab does have its limitations, hard to indicate time values, for instance. Where it excels is showing exactly where on the guitar to play the notes. Anyway, I like both standard notation and tablature. We have plenty of room here, so maybe we can do both.

[kawe]

Hi all!
I would suggest:
- making an image of the score (by scanning, exporting, ..)
- decrease it's size, so it would fit into a thread (with photoshop, etc.)
- create an account on a free image webspace (photobucket, ...)
- upload and link the image

I'm no pro in these things and just checking out, what could work or not.
Powertab, Tabledit and Guitar Pro 4 are the programs, which I'm just testing. Guitar Pro seems to have one big advantage: you can export whole scores as image-files (bmp), which you can easily adjust (size)/ convert (jpg, gif,..) to make it fit.

Another problem might be the different (screen) resolutions we use. I'm using 1152 x 864. Another one might use 800 x 600 and so on .....

In my opinion sharing just the files of a certain program (tabledit) would be the easiest way of communicating, because they are very small and everyone can view them on his pc.

[mahayana]

Hey, kawe.

I think you've mentioned most of the ways we've found so far. None of it is real simple, and the results vary ( I used the first way with Nardis, and the only hassle was getting the size right). Interesting point about screen resolution. What we post may be right on our computer, and still look wrong on others? Hmmm...

Looks like we have two votes for tabledit; JA sent me a CD awhile ago that needed adobe to read. Think it's on there...why do I feel like the old dog trying to learn new tricks? LOL

I do have a lot more material to post, kind of dread staying in a reply box for hours again. Let's see, I've started "I Left My Heart In SF", Nardis, Solitude...the other question is whether anybody really wants to see exactly how I do these tunes and others.

What do you think, are we having fun yet?

[jazzalta]

M, I like the idea of the resource page. It just might be that to post our stuff on this forum is going to be a major chore. I tried a couple of pics and couldn't get them in from the upload page. At least we have pinsk's page, and most of the files there open for me.

[Professor1]

mahayana,
It's not that I can't use a notation program, I use Finale. I wondered if we could post it here. BTW, I don't believe in tablature on principle.

[jazzalta]

I know where you're coming from Prof, but at least tab can get the info to a few more folks. I guess the bottom line or priority is sharing, and if tab is less intrusive or more easily understood for some people then I'm all for it.

[Professor1]

The topic here is jazz, and I assume jazz players to be more musically educated, since jazz is a more complicated genre. Jazzers should read. For that matter they should read well above average.

I dunno, maybe that makes me stuck up or arrogant?