• Aqarius@lemmy.world
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    6 hours ago

    It’s not really used by “a tool”, it’s a customary txt-format notation for guitar. People use it to learn/teach how an existing song is played, it’s not intended to actually notate music.

    • JackbyDev@programming.dev
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      5 hours ago

      People use it to learn/teach how an existing song is played, it’s not intended to actually notate music.

      Using something to communicate how to play a song certainly sounds like a form of music notation to me.

      • Aqarius@lemmy.world
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        4 hours ago

        Yes, but it generally doesn’t, for example, record length, or rests, or dynamics… It’s not intended to fully describe a piece of music, it’s really more of a diagram of a series of notes, specific to a guitar layout, that instruct you on playing a melody you’re presumed to already know the sound of.

        • JackbyDev@programming.dev
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          2 hours ago

          ASCII tab

          ASCII tab is a text file format used for writing guitar, bass guitar and drum tabulatures (a form of musical notation) that uses plain ASCII numbers, letters and symbols. It is the only widespread file format for representing tabulature, and is extensively used for disseminating tabulature via the Internet.

          Tablature

          Tablature (or tab for short) is a form of musical notation indicating instrument fingering or the location of the played notes rather than musical pitches.

          Musical notation

          Musical notation is any system used to visually represent music. Systems of notation generally represent the elements of a piece of music that are considered important for its performance in the context of a given musical tradition. The process of interpreting musical notation is often referred to as reading music.

          If that information is incorrect, please contribute your expertise by editing the entries, because they lead me to believe calling ASCII tablatures notation is acceptable.

          Even the article refers to them as notation.

          Um, that’s just a screenshot of a ChatGPT session…! WTF? Obviously that’s not music notation. It’s ASCII tablature, a rather barebones way of notating music for guitar.

          Our scanning system wasn’t intended to support this style of notation.

          • Aqarius@lemmy.world
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            25 minutes ago

            …Yes, if you go back and read my fist post, you will find that I, too, refer to tabs as notation, and say: “it’s a customary txt-format notation”. And if you go to the wiki article you linked and read the sentence after the one you pasted, you’ll find it says :“ASCII tab is intended to be a human-readable format rather than machine-readable, and hence is not strictly defined.”.

            Wanna see another musical notation method that doesn’t actually notate music?

            +5 -6 -7 +7 -6 +5 -6 -7 +7 -6 
            +5 -6 -7 +7 -7 -6 +7 -7 -6 +8 +8 +8 
            +8 -8 +8 -9 -9 -9 +8 -8 -9 +8 
            -8 +7 -7 +8 +7 -7 -6 
            

            That’s a harmonica tab - the number is the hole, the sign is inhale-exhale, but to actually play the song, you need to already know the tune to Bella Ciao.