BanjoTab

Introduction

lilypond is a powerful system for typesetting beautiful music.

As a banjo player I sometimes want to transcribe a piece into notation and/or tablature. Not being an expert at converting from string+fret positions on the banjo into standard notation, I wanted to be able to enter music by giving string+fret together with tuning information to lilypond.

This code is a preprocessor for lilypond files that converts string+fret information into standard notation that can be typeset in lilypond.

Example

Here is an example of the A part of Matt Brown’s two-finger banjo tab for Soldier’s Joy written in this simplified notation.

%!DoubleC 2.0.4 3.4.4 3.0.4 3.4.4 2.0.8 2.2.8 4.0.8 0.0.8 1.0.4 0.0.4 2.0.4 3.4.4 3.0.4 3.4.4 3.0.8 3.2.8 4.0.8 0.0.8 3.2.8 3.0.8 3.2.8 3.3.8 2.0.4 3.4.4 3.0.4 3.4.4 2.0.8 2.2.8 4.0.8 0.0.8 1.0.4 0.0.4 0.2.8 0.0.8 1.0.8 0.0.8 4.0.8 0.0.8 2.4.4 1.0.4 4.0.8 0.0.8 1.0.4 0.0.4 !%

The %! is a flag telling the preprocessor to translate up to the end tag !%. The DoubleC notation says that the tab info should be interpreted in that tuning. This only needs to be specified once; further %! – !% sections will use the same tuning unless there’s an explicit change. Options are OpenG, DoubleC, Modal (for sawmill tuning).

Each note is entered as (string).(fret).(duration). To 2.0.4 means a quarter note on the open second string. NOTE THAT STRINGS ARE COUNTED FROM ZERO like in python, so the “5th string” drone is string number 4 in the above.

The result of running the preprocessor on this input is the lilypond string

g’4\3 e’4\4 c’4\4 e’4\4 g’8\3 a’8\3 g’‘8\5 d’‘8\1 c’‘4\2 d’‘4\1 g’4\3 e’4\4 c’4\4 e’4\4 c’8\4 d’8\4 g’‘8\5 d’‘8\1 d’8\4 c’8\4 d’8\4 dis’8\4 g’4\3 e’4\4 c’4\4 e’4\4 g’8\3 a’8\3 g’‘8\5 d’‘8\1 c’‘4\2 d’‘4\1 e’‘8\1 d’‘8\1 c’‘8\2 d’‘8\1 g’‘8\5 d’‘8\1 b’4\3 c’‘4\2 g’‘8\5 d’‘8\1 c’‘4\2 d’‘4\1

In the included files, the lilypond file with interpolated string/fret format is soldiers_joy.rly. The generated lilypond file is soldiers_joy.ly. It was produced by running

$ parse2 soldiers_joy.rly > soldiers_joy.ly

The preprocessor recognizes lilypond ties (~), slurs (parentheses), and beams (brackets). Chords can be entered using <>:

<0.2 1.1>4 is a quarter note chord on the 0th string second fret and the first string, first fret.

Examples