🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <ajb.671294655@hela.iti.org> ajb@iti.org (Al Boehnlein) writes:
>I have an idea for a DSP project that might interest the guitar players out
>there.  I was wondering if it would be possible to write a program that
>would produce tablature of a song.
>
> ajb
Good luck! Unlike many musical instruments, the guitar often has 22 frets
(half-step quantized pitches) and the distance between string pitches is
only a 5th. This means that there is considerable ambiguity as to where
in the tabulature you would place a note. e.g.: the following are ALL ways
to finger the same C note:

     3   5   7    10  12    15    17  19    22
|-|-|-|-|-|-|-|-|-|-|-|-|-|-|-|-|-|-|-|-|-|-|-|
|0|-|-|-|-|-|-|-|-|-|-|-|-|-|-|-|-|-|-|-|-|-|-|
|-|-|-|-|0|-|-|-|-|-|-|-|-|-|-|-|-|-|-|-|-|-|-|
|-|-|-|-|-|-|-|-|-|0|-|-|-|-|-|-|-|-|-|-|-|-|-|
|-|-|-|-|-|-|-|-|-|-|-|-|-|-|0|-|-|-|-|-|-|-|-|
|-|-|-|-|-|-|-|-|-|-|-|-|-|-|-|-|-|-|-|-|O|-|-|

A good guitarist can hear the subtle changes in tone (spectral components)
and can, with the help of the process of elimination (there can be no more 
than 6 simultaneous notes, and the order is usually obvious), can often
determine a WORKING fingering. A computer program would have to be clever
enough to know which fingerings are possible, which are not possible, which
are probable, anatomically speaking. The task would be much easier if you
had access to the guitarist, and could put a hex pickup on his guitar. This
would eliminate the inherent ambiguity.

This is a project that has long interested me, but my DSP experience is 0.
My '81 college Sr. project was a monophonic real-time (analog) "harmonizer", 
and part of the problem was determining apparent pitch. Producing tabulature
would have been merely an information display problem. But then there's the 
polyphonic nature of the guitar...

-- 

Ron Anderson			"He is no fool who loses what he cannot keep to
rona@videovax.tv.Tek.com	gain what he cannot lose." Jim Elliot, martyr