tab in lessons and elsewhere

Wow, I don't think we've had this situation before. Do you mean that you could read tab if it were a text file instead of an illustration? Maybe someone here knows a proper solution, but in the meantime you could tell us what song you're working on, maybe one of us can type it to plain text.

Wow.

Hey Seagull and welcome by the way. You pose a very interesting question and new problem hopefully to be solved.

Yes you are correct, TAB is more of a graphical representation of where the notes are on the fret-board. I don't know if your even familiar with TAB but I'll assume for a minute that you don't. I'll attempt to write in a way that your text reader could make sense of it for you.

Basically TAB is a representation of the six strings of the guitar via six lines. The top line being the HIGH E (as in Pitch) and conversely the bottom line being the LOW E. These lines are usually represented by typing hyphens stacked one on top the other, with normal line spacing of course, like a miniature grid if you will.

Then along the lengths of the lines are numbers. These numbers represent the FRET to be pressed and anywhere there is a zero this represents an open or unfretted string.

The numbers then are placed along the length of the lines on their respective strings in a "Flowing" order if you will, for the proper sequence of a melody for example. Chords are represented by numbers being placed vertically on top another, again on their respective strings.

As you can imagine it is a bit difficult trying to describe tab but I'll try in this example, albeit short:

A simple melody might look like, again in descriptive form.

Happy Birthday Song:

Third String (or line) - Zero : Third String Zero : Third String Two : Third String Zero: Second String One : Second String Zero

Grinning !!

I doubt many of us even considered the blind musician in terms of TAB or how to effectively interpret TAB or Standard notation for that matter for someone who is blind.

I'm assuming of course, Interpretation is in part the means of your text reader doing it's job.

Pause in Thought.

WOW what an opportunity to perhaps, perhaps develop a standard of a way or a means to effectively interpret tab for someone like you. If one doesn't exist already. How do you read standard notation? Or Do you? Or is everything by ear?

I wanna call on my bretheren here at Guitar Noise to openly discuss this issue and how we could provide something for you. We need to discuss this. Now that I'm thinking about it. It will be a tall order I'm sure but we have some great folks here. some very Smart folks here and I'm sure we can come up with something.

I'm willing to volunteer to "Transpose" tab into Text that would make sense for your text reader.

Thoughts on a format:

Since the Lines of the strings represent First line High E, second line the B string, third line the G String etc. Maybe a Letter-Number combo would work best.

Or if we went the more traditional route and called things out by their "Position" then the Note Name. Then for chords we just call them Open G Chord, Open A Chord...etc.

OK.. so here's the challenge my GN Brothers and Sisters, lets find a way for Seagull to "READ" Tabs :)

Seagull: Let us "Chew" on this for a while, I'm sure we will find a way.

Dagwood.

Here's a suggestion. Go to the "Easy Songs" forum and see if there are any songs, that you can read. If you can, post the url or the name of the song and we'll see what works and what we can do about it.

Dagwood: I might be mis-understanding the question but I don't think that the tab-system is the issue. in Florida there is a school that uses notation with blind people, so I understanding it might not be the issue.The problem, I guess, is that all lessons on GN noise are pictures. If you're blind you're using a device that has the user feel the letters. However, because it's a graphic the system can't translate it to actual characters of text, so all he reads is that there is some picture. What it is is unclear. If that's the case the solution would be to just type it like we do in the forums. But I could be hopelessly wrong ofcourse.

EDIT: I was typing as Arjen posted the last reply. Sorry for the redundancy.
- m

Just want to point out that many, if not all, of the tab portions of the official GN lessons are indeed graphics (typically GIF). One would have to manually transcribe the entire song in GP, PowerTab, TablEdit or similar software, then export the file in ASCII.

Or get the original files used to create the lessons and export from there.

P.S. Welcome Seagull!

Dagwood: I might be mis-understanding the question ..... But I could be hopelessly wrong ofcourse.

And I may be mis-understanding it also...and I too could be way wrong and reading more into the question than what is there.

But thinking perhaps of how a Text reader would read an ASCII section of TAB. That in and of itself would be very confusing...again I would imagine. So I was just thinking of a way to recode or interpret the TAB to make it readable for a TDD type device.

:D It's my turn to say wow now. Thanks so much guys for all the suggestions and welcomes.
That's right, what happens when I try to read the lessons is that my screenreader just says "graphic" and the name of the graphic, "blues riff number 1" or whatever, and that's it. As it's a .gif file, it doesn't read it.
I was asked as well, which lessons I was having trouble with. Well due to the way I learned, (years ago with a teacher, and now basically self-tought), I'm a bit hazy on certain scales, namely the blues and pentatonic scales used in rock, and some blues riffs. I know how they sound, it's the fingering I'm having problems with. Maybe though this is a question not about tab, but about technique which would be better placed elsewhere. The reason I asked the tab question though is that there are lessons on this very thing, with tab in them.
It was also mentioned that tab would be very confusing to read, but I may have a solution around that. I program a fair bit in VB, and it would seem to be a pretty straight forward thing to write a little utility that would take a file as input, and convert it into a format that my screenreader could read, much like Dagwood's explanation of tab or something similar. Just a thought anyway.
But yeah, it was just those lessons I was running into a bit of trouble with.

Yeah, if you've got an ear for music you should be alright. IF it's fingering technique (for scales) perhaps we could relate scales in fingerings? The major pantatonic, for instance, would be middle, pinky; index, pinky; index, pinky; index, ring; middle, pinky; middle, pinky. Moving up the strings, of course.

Converting tab images to text would be beneficial for more than the blind - it's an accessibility issue; those with low vision can generally resize text easily, but pictures pose a problem. Text would be easier to print, or copy to another location; in general, text is preferable on the Web.

That's awesome. :) That's the kind of thing I was looking for in the tab, thanks so much for that. I know pretty much how scales should sound, as my ear for music isn't too bad. It's just the fingering I was ... well hazy isn't the word lol. OT I know so apologies for this, but I noticed while trying out the major pentatonic, that Fleetwood Mac use it for the riff in "As long as you follow". Just an aside really, and I that wont' be the only song, nor the only band it's used in. Anyway thanks again for all the help guys.