Compose two styles
Rather than blending two styles into a middle, this assigns them roles: one carries the structure, the other appears as an accent. Where the two fight, it says so before you start.
How to divide the work
- Composition
- Follow Staff Notation: Bar width proportional to duration, page turns placed at rests
- Type
- Set in Staff Notation's manner (Uniform head and stem weight, accidentals given clear space ahead), and let Tablature's lettering (Numbers sit on the lines, one line for each string) appear only where you want the eye to catch.
- Material
- Ground in Staff Notation's material (Thin staff lines, note heads printed darker than the spaces); bring in exactly one thing from Tablature (Tuning and capo stated at the head, the instrument named).
- Colour
- Build on #e9e6dd, #67635d, #171615 and admit one accent from #e9e6dd, #67635d, #171615.
Where they fight
- Both belong to Notation Systems, so the difference is small. Push the roles further apart than feels comfortable.
Caution
- Staff Notation Setting every bar to the same width breaks the link between spacing and duration, so fast passages jam and sight readers fall out.
- Tablature Fingering written without rhythm leaves duration unrecoverable in an unfamiliar tune, so the tab only serves someone who already knows it.
Image prompt
An original image that takes its structure from Staff Notation (Style, 11th century–) and its accent from Tablature (Style, 15th century–). Structural cues: The five-line coordinate system; Time running left to right; Clefs and key signatures; Bars dividing time. Accent cues, used sparingly: The string-and-fret grid; Letters and numbers for finger positions; Instrument-specific formats; Action encoded directly. Composition: Bar width proportional to duration, page turns placed at rests. Type and lettering: Uniform head and stem weight, accidentals given clear space ahead. Let one material quality come from the second style: Tuning and capo stated at the head, the instrument named. Mood: Trust, Technology, Calm, Intimacy, Play. Color: build on #e9e6dd, #67635d, #171615 with a single accent drawn from #e9e6dd, #67635d, #171615. Constraints: do not imitate, reference or name any specific artist, studio, brand, character or copyrighted work. Produce an original composition in the general period languages described above.
Related entries
- Staff Notation 11th century– / Style / Notation Systems
Notation that fixes pitch to a coordinate, running from Guido's invention of the line to the five-line staff. Time reads left to right and pitch up and down, a flat design still in use after a thousand years and the longest-lived format in information design.
- Tablature 15th century– / Style / Notation Systems
Notation from the player's point of view: not what pitch, but where the fingers go. From lute letter-tablature to guitar TAB, the lineage of practical writing that encodes bodily action directly.
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