Compose styles
Rather than blending styles toward a middle, this gives them roles. The first one carries the structure, the next comes in as the accent, and anything after that shows up in a single detail. Where they fight each other, 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 #d5c3aa, #b15832, #23190e and admit one accent from #fafafa, #888888, #1b1b1b.
Where they fight
- Staff Notation and Tablature both belong to Notation Systems, so the difference is small. Push the roles further apart than feels comfortable.
- Staff Notation and Tablature stand roughly 400 years apart. Keep one of them recognisably period rather than letting both drift into the middle.
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
Produce four original images that take their structure from Staff Notation (style, 11th century–) and their accent from Tablature (style, 15th century–). ## What to make Make the kind of thing Staff Notation exists for: engraving parts a player can follow at sight, spacing designed first, or stacking several voices so an ensemble reads them vertically aligned. Choose one subject and hold it across all four. ## Structure comes from Staff Notation - The five-line coordinate system - Time running left to right - Clefs and key signatures - Bars dividing time Composition: Bar width proportional to duration, page turns placed at rests. Type and lettering: Uniform head and stem weight, accidentals given clear space ahead. ## Accent comes from Tablature, used sparingly - The string-and-fret grid - Letters and numbers for finger positions - Instrument-specific formats - Action encoded directly Let one material quality come from it: Tuning and capo stated at the head, the instrument named. ## Colour and feeling Build the ground on #d5c3aa, carry the structure in #b15832 and #23190e, and let a single accent come from #888888. These are read off real works, so a direction rather than a fixed palette. Feeling to carry: trust, technique, calm, intimacy, play. ## Where they fight - Staff Notation and Tablature both belong to Notation Systems, so the difference is small. Push the roles further apart than feels comfortable. - Staff Notation and Tablature stand roughly 400 years apart. Keep one of them recognisably period rather than letting both drift into the middle. ## What goes wrong - 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. ## Across the four Keep the roles fixed in all four. Vary the framing, the scale and the arrangement so the set shows what this pairing can do rather than four versions of one picture. ## Constraints - Do not imitate, reference or name any specific artist, studio, brand, character or copyrighted work. - Do not reproduce the composition of an existing work. - Produce original compositions 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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