Quest for the most visually beautiful tab

[glorychords]

Hey there musical people! I don't know about you, but I travel a lot and am frequently frustrated because I never have my binder of sheet music for all the songs I've chorded out (particularly church songs). So instead of hauling my big binder of music around with me everywhere, it seems a good idea for me to simply put my music online so I can access it anytime from anywhere. And naturally if it's there online, I might as well share it with others. This has lead me to create GloryChords.com. Now this all leads me to my question…What are some ideas for making chorded music tabs look truly beautiful? Everything online is always bland monospaced courier. What would you like to see in a perfect guitar tab website? I know it doesn't matter in the long run, but I'm a designer by trade and if I'm gonna do it I wanna make it gorgeous! Appreciate any thoughts and feedback thanks!

[mmmaak]

Can it really be called "tab" if only the chords are shown?

[glorychords]

Yea, I don't really know what to call it. The chorded music stuff. We're all familiar with the plain jane courier stuff, there's just got to be a better more beautiful way to present it all!

[Coke_zero]

Not really sure what you mean. However, if you mean what is the best way to present the tab, PDF always looks neat and tidy for me.

[glorychords]

Man, I hardly know what I mean either. But you nailed it, presentation. PDF is one nice idea as it does allow for more visual customization.

I just want to combine the art of design and the art of music a bit more.

[HHP]

Some surviving samples of lute tab compare well to illuminated manuscripts. Guessing the months it would take to produce might be a deal breaker.

[sdelsolray]

A song's lyrics with guitar chord symbols above them, and nothing more, is not "tab". Too much information is missing.

[glorychords]

Painting up an entire illuminated page is a bit more than I got time for, but you do bring up a very fascinating idea. Some of that "ancient" sheet music looks pretty awesome, even the more basic non illuminated pages. I liked some of the lute tabulature I saw, used some spot colors in some of the tabs that adds a nice bit of punchy contrast. You've sparked some idea, thanks

[Coke_zero]

The best thing with PDF is that it can easily be downloaded and is perfect for printing. There are many places where when you try to print, it isn't set up for the page format & you end up getting a page with half a line of tab. PDF is also very neat, easy on the eye on a computer screen and can easily be zoomed in, out and shown as 2 pages next to eachother so you dont need to scroll down to the next page as often.

I regularly write my own stuff onto a PDF or even copy out other tabs I like onto a PDF.

[glorychords]

Originally Posted by sdelsolray

A song's lyrics with guitar chord symbols above them, and nothing more, is not "tab". Too much information is missing.

I do concur, so what do we call it? I feel like I'm drawing a complete blank to something very obvious.

[imwjl]

Originally Posted by glorychords

What would you like to see in a perfect guitar tab website? I know it doesn't matter in the long run, but I'm a designer by trade and if I'm gonna do it I wanna make it gorgeous! Appreciate any thoughts and feedback thanks!

Thanks for your efforts.

What I saw was not really tab, and looses formatting of copied to something else because it's not plain ascii text. I prefer GuitarPro and Powertab formats over ascii and ascii over html. They may not look particularly good but they are more functional.

I'm not sure of your goals but the content seems to be Christian music. I'm not Christian so maybe I missed the Glory part as code for that.

Good luck.

[sdelsolray]

Originally Posted by glorychords

I do concur, so what do we call it? I feel like I'm drawing a complete blank to something very obvious.

I think calling it "song lyrics with guitar chord symbols above them" describes it pretty well. Consider adding melodic and rhythmic content.

[JayMack]

A few thoughts:

Make sure that you're not violating copyright. There's a fair amount of copyright violation in choral music in particular (photocopying octavos) and some Christian music publishers don't fool around about copyright. I have no idea who the composers are, but if they have publishers, I'd be careful (respectful).

These chord sheets are not particularly useful in musical terms if one doesn't know the tune. For a comprehensive resource, you should consider a lead sheet style. That is, melody on a musical staff, words below and chords above. This makes the music more accessible to those unfamiliar and to other instruments, most notably, pianists/organists.

As is stands, these "chord & lyric sheets" feel more like memory aids. Putting so much consideration into design is over thinking it, IMO.

jay

[glorychords]

Hey JayMack, yikes I hadn't considered copyrights much! I'm primarily doing this simply for myself anyway, so perhaps making it publicly available isn't such a great idea. And like you said, it really is more of a memory aid. I tend to use these songs with a little rag tag church band that already is familiar with the songs and just needs some chords so they can quickly join in whether they're on guitar, bass, or keyboard. And I know I probably am overthinking it all, just had to throw a quick brainstorm out there to see if there were any ideas I was missing. Thanks!

[mhs]

I know this isn't what you were after but these are things I study when I practice and are visually stunning for me.

They are palindromic canons (same from either direction) and are in standard piano notation. These are by Nicholous Slonimsky.

I tried to use the image but it left a lot to be desired so will just link to the website:

http://www.otherminds.org/html/Palindromic.html