You can’t quite run it on different hardware: unlike on a piano, the note does not uniquely determine how something is played on, say, a guitar.
Tabulatures come with their own limitations though. They're mostly a far less portable way to express western music. They also lose a lot of meaning. Is a note part of a particular chord or melody line? A lot of this is not visible in tabulatures.
Just for clarification, I asked because GP said:
> You can’t quite run it on different hardware: unlike on a piano, the note does not uniquely determine how something is played on, say, a guitar.
> Of course, on top of that, you also have a wide range of ways to modify how you play on a guitar.
Yeah, same with the piano. And I think, with most of all instruments.
This is not possible for a guitar (and others) because there is no unique mapping between the note on the sheet and the position on the instrument.
I know it's not really suited for e.g. non-western or modern quarter-tone music. But since I don't play the guitar I would like to understand the reasoning behind your qoute:
> You can’t quite run it on different hardware: unlike on a piano, the note does not uniquely determine how something is played on, say, a guitar.
Is that more clear?
It’s not.
You seem to have trouble with the concept that the vast majority of instruments does not yield a recognizable melody simply by pressing the right button at the right time. All of those musicians are doing just fine, thank you very much.