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Comment by niek_pas | Hacker News Reader

I find conventional Western notation works quite well for communicating notes, rhythms, and basic expression, but it breaks down pretty quickly once you move beyond that. E.g. a lot of the common techniques on electric guitar (bends, palm muting, tremolo/whammy bar stuff, pick slides, slap/thumping, pinch harmonics, raking) don't really have a convenient notational shorthand. That's without even mentioning synthesizers (how do you notate 'gradually increase the filter cutoff here'?) and DAWs, samplers, drum machines. But it's definitely a hard problem: the more information you try to shove into a notational system, the harder it gets for people to keep track of what everything means. Plus you just start running out of easily distinguishable symbols at some point.

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I'm not sure what you are talking about wrt guitar and standard notation. Finger (PIMA) indication, staccato/legato, vibrato, tremolo, slurs, hammer, pulls, etc...it's all there. I don't see as much notation around hammer/pull as a classical player, but pick up a classical guitar music book sometime...you'll find that everything (guitar-related) you mentioned needing to be included, is already included.

Not sure what you consider convenient, but I’ve never had a problem reading electric guitar notation. It’s handled the same way we notate extended technique for other instruments - a combination of text above the staff, and squiggly lines on it :)

> (how do you notate 'gradually increase the filter cutoff here'?)

Use freeform text; it's a standard part of musical notation. Just because most of what you see on a score is some form or another of shorthand doesn't mean everything is.

How do you think Tom Lehrer was able to indicate a tempo of "Pornissimo"?

https://tomlehrersongs.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/smut-m...

What?! I'm surprised those are the things you complain about regarding guitar sheet music.

The only real problem is guitar always has several different ways to play the same notes all over the neck and instrument tuning isn't always specified either.

Standard tuning may not work and tabs sometimes aren't there alongside the staff. If you're trying to sight read, you'll guess alright for a while until you are suddenly forced to make heroic leaps to the other end of the neck or painfully contort your fingers just so you don't miss a beat.

I guess I am maybe not coming from the same place you are here, but, fwiw, scores for classical guitar will often mark bare positions (basically, what fret your 1 finger is around) at certain points with Roman numerals, which then communicates, or at least implies, which string you are playing which note (for that part, until you see a new roman numeral). Also common to see simply a number on a specific note indicating a finger, as you do for a note+finger combo with piano scores, which then implies how to play the rest of the notes in that phrase or whatever. I don't think you need much more than that and it seems elegant enough to me!

But also, really, I was always taught that unless the composer specifies something specific, you are free to figure it on your own. Like there are only so many contexts where the timbral differences between two unison, fretted notes is going to matter probably, right? Also, how you play some part might be informed by where you are after the preceding part etc.

Tuning point though is kinda interesting and not all my wheel house. But they do call the default one standard for a reason!

Yes. I am thinking about rock, jazz, and fingerstyle playing. They're hardly edge cases and haven't been for decades. They're so popular and modern enough to prove the original point.

With regards to tuning, fingerstyle will often feature an arbitrary tuning unique to only a handful of songs. Timbre absolutely matters because you're playing multiple parts on one fretboard simultaneously.

Here's an example of all three genres in one performance! Kent Nishimura covering Steely Dan's "Peg" in fingerstyle. He does have a book available. It combines ordinary sheet music with tablature.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=x4sadPd661s

> how do you notate 'gradually increase the filter cutoff here'?

probably a standalone Italian word would be fine, or some special < like we have for gradually increasing volume

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