#1 resource for Cigar Box Guitars, Free Plans, How-To, Parts & More!

Please, teach me how to write tablatures

Hello, pleased to meet you all. I've been lurking in this forum for quite a while and I think this place is great! I got so inspired two days ago that I made my first instrument, the one stringed Canjo with a diatonic scale. It is a good start and it has a very pure sound and I absolutely love it and I love playing on it. I'm working on memorizing my first song "Silent Night", it's easy enough and I'm playing by a "number tablature".

Now, I have a specific melody in mind that I would love to play, I found a tablature designed for the guitarr and I was wondering over the process of converting the tabs, is it as simple as going over each of the notes and see if they sound similar, and if not just plink away untill I find one that does and write that in its place?

The song I have in mind is the theme song from Tetris: "Type A"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5oBf7Ug1hi8

The tabs I found:

http://tabs.ultimate-guitar.com/o/ozma/tetris_theme_tab.htm

Thank you for the help!

0 members like this

▶ Reply to This

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Ron "Oily" Sprague on May 24, 2015 at 3:11am

Mattis,

Plinking away until it sounds similar is indeed one way to do it. The thing is, if you have a diatonic fretted Canjo ( you don't mention the scale length or the tuning of that one string when it's open, meaning, non-fretted, which is somewhat important), you can map out the notes on your fret board very quickly. Then you take the tabs from the Tetris Theme, and map those notes out. You'll notice they are played on the GBE strings of a 6-stringer. You'll have to take the note sequence from the Tetris tab, and transfer it to those notes on your one stringer. Since you only have 1 string, and have diatonic fretting, there is a reasonable chance that you won't be able to play one or more of the original notes in a fretted position, at least without some string bending.

▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by Mattis Carlgren on May 24, 2015 at 4:23am

Ahh, I see. Cheers for your help, mate! As you said some notes where hard to get right, but I'm sure I can figure something out to make it sound right. When I'm done and if it sounds alright I'll post the tabs for you guys =)

▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by Ron "Oily" Sprague on May 24, 2015 at 9:23am

Another way to do it is to make a chromatic fretted Canjo. Then at least you stand a chance of getting the notes right. Plus, you have another build under your belt.