• English
• Deutsch
• Français

• Home Page
  
• Summary
• Previous
• Next
• Table of Contents


• Mac Help

Diatonic Instruments

Diatonic Accordion & Concertina

TablEdit automatically recognizes this instrument as soon as a tablature has been created using one of the pre-defined tunings proposed for it in the "Tuning" tab of the "Instrument..." dialog. TablEdit recognizes the concertina as long as the configuration name starts with "Concertina".

The appearance of the "Special Effects" palette will also change:

You can enter both the melody and the bass from either the tablature or the notation.

You can transfer notes found on the "Pull" (T) line to the "Push" (P) line by using [Ctrl]+[-]. Conversely, notes on the "Push" line can be sent to the "Pull" line using [Ctrl]+[+].

Entering notes via the tablature is simple. Enter the number of the button on the destination line and then press ['] if it's a second row note or the corresponding button from the palette (same thing for third row notes).

In cases where the note can be played on any of several rows, the row can be forced using ['] or ["] in the notation.

Notes entered in the notation are automatically placed on the line or on the row selected in the "Special effects" palette illustrated above. The "cross" button cancels all priority.

To enter the bass notes, enter the initial of the note in Upper Case.

To enter left hand chords, re-enter the initial a second time. If necessary, you can adjust the pitch using [+] and [-]. You can also use the keyboard shortcut [§] that turns a single bass into a chord or vice versa. In MIDI playback, the chords are played without the third. If you want to play a minor, major or 7th chord, use the last button on the Special Effects palette (the program performs a minor, major, seventh, neutral cycle).

By default, TablEdit provides two lines for the entry of basses and left hand chords. If the bass and the chord have to be played at the same time, a capital letter with a diagonal bar is displayed.

On screen, TablEdit can display the basses in the notation. This makes it easier to adjust the duration. On printout, the basses and the chords are removed from the notation.

The "Accordion" palette allows the entry of right hand chords as well.

Right-hand chords

In order to enter a right-hand chord consisting of three notes:

To access the individual notes in order to edit them you'll first have to separate them by re-selecting them as a block and once more clicking on the chord effect in the palette.

You can enter chords of from two to four notes. The notes of two-note chords will be displayed one above the other in the tablature rather than side-by-side as is the case with three and four note chords.

Notes:

By pressing [&], you automatically enter "row" mode (aka Corgeron mode). This mode affects display and printout only. Entry from the tablature is almost impossible because the notes appear on the tablature where they are not physically. By default, the first two rows are named G and C. But you can define another string by editing the name of the accordion in the Instrument Configuration dialog. For example, if you enter "Accordion B&C#", TablEdit will display B at the beginning of the first row and #C at the beginning of the second.

The button [ _ ] triggers the Chopard mode. The melody is displayed on a single tablature line grouping the notes pulled and pushed.

By pressing [shift]+[W], you automatically enter in Griffschrift mode. A Griffschrift sheet looks like normal notes. But they are not notes, it is a tablature, each note symbol means only a certain button on the accordion, so it does not show the real pitch, but the button to be pressed. This can be recognized by the absence of the violin or other key and the absence of the signs (neither sharp nor flat signs are presented, but double crosses instead of or in front of individual note symbols).

It should also be noted that the pre-defined tuning used by TablEdit is that of the G/C accordion, this being the most common. You can, of course, very simply specify, for instance, an A/D tuning by raising the three "strings" by two semi-tones in the Instrument Tuning dialog box. More customization is possible with Instrument Configuration specific dialog (see below).

Harmonica

The instructions provided above for the diatonic accordion are, for the most part, also applicable to the harmonica.

In order to enter notes in the tablature, enter the number of the hole on the destination line and then press ['] if the note is bent or ["] for an overbend. Bends and overbends are displayed as an apostrophe or a double-quote, respectively.

The "Instrument Configuration" dialog shown below allows you to change the default initials "P" and "T". If, for instance, you replace "Push" with "Blow" and "Pull" with "Draw", the two lines will begin with "B" and "D" respectively.

Configuration of a diatonic instrument

If either "Accordion" or "Harmonica" are selected in the "Tuning" tab of the "Instrument..." dialog, The [Tune] button is replaced by a button labeled [Instrument Configuration]. Clicking on this button will, in turn, open the dialog illustrated above.

In the case of the accordion, this allows you to create a custom keyboard configuration by defining the key/note relationships for each row of keys. As concerns the harmonica, it allows you to define the hole/note relationships with the extra rows being used for bends and over-bends.

At the top of the dialog, you'll find two fields.

The first one is a combo box containing a number of preset definitions corresponding to the currently selected .dat file. The .dat files furnished with TablEdit contain 16 instrument definitions, eight accordions and eight harmonicas. These files are used to populate the popup list of instrument definitions.

The second field is editable and simply allows you to assign a name of your own to a given configuration. If the name of the configuration includes the number 4 somewhere, the dialog box shows 4 rows as in the picture above. If the configuration name contains the string "24B", TablEdit will treat the chords on the last line as additional basses.

The dialog also allows you to change the name used for the "Push" and "Pull" rows. The initials of the names you select will be used for both display and printout of the tablature. The first time you open the dialog, you'll notice that the fields for these two names are in French (thus, the use of the letters "P" and "T" in the tablature as well as in the explanations below). As you can see, translation into English presents a problem in the fact that both "Push" and "Pull" begin with the letter "P". One solution might be to use "P" for "push" and "p" for "pull". The choice is up to you.

Below each of the two name fields is a box which allows you to define the pitch of the lowest note used to define the "Push" string (string 1) and the "Pull" string (string 2).

[Default] resets the grid to the default settings (G/C accordion with 2 1/2 rows or C major diatonic harmonica).

[Init] clears the entire grid so that you can create a completely custom configuration.

The [Import] button allows you to import a configuration from another TablEdit file without having to re-enter it.

[Open] loads the item currently selected in the list from the .dat file into the configuration editor.

[Save] allows you to save the configuration you've just created/modified into the list under the currently selected heading. This will modify the currently selected .dat file permanently, so you may want to save an unmodified copy of the original file either in another location or under another name. You shouldn't, normally, have to do this repeatedly. The eight pre-defined configurations should be enough.

Anyway, TablEdit will save the custom configuration you've selected or defined with your *.tef file.

 

Note 1: You can easily convert an existing score by assigning a different keyboard configuration. Notes are automatically assigned to the appropriate buttons.

Note 2: For Accordion or Harmonica tablature, the following functions are limited or inhibited:

Note 3: The .dat files supplied with TablEdit are copied during installation into the "My documents\TablEdit" directory. When you have modified a .dat file adapted to your keyboard, it is recommended that you rename this file to diato_adlib.dat. This way, you won't risk deleting it when installing a new version of TablEdit.

Note 4: In the "Tuning" tab of the "Instrument..." dialog box, the "Invert tablature" button inverts the lines Push and Draw lines. This allows you to display "Draw" at the top.