Generator

C4, in every place it can be played

A guitar neck with the 4 places C4 can be stopped, drawn at the fret spacing a 64.8-centimetre scale actually has. The stave writes one note and the tablature writes one of these; each notation says exactly what the other leaves out. The speaking lengths run from 61.2 down to 27.2 centimetres, so a hand plucking 12 centimetres from the bridge meets between 20 and 44 per cent of the string.

Drawn above with its standard settings, which is almost never how an essay draws it: an essay states the numbers it is arguing about, so the figure a reader meets there is about that argument rather than about the drawing in general. Every option a placement passes is checked against the ones this function actually reads, because an option it does not read is silently ignored and the figure quietly draws what is above instead.

It makes a noise. 9 of its 9 placements carry sound, built from the same numbers as the drawing, offering these buttons: C4, brightest position, C4, dullest position, Fret 1 — pluck at 20%, Fret 10 — pluck at 33%, Fret 12 — pluck at 11%, Fret 15 — pluck at 44%, Fret 3 — pluck at 6%, Fret 5 — pluck at 25% and 12 more.

Called by 2 essays

the blast radius of changing it

What a tablature keeps

Middle C can be stopped in four places on a guitar. The speaking lengths run from 61 to 27 centimetres, so a hand plucking twelve centimetres from the bridge meets between a fifth and nearly a half of the string, and the comb of missing partials is different at every one: the second partial is thirteen decibels stronger in the best position than in the worst. A stave writes one note for all four. A tablature writes four different things and cannot say which note any of them is.

instruments · Notation

The bow's window along each string, with the bow held still. Schelleng's window — the ratio of the greatest bow force a note tolerates to the least — for every written pitch on every string that can play it, with the bow 35 mm from the bridge and staying there. The window widens up each string because β is the bow's distance over the SOUNDING length and the sounding length is shortening, and it steps down at each new string because a heavier string carries a narrower one. The dashed lines are what was drawn earlier, which held β at 0.09 for every note on every string. The widest disagreement between two strings at one pitch is 1.48 to one, at A♭5.

Two dials the player turns together

Schelleng's window is a ratio of two bow forces, and an earlier essay found that the string's own impedance is in it twice. What it held still was the bowing point — as though a player kept β constant while moving up the fingerboard, which is the opposite of what a bow does. Let the bow stay where a bow stays and the window widens up every string, the spread between two strings at one pitch goes from 1.4 to 1.5 the other way round, and the string that is easiest changes.

instruments · Bowed string

All figures · What can be heard