[Harp-L] Tabs & Software

[Tino Heth <bluenotes@xxxxxxx>]

Hello everybody!

I'm currently working on a little tab database for the iPhone.
I don't want to do much advertising here, so if someone wants to know more,
take a look at http://bluenotes.t-no.de/index.html.en
The reason for this post is that I want to get some feedback about useful features
and the preferences of other players.
One important question for me is how to display tabs, as there seems to be no real
standard:
I know a system using arrows (which is hard to read, and even harder to typeset),
and then there are many variants looking like "4 4 -4 4" or "+4 +4 4 +4".
The problem with the second system is that there is no natural way of denoting
bends or overblows, so I'd like to hear about established ways to indicate the use
of such techniques.

I guess textual representation of notes ("C C C# C") are not very attractive for most
of you - but, of course, there is still the graphical, staff-based approach... just tell
what you prefer.

There are plenty of other things I'm thinking of - but most topics might be to special for
a discusion on the whole list, so feel free to contact me directly if you have some comments:
- lyrics (line-based vs. note-based)
- build-in synthesizer
- links to audio files in iTunes
- rating of existing file formats (MIDI, ABC, MusicXML)
- importance of editing/creation-capabilities and ways how to handle those
- ...

Greetings,
Tino