[ark]

Need some help please:

In bar 1, what does the little 16 note symbol following the first note indicate? As I understand it, the dotted first note gets 1 1/2 beats, the next note ( an eight note), 1/2 a beat, and the last two quarter notes a beat each for a total of 4 beats. If this is correct, then I don't understand what is meant by the 16 note symbol?

How do you count bar 13 to get the four beats? I think the first triplet of quarter notes gets 2 beats, the next quarter note 1 beat, but then I have trouble coming up with the remaining 1 beat.

Thanks very much for these lessons and the music!

Al

[Kirk Lorange]

Hi Al. Good questions, and I'm afraid somebody else will have to answer. I have always found notating timing impossible and when I translate these pieces to tab, I use GuitarPro. I just screw around with it until the playback sounds as close to the real thing as possible. In GP, there's a little icon that turns green when the bar adds up to 4 beats, and that's good enough for me ... I just keep fiddling until that happens.

I'm sure that there must be a better way of notating it ... hopefully someone else here will be able to give you a better answer! Meanwhile, if you listen to the midi, you'll hear exactly what the tab sounds like, as they both are generated at the same time. Listen to the real version too, of course, the movie, as that is always what I'm trying to duplicate. I play first, then tab later.

[ark]

I think I have bar 13 figured out. If you make the 4th chord in the measure (right after the triplet) an 8th note instead of a quarter note, the timing works out -- exactly 4 beats total for the measure. From listening to the video, I think that is about right as best as I can tell, and hopefully the part of Guitar Pro that Kirk mentioned checks the timing, would agree.

Al

[tcliff]

I can't dispute that logic...but, right or wrong, when I played it, I treated the first triplet as 1 beat, the 4th chord of the measure as 1 beat, then the next 4 notes: E-G-B-E, as 1 beat, then the last note of the measure: D, as 1 beat. If you look at the attachment that includes the standard notation, I think those four notes are each 1/16th notes. I may be totally confused, but it sounds right to me when I play it this way anyways...

[ark]

Tcliff, you may be right. It certainly seems the final note in bar 13, the D, is played as more than an eigth note -- I assumed it was tied into the next measure for at least another eigth count. That means measure 14 is no longer just 4 quarter notes -- make the first E in bar 14 an eight note. Alternatively, you could leave the first E in bar 14 a quarter note, consider the last 3 notes a quarter note tripet (two counts), which leave 1 beat for the tied D from bar 13. Choices, choices........

Going back to bar 13, the reason I considered the triplet 2 counts was because they are shown as quarter notes. It you look at bar 9 or 10, for example, they each contain only two triplets ( of quarter notes) so each triplet must be 2 beats.

Thanks for the discussion.
Al