GGGuitar

In ggguitar: Utilities for Creating Guitar Tablature

This vignettes is a brief introduction to the ggguitar package. The graphics are based on ggplot2 and processing on the tidyverse in general.

library(ggguitar)
library(tibble)
library(ggplot2)

# Ignoring warnings
options( warn = -1 )

Special thanks to Dr. Hadley Wickham and the crew at RStudio whose work does all of the heavy lifting.

Examples of Tablature

A chord in ggguitar is represented as a vector containing 6 elements. Each element represents a string. A numeric value represents the fret where a finger is placed. Zero represents an open string, NA represents a string not played (either skipped or muted).

A G Major chord can be represented using the following vector.

G_M <- c(3, 2, 0, 0, 0, 3)

The ggguitar method can be used to create the tablature for this chord. The numbers in the vector represent fret positions with zeros indicating open strings. By default the x and y axis are labeled as Strings and Frets along with associated numbers.

ggguitar::tablature('G Major', G_M)

If a given string is not to be played, an NA is used rather than an integer representing the fret number.

B_M <- c(NA, 2, 4, 4, 4, 2)
ggguitar::tablature('B Major', B_M)

Both open strings and ignored/muted strings can be included in the same chord.

C_M <- c(NA, 3, 2, 0, 1, 0)
ggguitar::tablature('C Major', C_M)

Chords need not be restricted to first position. In the next example, a bar chord further up the neck is represented.

C_M_bar <- c(8, 10, 10, 9, 8, 8)
ggguitar::tablature('C Major (bar)', C_M_bar)

Combining Tablature Images

Charts can be assigned to variables and then displayed together using grid.arrange.

D_M <- c(NA, NA, 0, 2, 3, 2)
F_M7 <- c(NA, NA, 3, 2, 1, 0)
e_m <- c(0, 2, 2, 0, 0, 0)
a_m <- c(NA, 0, 2, 2, 1, 0)
b_m <- c(NA, 2, 4, 4, 3, 2)

G_Major <- tablature('G Major', G_M)
C_Major <- tablature('C Major', C_M, TRUE, FALSE)
D_Major <- tablature('D Major', D_M, FALSE, FALSE)
e_minor <- tablature('e minor', e_m)
a_minor <- tablature('a minor', a_m, TRUE, FALSE)
b_minor <- tablature('b minor', b_m)

gridExtra::grid.arrange(G_Major, C_Major, D_Major,
              a_minor, b_minor, e_minor,
              ncol = 3)

Labeled Frets

In place of dots on frets, labels can be assigned. These can contain finger numbers, scale degrees or any other characters of interest.

tablature("A7", c(5, NA, 5, 6, 5, NA), dot_labels=c("Root", NA, "7th", "3rd", "5th", NA))

The appearance of the labels varies depending on the size of the rendered image. You can assign a size for these labels explicitly.

tablature("A7", c(5, NA, 5, 6, 5, NA), dot_labels=c("R", NA, "7", "3", "5", NA), dot_label_size = 5)

Scales

Scales can be presented as well.

G_M_scale <- c(3, 0,0,0,NA,NA,
               NA,2,2,NA,NA,NA,
               NA,3,4,NA,NA,NA)

tablature('G Major Scale', 
           G_M_scale,
           dot_labels=c(2, 0,0,0,NA,NA,
                        NA, 1,1,NA,NA,NA,
                        NA, 2,3,NA,NA,NA), 
           dot_label_size = 5)

Chords for Left-handed Guitars

The reverse function - called rev() - in Base-R can be used to render a left-handed version of a chord. If you want the strings on the x-axis, these should be passed using the x_labels parameter.

ggguitar::tablature('G Major (Left-handed)', 
                    rev(G_M), 
                    x_labels = c(1,2,3,4,5,6))

sessionInfo()

ggguitar documentation built on May 2, 2019, 3:28 p.m.