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Thread: Anybody happen to have tabs for Temtation Rag?

  1. #1
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    Default Anybody happen to have tabs for Temtation Rag?

    Seems like the only dadblame tab I can’t find online. Any leads?

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    Moderator MikeEdgerton's Avatar
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    Default Re: Anybody happen to have tabs for Temtation Rag?

    Have you searched for Temptation Rag (note the p)?

    https://www.google.com/search?q=temp...hrome&ie=UTF-8

    Lots of Google returns, I have no idea if there's any mandolin tab in there.
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    Default Re: Anybody happen to have tabs for Temtation Rag?

    Thank you, Mike, and yes, I’ve tried, without the typo, and no luck at all.

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    Registered User rockies's Avatar
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    Default Re: Anybody happen to have tabs for Temtation Rag?

    Brian, by chance you are thinking of Temptation Reel not Temptation Rag? There's lots of tabs for the reel , I've never heard the rag.
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    Default Re: Anybody happen to have tabs for Temtation Rag?

    Dave, do you mean Temperance Reel? I just tried looking up Temptation Reel and came up empty handed but saw Temperance. In any even, I’m looking for Temptation Rag, like this one... https://youtu.be/Zpy4jgMFKdA

  7. #6
    Registered User Martin Ohrt's Avatar
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    Default Re: Anybody happen to have tabs for Temtation Rag?

    Temptation Rag can be found in the "Melody Lines" Book for the "Grilles de Jazz", a french anthology of jazz standards. However, it's in standard notation.
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    Registered User Billy Packard's Avatar
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    Default Re: Anybody happen to have tabs for Temtation Rag?

    All I have is the piano score for Temptation Rag which is a great option with Alexis being such a great piano player.
    No tab...
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  11. #8

    Default Re: Anybody happen to have tabs for Temtation Rag?

    My try at a Temptation Rag arrangement with play-along scrolling sheetmusic and tab video that has melody & mandolin tab, guitar chord tab, mandolin chord diagrams, ukulele chord diagrams, and a fun but possibly wrong-genre MIDI backing track (with unexpectedly too-loud bass, thanks to YouTube EQ after I uploaded it, the bass wasn't that loud before I put it on YouTube... always something). There's also a printable PDF version and a TablEdit version, see links further down this post. The score is slightly shortened - no multi-bar intro which I didn't care for, and fewer repeats, but otherwise it's all there. And instead of the pesky 2/4 time with all those extra annoying lines that (IMO) clutter up the page, I used an easier-to-read notation of 4/4 - sounds the same either way, just makes it easier for me to read. I also transposed it to (IMO) an easier key that fits on the mandolin better (hey, I like easy keys, my background is oldtime fiddling and 'easy' keys are normal as far as I'm concerned) - anyway in this version there is only *one* instance of a note outside of first position (there's one note on the 8th fret, but it's only played one time and not repeated). I set the 'melody' to not very loud so it would function as a backing track for practice with only a light outline of the melody to help keep track of where you're at in the tune. You might want to turn your bass settings down a little. Video:


    (or direct link)

    The MIDI-only backing track, and the bass-line notes that I use in the additional tab files listed below, are from ChordPulse "rhumba" backing track (see item #3 below) which may not be exactly a ragtime backing but I like the sound of it... er, I mean, as much as one can like MIDI stuff. One of the original 1909 piano scores listed this rag as a "two-step" anyway, so seems to me it's fair game for some different backing interpretations.

    Some extras:

    1. I also made a printable PDF free download of Temptation Rag sheet music and tab (you can view the PDF in your browser, also the page has a "Download" button to save the standard PDF file to your device). The PDF has everything shown in my above video *and* also has bass tab/notation as well as two versions of piano (an advanced piano version and a somewhat simplified version)... not that you need all those instruments playing at the same time, but just so you have options. Note that I'm not so sure about the appropriateness of the left hand range of the transposed piano - I moved some of the way-low bass notes up an octave but I don't know if that's sufficient... Most of the actual pianos I've played, the lower bass notes tended to go out of tune pretty quickly and didn't sound very good so I usually avoided those low ranges... guess that's not an issue with electric keyboard/pianos though.

    2. If you have TablEdit or TefView etc, here is my Temptation Rag TablEdit tab of mandolin melody, guitar chords, and bass (skip past the "we're sorry" blurb and use the "Download" button instead). The only caveat is that, as usual for me with TablEdit, I put the chord names in "text" form because I've never figured out how to use the proper "chord"-entry feature in TablEdit... for display/reading purposes it doesn't matter, but the "text" chords don't transpose if you wanted to change keys... Maybe someday (unlikely at this point) I'll learn the correct method.

    3. Lastly, if you want to try new or different or simpler chords than the ones I'm using, here's the actual ChordPulse backing-track file (skip past the "we're sorry" blurb and use the "Download" button instead) that I put together for this tune - it's in cps format and requires the Chordpulse app or the free Chordpulse Player (both Windows only) to open and play the file. Once you have the cps file open in Chordpulse then you can change chords, tempo, transpose to different keys, etc.


    Note: to the best of my knowledge, with only one exception my chords *do* match the transposed original 1909 piano score, I tried to match them up very carefully. That's why there are so many chord changes. I did alter one of the chords though, in just one of the measures - it started out as a mistake but I liked the sound of it better so I decided to keep it as a variation. It's duly noted in the video and the PDF. I'm certainly not a chord expert, but hopefully there aren't any glaring errors.

    Anyway that's what I've got. I'm thinking about learning to play this tune on several instruments and then multi-tracking it, or maybe (easier) I'll just get halfway competent on the melody and settle for a Chordpulse backing instead. If/when I ever get my playing whipped into shape, and find my recording gadgets, I'll post a recording of it.

    Hopefully I didn't make too many typos or other dumb mistakes, but ya never know, there's a lot of potential for boo-boos with all those chord diagrams etc. If you see an error, post about it here in this thread and I'll look into it.
    Last edited by Jess L.; May-12-2019 at 7:33am. Reason: Fix info (again).

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  13. #9
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    Default Re: Anybody happen to have tabs for Temtation Rag?

    WOW. This is perhaps the most far out response to anything I have ever posted on the internet. Thank you! Superb!

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  15. #10

    Default Re: Anybody happen to have tabs for Temtation Rag?

    Quote Originally Posted by Brian B View Post
    WOW. This is perhaps the most far out response to anything I have ever posted on the internet. Thank you! Superb!
    Thanks Brian! It's a cool tune, and I had fun putting the arrangement together.

    I'm still in awe of that original 1909 piano score with all those intriguing harmonies. It's one thing for someone like me to sit down and try to analyze those piano notes to come up with likely chord *names* (for the transposed key, of course), but the thing that mystifies me is how did the original composer even know to use those notes in the first place? Working on this tune for a while has given me a whole new appreciation for what I suppose eventually has become known as 'jazz' chords or whatever the right term is, very intriguing stuff. (I have much to learn about ragtime and jazz, I grew up with I-IV-V and that's it, took me like another 20 years to even add my first minor chords, so nowadays I enjoy these more complex tunes.)

    Anyway I wanted to thank you again Brian for bringing this tune to our attention, as I don't think I'd ever heard this tune before seeing this thread.

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  17. #11

    Default Re: Anybody happen to have tabs for Temtation Rag?

    Great project JL277z!!! I am very impressed with your level of detail. I loved the ??? section. Thank you so much.

    Len B.
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  19. #12

    Default Re: Anybody happen to have tabs for Temtation Rag?

    Quote Originally Posted by lenf12 View Post
    Great project JL277z!!! I am very impressed with your level of detail. I loved the ??? section. Thank you so much.
    Thanks lenf12!

    Yeah about those question-mark chords, I didn't know what, if any, chords to use there, so I figured it was probably better to just put question marks there.

    In those two bars, the original piano score has only a chromatic run with both hands, but no additional notes to suggest precisely what harmony the original composer intended there. I've occasionally heard other types of music where the chordal accompaniment stops for a couple seconds and then starts up again, that seemed like maybe what was going on in those two bars, not sure though.

    (Perhaps I should have indicated those two bars as NC for "no chord" rather the question marks, I'm not sure what the proper protocol would be in this case - I just figured that probably someone would know what, if any, chords to use so the question marks would cover all cases.)

    However, I wanted to keep the bass line going even though the chords had temporarily stopped... so, for lack of any better ideas, I assigned every-other-note from the original score's [transposed] left-hand piano, and made those into bass notes (for the guitar and bass parts).

    When I added that bass-note-only idea to that area of the Chordpulse backing track that I put together for this tune, I noticed that Chordpulse auto-generated a kinda cool little bass run, so I went ahead and wrote those notes into the bass part (as seen in the bass parts for both the TablEdit file and also the printable PDF listed in my post 8 above; also the Chordpulse backing file is available there as well just for reference). That bass line idea was kind of a gamble, because I don't really know if it's appropriate to the tune or not, but I like the sound of it anyway.

    If anyone out there has any ideas as to which chords would work ok in the question-mark areas, please feel free to post them here in this thread. Ideas for revisions/improvements etc are certainly welcome.

  20. #13
    Fiddler & Mandolin Player Dave Reiner's Avatar
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    Default Re: Anybody happen to have tabs for Temtation Rag?

    Awesome work!

    One oddity - maybe it's just my hearing - is that the second melody note in measure 2 is written as a B in notation and tab, but the midi player plays it as an A. Similar issue when that measure recurs (e.g., measure 10).

    Dave
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    Default Re: Anybody happen to have tabs for Temtation Rag?

    Quote Originally Posted by Dave Reiner View Post
    Awesome work!

    One oddity - maybe it's just my hearing - is that the second melody note in measure 2 is written as a B in notation and tab, but the midi player plays it as an A. Similar issue when that measure recurs (e.g., measure 10).
    Thanks Dave! For me here, the written "B" plays as a "B" as far as I can tell, both with MuseScore and TablEdit. Here's a super-quick screen-capture video of my whole computer screen, which shows the MIDI playback of just the melody in that measure (at a slower tempo so I could hear it better) - and compares the "B" note to the "A" note in that same measure in both MuseScore and TablEdit:


    (or direct link)

    The melody part of my earlier video is a recording of the same MuseScore MIDI file - playback by MuseScore and recorded by Audacity straight off my computer's soundcard. Sounds normal to me, for MIDI anyway...

    However, I think there are a couple of issues with MuseScore that have potential to contribute to audio playback issues. One of these things is that, a couple years ago I installed an optional 3rd-party "soundfont" into MuseScore, it has the attractive feature of having some nicer MIDI sounds compared to the default MuseScore v2.1 sounds. But this same optional soundfont also has some problems, including non-editable too-high reverb on some of the MIDI 'instruments' including the piano sound that I used for the Temptation Rag melody line. Sometimes the too-much-reverb makes notes sound muddy or unclear. But there doesn't seem to be any way to turn off the built-in reverb on that particular soundfont's MIDI 'instruments'. The MuseScore mixer reverb 'knob' has no effect here. That's one of several reasons I typically keep the melody volume turned down pretty low in comparison to the volume of the other 'instruments', when trying to make a recording of MuseScore playback.

    Some of the other 3rd-party soundfont 'instruments' (I never use these ones) have some notes that are wildly out-of-tune. Unfortunate because some of them have nice tone otherwise, but they're too out-of-tune to be useful. How in the world a soundfont MIDI 'instrument' could be designed to be out of tune, I have no idea, but I steer clear of those ones... at least the ones that are far enough out of tune for me to notice. I suppose it's possible that there are others that are only slightly out of tune, that I hadn't noticed; a person with a very good ear (not me) might pick up on that which could make the notes not sound like the notes they're supposed to be.

    I haven't yet tried the new version 3 of MuseScore - I'm still using version 2.1. One can hope that someday the available soundfonts will be sufficiently awesome (and thoroughly tested, in-tune, not too much reverb, etc etc) so as to make better sound without having to jump through any hoops. (I'm not knowledgeable enough and probably don't have the right gear to create/modify my own soundfonts, no clue how they do that.) I read somewhere once on a MuseScore question and answer thing, that the MuseScore developers' primary focus is for printed stuff rather than playback or audio sound, but still a lot of people, including myself, like MuseScore for its price (free! lol although I toss them a few bucks once every few years) and are using its playback as a learning tool, so IMO there's a need for good quality audio.

    Anyway, I don't know if any of that tech stuff has any bearing on the notes that Dave is hearing (b verses a), but I suppose it could be related...

  23. #15
    Fiddler & Mandolin Player Dave Reiner's Avatar
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    Default Re: Anybody happen to have tabs for Temtation Rag?

    This is what I'm hearing...

    https://youtu.be/uu04JHsCTTM
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  24. #16

    Default Re: Anybody happen to have tabs for Temtation Rag?

    Quote Originally Posted by Dave Reiner View Post
    One oddity - maybe it's just my hearing - is that the second melody note in measure 2 is written as a B in notation and tab, but the midi player plays it as an A.
    Quote Originally Posted by Dave Reiner View Post
    This is what I'm hearing...

    https://youtu.be/uu04JHsCTTM
    Still sounds like two separate notes to me - the B sounds different than the A.

    But I'm curious to see what's going on here with Dave's audio, so let's try an experiment. First let's compare these two items:


    The second bar only:




    For comparison, an EDITED 2nd bar with an INTENTIONALLY WRONG "A" melody note instead of a B:



    I can clearly hear the difference between the above two audio files...

    However...

    I wonder if the backing track could be distracting the ear from those melody notes. Here is that same bar's Chordpulse backing track ONLY:



    Here's a partial screenshot of the raw Chordpulse MIDI backing track as exported from Chordpulse and imported into MuseScore via drag-and-drop - I used Photoshop to put a yellow highlight on the 2nd bar of the screenshot, so you can see which bar we're discussing - click the pic 2 or 3 times to make it full-size to see the details:

    Click image for larger version. 

Name:	bar-2-chordpulse midi.jpg 
Views:	285 
Size:	213.5 KB 
ID:	176821

    Aha! Ok maybe that's where the "A" note that Dave is hearing, might be coming from, because I see that the Chordpulse backing's two so-called "Classical Guitar" parts *both* contain an "A" note playing at the same time as the melody's "B" note (the melody isn't shown in the pic because the melody is in a separate MuseScore file), but anyway as to location, the mystery note is the 2nd note in the 2nd bar... and one of those Chordpulse "classical guitar" A note is up nearer to the melody line's treble range too - so I suppose it's possible that a person's ear might focus on those backing track "A" notes instead of the melody "B" note. If that's what's going on here, then Dave has a really good ear (or at least better than mine, as I hadn't noticed this effect before).

    That's the only hypothesis I've got so far, anyway.


    (Incidentally, as one may have noticed upon studying the above screenshot for a little bit, the only part of the Chordpulse backing track that made it into my *written* arrangement is the bass line - I like that bass line so I put it right in there (duly credited of course). But the rest of the Chordpulse backing track notes can be heard as the backing in the video.)


    Edited to add:
    But now there's another mystery - why is there a "B" melody note in what I thought was an Am chord? I'd assumed the B note is just a "passing tone" (is that the right term?) in that bar, but now I'm wondering if maybe that chord should be fancied up into something more complicated like oh I dunno maybe Am(add2) or Am9 (but the original transposed piano score doesn't have all the notes of an Am9 chord so that wouldn't necessarily represent the original author's intent) etc etc... Well... I guess as with any music, there's probably plenty of room for variations and exploring different ideas...




    (attachments for embedded mp3 players above)
    bar-2.mp3
    bar-2-WRONG-NOTE.mp3
    bar-2-backing-only.mp3
    Last edited by Jess L.; May-18-2019 at 3:07am. Reason: Clarification

  25. #17
    Fiddler & Mandolin Player Dave Reiner's Avatar
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    Default Re: Anybody happen to have tabs for Temtation Rag?

    JL277z, I'm in awe of your analysis! That's probably the reason I'm hearing an A in the second measure.

    And the B is just a passing tone (like the D# in the first measure), not requiring any fancy chord like Am9.

    Dave

    Quote Originally Posted by JL277z View Post
    Still sounds like two separate notes to me - the B sounds different than the A.

    But I'm curious to see what's going on here with Dave's audio, so let's try an experiment. First let's compare these two items:


    The second bar only:




    For comparison, an EDITED 2nd bar with an INTENTIONALLY WRONG "A" melody note instead of a B:



    I can clearly hear the difference between the above two audio files...

    However...

    I wonder if the backing track could be distracting the ear from those melody notes. Here is that same bar's Chordpulse backing track ONLY:



    Here's a partial screenshot of the raw Chordpulse MIDI backing track as exported from Chordpulse and imported into MuseScore via drag-and-drop - I used Photoshop to put a yellow highlight on the 2nd bar of the screenshot, so you can see which bar we're discussing - click the pic 2 or 3 times to make it full-size to see the details:

    Click image for larger version. 

Name:	bar-2-chordpulse midi.jpg 
Views:	285 
Size:	213.5 KB 
ID:	176821

    Aha! Ok maybe that's where the "A" note that Dave is hearing, might be coming from, because I see that the Chordpulse backing's two so-called "Classical Guitar" parts *both* contain an "A" note playing at the same time as the melody's "B" note (the melody isn't shown in the pic because the melody is in a separate MuseScore file), but anyway as to location, the mystery note is the 2nd note in the 2nd bar... and one of those Chordpulse "classical guitar" A note is up nearer to the melody line's treble range too - so I suppose it's possible that a person's ear might focus on those backing track "A" notes instead of the melody "B" note. If that's what's going on here, then Dave has a really good ear (or at least better than mine, as I hadn't noticed this effect before).

    That's the only hypothesis I've got so far, anyway.


    (Incidentally, as one may have noticed upon studying the above screenshot for a little bit, the only part of the Chordpulse backing track that made it into my *written* arrangement is the bass line - I like that bass line so I put it right in there (duly credited of course). But the rest of the Chordpulse backing track notes can be heard as the backing in the video.)


    Edited to add:
    But now there's another mystery - why is there a "B" melody note in what I thought was an Am chord? I'd assumed the B note is just a "passing tone" (is that the right term?) in that bar, but now I'm wondering if maybe that chord should be fancied up into something more complicated like oh I dunno maybe Am(add2) or Am9 (but the original transposed piano score doesn't have all the notes of an Am9 chord so that wouldn't necessarily represent the original author's intent) etc etc... Well... I guess as with any music, there's probably plenty of room for variations and exploring different ideas...




    (attachments for embedded mp3 players above)
    bar-2.mp3
    bar-2-WRONG-NOTE.mp3
    bar-2-backing-only.mp3
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  27. #18

    Default Re: Anybody happen to have tabs for Temtation Rag?

    Dave, excellent, thanks!

  28. #19
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    Default Re: Anybody happen to have tabs for Temtation Rag?

    Quote Originally Posted by JL277z View Post
    Thanks lenf12!

    Yeah about those question-mark chords, I didn't know what, if any, chords to use there, so I figured it was probably better to just put question marks there.

    In those two bars, the original piano score has only a chromatic run with both hands, but no additional notes to suggest precisely what harmony the original composer intended there. I've occasionally heard other types of music where the chordal accompaniment stops for a couple seconds and then starts up again, that seemed like maybe what was going on in those two bars, not sure though.

    (Perhaps I should have indicated those two bars as NC for "no chord" rather the question marks, I'm not sure what the proper protocol would be in this case - I just figured that probably someone would know what, if any, chords to use so the question marks would cover all cases.)

    However, I wanted to keep the bass line going even though the chords had temporarily stopped... so, for lack of any better ideas, I assigned every-other-note from the original score's [transposed] left-hand piano, and made those into bass notes (for the guitar and bass parts).

    When I added that bass-note-only idea to that area of the Chordpulse backing track that I put together for this tune, I noticed that Chordpulse auto-generated a kinda cool little bass run, so I went ahead and wrote those notes into the bass part (as seen in the bass parts for both the TablEdit file and also the printable PDF listed in my post 8 above; also the Chordpulse backing file is available there as well just for reference). That bass line idea was kind of a gamble, because I don't really know if it's appropriate to the tune or not, but I like the sound of it anyway.

    If anyone out there has any ideas as to which chords would work ok in the question-mark areas, please feel free to post them here in this thread. Ideas for revisions/improvements etc are certainly welcome.

    I fail to see the problem. The passage in bars 7-8, in parallel sixths, is exactly what the composer intended. Just have the mandolin play the right hand part and the guitar the left hand. Why do you want to "have the bass part going"? I see no musical reason for changing the tune in that place.

    Looking at the tab I wonder what musical considerations motivated it. To me the most natural fingering is to play the e's in bar 1 and the a's in bar 4 on the next lower course, in order to save string crossings. Also there's a lot of sequencing and I think the fingering should reflect that for smooth phrasing.

    I had almost no formal instruction when learning my instruments so I don't know the meaning of the term "easy key". Is there a definition? I didn't learn the mandolin as systematically as the guitar. In the latter case I learned the keys in order of increasing flats and sharps, C, F, G, Bb, D, Eb, ... -- and I can't recall that the key of Eb was particularly difficult. I've tried to play TR, from the original score, for the first time in many years, and found that the melody lies very comfortably on the fretboard of the mandolin. The only difficulty is the chromatic run in bars 7-8; the fingering is not obvious; it would take some experimenting to achieve the most pleasing phrasing.

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    Default Re: Anybody happen to have tabs for Temtation Rag?

    Quote Originally Posted by ralph johansson View Post
    I fail to see the problem. The passage in bars 7-8, in parallel sixths, is exactly what the composer intended. Just have the mandolin play the right hand part and the guitar the left hand. Why do you want to "have the bass part going"? I see no musical reason for changing the tune in that place.

    Looking at the tab I wonder what musical considerations motivated it. To me the most natural fingering is to play the e's in bar 1 and the a's in bar 4 on the next lower course, in order to save string crossings. Also there's a lot of sequencing and I think the fingering should reflect that for smooth phrasing.

    I had almost no formal instruction when learning my instruments so I don't know the meaning of the term "easy key". Is there a definition? I didn't learn the mandolin as systematically as the guitar. In the latter case I learned the keys in order of increasing flats and sharps, C, F, G, Bb, D, Eb, ... -- and I can't recall that the key of Eb was particularly difficult. I've tried to play TR, from the original score, for the first time in many years, and found that the melody lies very comfortably on the fretboard of the mandolin. The only difficulty is the chromatic run in bars 7-8; the fingering is not obvious; it would take some experimenting to achieve the most pleasing phrasing.
    This chromatic run is easy to play using 2 finger on the low B, 3 for C and C#, open D, 1, 1, 2, 2, 3, 3 open A, 1, 1, 2 on C# 3 onE flat, in other words standard chromatic fingering until it jumps a not or two at the end of the run.

    As for playing the closed positions to avoid string crossing, the open strings in this arrangement, when fretted for sustain produce a pleasing bell like connection that sounds good for this.

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  31. #21
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    Default Re: Anybody happen to have tabs for Temtation Rag?

    Also, for chording during the chromatic run, more likely that the composer intended multiple instrument to play the run together without rhythm chords,

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  33. #22

    Default Re: Anybody happen to have tabs for Temtation Rag?

    Quote Originally Posted by ralph johansson View Post
    ...Why do you want to "have the bass part going"?
    Because I like the sound of it.

    Quote Originally Posted by ralph johansson View Post
    ... no musical reason for changing...
    Perhaps not, but it was my personal preference as arranger.

    Quote Originally Posted by ralph johansson View Post
    Looking at the tab I wonder what musical considerations motivated it.
    Ease of playing. I wrote the tab the way it seemed easiest to me, to play it. I wanted it to be accessible to everyone (including myself), without having to be some kind of musical genius or something.

    Quote Originally Posted by ralph johansson View Post
    To me the most natural fingering is to play the e's in bar 1 and the a's in bar 4 on the next lower course,
    In bar 1, it depends on whether or not you want the Eb grace note. You'll notice I didn't include the grace note in the mandolin tab staff. That's because I didn't want to start out making the tab all complicated in the very first bar.

    In bar 4, I debated as to whether or not to put the "A" note on the 7th fret, but decided against it because I would not play it that way myself. It's easier with the open string. I personally am ok with the occasional 7th fret note, and yes my pinky works great (I use it all the time on longer scale octave-GDAE instruments for all the 5th fret notes), but one might be surprised at how many mandolin players have trouble getting 7th fret notes - I didn't see any point in discouraging people by starting right out with something needlessly difficult when there's an easier way.

    Quote Originally Posted by ralph johansson View Post
    ... in order to save string crossings.
    Why? These types of "string crossings" (actually no strings are "crossed", they're just notes on adjacent strings) are the most efficient/easy way of getting those notes. They're certainly a major feature of the oldtime fiddle tunes I grew up playing (fiddle and mandolin etc) - even the aged players with no formal training whatsoever had no qualms about going back and forth between adjacent strings, so I never would have imagined that anyone would think of that technique as somehow difficult or something to be avoided... especially compared to the difficulty that so many people have in taming the pinky finger and getting it to behave.

    But the beauty of music is that one can play it however they wish - if someone wants to move some notes up the neck to suit their own playing style, that's cool, whatever works.

    I write tab the simplest possible way, using as many open strings as possible because that's what is normal and acceptable from my point of view in the genres I grew up with. I'm too old to learn a whole bunch of new stuff. I've pretty much stretched my musical and technical abilities about as far as I can already, just trying to figure out this ragtime tune (always a continual learning process, in music and everything else).

    So one can see why so many tunes and songs often acquire lots of different arrangements and interpretations over the years - different players have different ideas as to how to do things. Someone else hears an arrangement, says "I would do it different," so they give it a whirl and sometimes it's an improvement and sometimes not, sometimes just different.

    One of my goals with this arrangement, was to hopefully make this cool old tune more accessible to more people who otherwise would have skipped it because they might have thought it was too difficult. I certainly could make no sense whatsoever of the original score until I started studying it one bar at a time.

    The original score didn't even list the chord names, so how would I get an accompanist on guitar to play guitar chords if the chord names weren't even shown? None of my musical cohorts can simply look at a complex piano score and instantly detect which chords to use, in real time while playing... yeah so maybe some players can do that, but they're few and far between. (Around these parts, it's hard enough to find competent musicians to jam with who aren't drunk or high or smoking cigarettes, so to add sight-reading ability to the 'requirement' list, would pretty much ensure no jams at all.)

    Quote Originally Posted by ralph johansson View Post
    ...I don't know the meaning of the term "easy key". Is there a definition?...
    Well I guess it would depend on one's background. For me, unsurprisingly with the oldtime fiddle tunes background, the easiest (and most common) keys are G, D, A, C. Very very rare to have any flat keys, sure there are a small number of F and Bb fiddle tunes but they don't get played very often in any of the circles that I've played with.

    As to why keys such as G and D seem easier... well that's a good question... let me think out loud here for a moment, I'd say that among other advantages, on GDAE-tuned instruments... for melody players anyway - there's an absence of 1st fret melody notes in most of those 'easy' keys I mentioned, you mostly just play frets 2,3,4,5, the hand itself barely even needs to stretch or move, so you can focus your full concentration on the sound of the music rather than the technicalities of physically achieving the notes. Open drone strings etc (pretty much a staple in some branches of oldtime fiddling) can also be more useful and effective in the 'easy' keys.

    But one doesn't have to have a fiddle-tunes background to think that some keys are easier than others. One of my old pastors had a similar observation about religious hymns on guitar - he always maintained that G is the "easiest" key on guitar. Certainly would explain the many times I've seen guitarists use a capo to play in some other key while still using comfortable familiar G fingerings.

    Is it 'right' to do things easier? Well, seems to me that it depends on what you're using music for. If you're aiming to be a pro studio musician or orchestra player or some other music job where musical versatility and instant high-level performance is required, then you'd presumably need to be able to do as many musical things as possible (all the keys etc) without any hesitation. On the other hand, if your playing is more casual, then IMO go with what sounds best.

  34. #23

    Default Re: Anybody happen to have tabs for Temtation Rag?

    Quote Originally Posted by Brian B View Post
    Also, for chording during the chromatic run, more likely that the composer intended multiple instrument to play the run together without rhythm chords,
    Yeah I think you're right. (In those two bars, my arrangement's bass and guitar lines primarily just mimic the piano left-hand chromatic run notes, er well every-other note anyway... seemed mostly harmless.)

  35. #24
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    Default Re: Anybody happen to have tabs for Temtation Rag?

    Quote Originally Posted by JL277z View Post
    Yeah I think you're right. (In those two bars, my arrangement's bass and guitar lines primarily just mimic the piano left-hand chromatic run notes, er well every-other note anyway... seemed mostly harmless.)
    Or, typical of arrangements of the day, one or more instruments playing the chromatic run with maybe some cymbal on the way in...

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  37. #25

    Default Re: Anybody happen to have tabs for Temtation Rag?

    Quote Originally Posted by Brian B View Post
    Or, typical of arrangements of the day, one or more instruments playing the chromatic run with maybe some cymbal on the way in...
    That would be good too.

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