From MIDI to Rich Tablatures: an Automatic Generative System incorporating Lead Guitarists' Fingering and Stylistic choices
This work addresses the specific need for automated tablature generation for lead electric guitar, with potential applications in instrumental teaching, assisted composition, and computational music models.
The authors tackled the problem of automatically generating enriched guitar tablatures from MIDI melodies by incorporating lead guitarists' fingering and stylistic choices, resulting in a system that produces tablatures with fingerings, articulations, and expressive techniques based on optimization and statistical analysis.
Although the automatic identification of the optimal fingering for the performance of melodies on fretted string instruments has already been addressed (at least partially) in the literature, the specific case regarding lead electric guitar requires a dedicated approach. We propose a system that can generate, from simple MIDI melodies, tablatures enriched by fingerings, articulations, and expressive techniques. The basic fingering is derived by solving a constrained and multi-attribute optimization problem, which derives the best position of the fretting hand, not just the finger used at each moment.Then, by analyzing statistical data from the mySongBook corpus, the most common clich{é}s and biomechanical feasibility, articulations, and expressive techniques are introduced. Finally, the obtained output is converted into MusicXML format, which allows for easy visualization and use. The quality of the tablatures derived and the high configurability of the proposed approach can have several impacts, in particular in the fields of instrumental teaching, assisted composition and arranging, and computational expressive music performance models.