Fretboard diagrams

[joeberkovitz]

This issue notes the need for fretboard diagrams in MNX-Common (used in piano/vocal/guitar music).

[andrewShillito]

Hi @joeberkovitz. I just came across this repo and found it interesting. I saw in the MNX-Common by example an example of an instance of a chord.

And I wondered, just as a first draft of an idea if something similar to:

but I think a more generic element diagram nested within the event element would be better and could be differentiated with a type attribute. Finger element is an optional element and does not apply when fret == 0. If it was allowed that a diagram could also optionally occur as a direct child of the measure element that could be a succinct way to express whole measure chords. Let me know your thoughts or what has been developed so far in this issue. I'm curious as to your ideas.

[clnoel]

I'm just wandering through different old issues and putting in thoughts when I have them.

1. If this is a diagram of type fretboard, what other diagrams are you envisioning? Are they similar enough to fretboards (e.g. with "string" children) to make them the same element?

2. The MusicXML name for this was "harmony" and could describe both chord labels ("Am") and the fretboards associated with those labels. Should we stick to the same idea? In which case, the fretboard/diagram element would become a child of that theoretical harmony element.

3. Sometimes these fretboards appear at the beginning of a piece, as part of the initial directions, so we need to be able to account for that.
   

4. The string child probably needs a different name, to distinguish it from text strings proposed elsewhere (Multi-line text blocks #278), or we are going to have to be careful to properly name those text strings.

5. I think fret and finger should be attributes, not children.

Upon further reflection, harmonies don't belong inside other parts. They always appear above the top staff, regardless of what staff that is. I think we need a new sibling to <part> to hold these. Ooh.. what if they don't have durations, but rather measure locations that properly define where they each are?