From MIDI to Rich Tablatures: an Automatic Generative System incorporating Lead Guitarists' Fingering and Stylistic choices

TL;DR

This paper presents a system that automatically generates detailed guitar tablatures from MIDI melodies, incorporating fingering, articulations, and expressive techniques, enhancing musical performance and education tools.

Contribution

It introduces a novel approach that combines optimization, statistical analysis, and conversion to MusicXML for enriched guitar tablature generation from MIDI.

Findings

Effective fingering and articulation generation for lead guitar

High configurability and quality of generated tablatures

Potential applications in teaching and computational music performance

Abstract

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{\'e}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.