C for Guitar

Hi, I am a C newbie. My first project is to model my guitar (strings + frets = notes) in C and then write algorithms to create music. This post attempts a simple for loop to assign a char array containing musical letters (i.e., E, F, F#...n) to another char array of 19 possible notes on my bottom (i.e., low) E string.

Code:

#include <stdio.h>

main() {
char e_string[19];
char notes[12] = {E, F, F#Gb, G, G#Ab, A, A#Bb, B, C, C#Db, D, D#Eb};
int i;

for (i=0; i<19; i++) {
	e_string[i] = notes[i];
	print f("%c\n", e_string[i]);
	}
return void;
}

Questions:
1) Have I correctly declared and initialized my variables?
2) Have I correctly looped through i and assigned the notes to the 19 possible positions on the E string?
3) Is their a simpler way to do this operation?

Thanks for your interest and comments! IRNO

You might want to compile your code first before asking. That act alone would answer your first question, as it stands.

Some comments:

1. There's no space in "printf".
2. You need to put single quotes around characters like 'E', or else the compiler thinks you're referring to the variable E. Likewise, strings with multiple characters must be surrounded by double quotes.
3. Your char[12] array is an array of 12 chars -- you can't put "A#Bb" into a single char.
4. void is a keyword for e.g. declaring functions which return nothing. You shouldn't return it with a return statement; use "return 0" from main.
5. main() should return int, as in "int main()" instead of just "main()" (the latter is outdated K&R code).

3) Is their a simpler way to do this operation?

I'm not really sure what you're trying to do, but maybe you could start with something like this.

Code:

#include <stdio.h>

int main() {
    char notes[12][5] = {"E", "F", "F#Gb", "G", "G#Ab", "A", "A#Bb", "B", "C", "C#Db", "D", "D#Eb"};
    int i;

    for(i = 0; i < 12; i++) {
        printf("%s\n", notes[i]);
    }
    
    return 0;
}

[Syntax highlighting by codeform.]

Notice that I've stored each note as a char[5], an array of up to 5 characters. That's what you need to store strings like "E" and "F#Gb".

A while ago I wrote a program to convert online guitar tabs to a more piano-appropriate format. I found that when dealing with guitar-style music, the best data structure was a linked-list of "chords", and each chord contained an array of between 1 and 8 notes, and a chord-length. Each note was represented as a number ( 0 being the lowest possible note, 88 being the highest), and I made functions to convert from a number to a string ("F# - 3rd Octave"), etc.. The chord-length was also a number (for instance, I could measure it number of 1/16 beats, or something).

Originally Posted by sean

A while ago I wrote a program to convert online guitar tabs to a more piano-appropriate format. I found that when dealing with guitar-style music, the best data structure was a linked-list of "chords", and each chord contained an array of between 1 and 8 notes, and a chord-length. Each note was represented as a number ( 0 being the lowest possible note, 88 being the highest), and I made functions to convert from a number to a string ("F# - 3rd Octave"), etc.. The chord-length was also a number (for instance, I could measure it number of 1/16 beats, or something).

Something that would be great and AFAIK does not exist (very surprisingly) would be a kind of "reverse tabbing" GUI where you could just point and click at frets to assemble a chord, and find out what chord(s) that could be. I would love to do a web app like that. I have never even seen a book that attempted to do that, although it could be done in a few hundred pages methinks.

I would love to do a web app like that.

Perfect. I'll talk to Paul Graham about some funding, and we'll get moving on this.

Originally Posted by sean

Perfect. I'll talk to Paul Graham about some funding, and we'll get moving on this.

It does seem to me that you could pick up a few ad dollars this way. If only I took myself seriously...

Originally Posted by MK27

it could be done in a few hundred pages methinks.

I fail to see why it would be that complicated

Originally Posted by ಠ_ಠ

I fail to see why it would be that complicated

Okay Mr. SmartyPants.

Originally Posted by MK27

Okay Mr. SmartyPants.

why do you think it would be that complicated?

Originally Posted by ಠ_ಠ

why do you think it would be that complicated?

Because books are not interactive at all, and therefore there probably wouldn't be an intuitive way to search through the different notes to find chords. Of course the total number of pages it took would be dependent upon the font size and the amount of pictures in the book

Originally Posted by MK27

Something that would be great and AFAIK does not exist (very surprisingly) would be a kind of "reverse tabbing" GUI where you could just point and click at frets to assemble a chord, and find out what chord(s) that could be. I would love to do a web app like that. I have never even seen a book that attempted to do that, although it could be done in a few hundred pages methinks.

Years ago I wrote a program in AMOS on the Commodore Amgia called "FretKnot" which was a learning tool/utility for guitar players. It would display chords and scales in all keys all over the fretboard, consisting of both preset fingerings and algorithm generated fingerings. Basically you could specify a range of frets and have it compute every possible fingering of a chord within those frets. You could also click on frets to make a chord and have it analyze those notes, so it would tell you which chords those notes matched exactly, which chords contained those notes among others and which chords were contained in those notes. It was actually pretty useful for jazz guitarists, for learning about chord substitution and for composing. You could also give it a chord progression and it would give you tons of suggestions as to which chords the progression could go to next, etc.

I tell you, it wasn't half bad for my first ever program! It had a fully featured 3D GUI (programmed from scratch!) and enabled you to save and load chord fingerings and progressions. I think it ended up on a couple of Amiga magazine cover CD's. I've long since lost the Amiga and the program and would love to see it again for old times sake. I've asked on Amiga forums if anyone has the cover disks but never got a response.

Originally Posted by Sharke

I've asked on Amiga forums if anyone has the cover disks but never got a response.

You almost have me in tears about that Sharke. Honest.

Originally Posted by MK27

You almost have me in tears about that Sharke. Honest.

The funny thing is, I just went back to the thread on which I asked and it turns out someone actually replied months later with an attachment containing my program. They'd found it on an old cover disk. Now I'm just going through the frustrating process of trying to get an Amiga emulator set up so I can check out my old handiwork.

For the OP:

Instead of assigning a character string for every fret of every guitar string, why not just represent notes as ints with C as 0 up to B as 11, that way you can simply represent the guitar strings as an array of 6 ints and calculate the note for each fret on the fly, using the note value as a subscript on an array of char pointers which point to string representations of each note. Probably easier to show some code than explain it. This prints the notes on each string up to the 12th fret, for example:

Code:

#include <stdio.h>

int main(void)
{
    char *notes[] = {"C", "C#/Db", "D", "D#/Eb", "E", "F", 
                     "F#/Gb", "G", "G#/Ab", "A", "A#/Bb", "B"};

    int strings[6] = {4, 9, 2, 7, 11, 4};
    int i, j;

    for (i = 5; i > -1; i--)
    {
        printf("%s string:  ", notes[strings[i]]);
        for (j = 0; j < 13; j++)
            printf("%-8s", notes[(strings[i] + j) % 12]);
        printf("\n");
    }

    return 0;
}

It doesn't help to explain things when you're dealing with both C strings and guitar strings btw!