tabulator

Former special notation method in music for musical instruments. Out of the several different types of tabulators, the most widespread were the lute and guitar as well as organ tables for keyboard instruments. Notation of music by the tabulator method was a notation of full value for musicians at the time. The entire literature on the lute and a significant amount of keyboard music survived as a result of this method. The majority of tabulators, - instead of marking the pitch of a sound by musical notation, -indicated the key to be pressed for the certain sounds (lute, guitar or stringed tabulators) or gave the sound to be emitted by the combination of ABC chords and musical notation (old German tabulator) or only by their ABC chords (new German tabulator) Sound of the most regularly occurring chords were not written out in some of the 17th century guitar tabulators, instead, each type of chord was made equivalent to one capital letter of the alphabet (this was the so called "Alfabeto" - notation). In tabulators, the rhythm scheme of the sounds that followed each-other and of the chords were marked in separate lines above the tabulator signs.

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