The edition of the Biber Mystery Sonatas I have has both: playing pitches as a primary staff, with sounding pitches as a smaller staff beneath. It also uses stems up/stems down to differentiate open strings vs. stopped. I like this approach, and have stolen it for my own cross-tuned pieces.
If it’s just the odd note (like a detuned open string), then sounding pitch is ok. But for anything requiring the fingers to move on the string, it needs to be at played pitch. To avoid any ambiguity, i’d use string indications / hooked brackets liberally.
I have perfect pitch, so in almost all cases, I *need* it to be the sounding pitches. However, one exception is if it's basically a chord-based use of the viola, as in Kenji Bunch's The Three G's, where the scordatura is extreme and you're perpetually playing on multiple strings at once.
Was looking at a couple scordatura pieces recently (Saariaho's Spins and Spells, Bach C minor cello suite) and it just bends my brain that only certain pitches are "wrong." I would much rather be able to follow my ear, but I'm not a string player! Is muscle memory more powerful than the ear here?
As a guitarist—it's a string instrument—I prefer sounding pitch. I'm pretty good at re-memorizing my fingerboard. But, I won't say no to including tablature beneath the staff.
(I also prefer guitar music written in the octave it sounds, i.e.: bass clef, then switch to treble when it goes higher.)
as played, with the caveat that i don’t have perfect pitch. i like to have a little ossia line for the sounding pitch but for me the instruction manual is much much easier to read
Anything fast or otherwise compex as played. Unless you can spend a lot of time in studying the part. This is not possible in orchestral playing or chamber music. On gamba instruments tabulature solves the problem.
Either way, honestly, as long as the desired fingering is clear. Honestly it’s best to have both for solo rep, like Dutilleux, or in chamber music probably pitches
Same. Good relative pitch but not perfect, and as played works much better for me. Though if the range gets unusual or requires a lot of out-of-first-position playing that might change my feeling.
yeah that’s true about higher positions but I still think I’m thinking in ratios across the instrument in coming up with efficient fingerings and not having things be in 5ths is weirdly hard!
It’s SO hard. I’ve been playing guitar for years and tried a bit of gamba a few years ago and for both I’m constantly thinking about the string relationships because my brain canNOT settle into it.
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(I also prefer guitar music written in the octave it sounds, i.e.: bass clef, then switch to treble when it goes higher.)