Creating guitar notation

Adding guitar parts and tablature.

NotePad makes creating guitar parts easy by offering the ability to translate standard notation directly to TAB.

In this lesson you will learn how to:

1. Copy notes from a standard staff to a TAB staff
2. Enter notes directly into a TAB staff
3. Change the TAB fingerings
4. Add chords in TAB staves

To prepare for the following steps, we'll copy some music into the regular guitar staff.

To copy the right hand piano part to the Guitar staff:

Note. To begin at this point, open "Tutorial 7a.MUS."

1. Choose the Selection tool .
2. Click to the left of the first measure of the right hand (top) Piano staff. All measures in the staff should be selected.
3. Click the selected region and drag down until the black border begins at the beginning of the first measure of the Guitar staff. Then release the mouse button. The music now appears in the Guitar staff.

Use the Selection tool to copy the right hand Piano music to the standard (top) Guitar staff.

Entering notes into a TAB staff

There are a few ways to enter into a tab staff. We’ll start with the most basic, copying music directly from a standard staff into tablature.

To copy music to a tab staff:

1. Select measures 1-4 in the Guitar staff and drag-copy them down to the tab staff.
2. Click OK on the Lowest Fret window. The fret numbers appear in the tab staff.

Lowest Fret - What it does:

In order to correctly place the notes on the strings, NotePad needs to know what fret to use as the lowest. If you wish for a particular passage to be played further up the neck, you can specify the lowest fret for NotePad to use.

NotePad now displays the fret numbers representing the pitch as played on the lowest possible fret in standard guitar tuning. However, you may wish to choose different fret numbers or strings.

Use the Selection tool to copy music directly into a TAB staff. NotePad transcribes the notation into tablature automatically.

Note. When copying and pasting into a TAB staff, some notes may appear yellow instead of black. This is how NotePad displays a note that cannot be played with the current lowest fret or tuning. In order to play this passage, this pitch will need to be changed.

Changing the string and fret number

You can edit tab numbers and move them between strings manually with the Simple Entry tool. This method gives more control over the movement of single and non-contiguous fingerings. For example, you could change this passage to start higher up the neck

To change the string and fret number:

Note. When using Simple Entry on TAB staves, the keyboard commands are slightly different than with standard notation staves and will use both the number pad numbers and the QWERTY numbers on your keyboard to accomplish various tasks. For the purposes of this exercise, QWERTY numbers will be specified as such. All other numbers will be from the number pad.

1. Click the Simple Entry tool.
2. CTRL+click the third fret number (1) on the top line of measure 3. Let's move this down to stay on the B string.
3. Press the DOWN ARROW once to move it down to the second (B) string. You will see that this fingering has moved to the new string and fret, and the number has changed accordingly to the correct fret (it's now a 6).

Note. Fret numbers in layer 2 (like the "3" in this example) are red. See Entering Multiple Voices for more information on layers.

Use the up and down arrow keys to move fret numbers to different strings.

Entering directly into a tab staff

In addition to copying from a standard notation staff, you can also enter tab directly into a tab staff, either with your mouse or your computer keyboard. This comes in handy if you are working with a tab staff only, or already know the tablature and not the standard notation.

To enter directly into a tab staff with Simple Entry:

1. Click the Simple Entry tool .
2. Choose Layer 2 from the layer selection
3. Click the Layer 2 icon in the lower left corner of the window.

We will enter the dotted half note in measure 5, which is in layer 2.

4. Click the and tools (in the Simple Entry palette). (You will always need to choose the rhythmic value of the entry first so NotePad knows its duration and how to properly space each fret number.)
5. Click the TAB staff on the G string (third from the top) in measure 5. A “0” (zero) appears. When you click directly into a tab staff, you will always see a “0” first.
6. Type 5.
7. Return to layer 1.
8. Click the tool in the Simple Entry palette.
9. Click the B string directly above the 5 you just entered and type 4.
10. Click the tool in the Simple Entry Palette.
11. Click the top (E) string and type 3, then click to the right on the same E string and type 6.
12. Click the tool in the Simple Entry palette.
13. Click on the last beat on the same (E) string and type 3. Measure 5 should now be complete.

Note. You can also add multiple notes on the same beat to build a chord (in the same layer), either by clicking them in with the Simple Entry tool, or by adding them with the keyboard. To add an interval with the keyboard, type ALT+ [string number] on the number row of your computer keyboard.

Remember to choose the correct duration before clicking-in or typing-in fret numbers.

14. You can complete the remaining TAB measures by either copying directly from the standard guitar staff or by clicking-in fret numbers.

Note. Once you've entered notes in the TAB staff, you can copy and paste into a regular Guitar staff to produce standard notation that matches the TAB.

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