Creating a tab staff and adding fret numbers.
Tablature (tab) staves for guitar and bass are available from the Setup Wizard. After you have added tablature staves, there are a couple ways to enter the fret numbers.
In this lesson you’ll learn how to:
Note. To begin at this point, open "Tutorial 10.MUS."
The example you have already created includes a standard notation guitar staff, so the first thing to do is to add a standard notation tablature staff to go with it.
To add a tab staff:
To prepare for the following steps, we'll remove the slash notation Alternate Notation we added earlier and view the score with staff transpositions (to view the transposed guitar notes properly - up one octave). Also, we'll copy the left hand piano music to the guitar staff as our guitar part, and resize the page again to fit two systems on a page.
To prepare our tutorial musical example for tab entry:
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:
In order to correctly place the notes on the strings, SongWriter 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 SongWriter to use.
SongWriter now displays the fret numbers representing the pitch as played on the lowest possible fret in standard guitar tuning. Look at the first beat of measure two and notice that this number displays in yellow. This is how SongWriter 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. We'll do that next.
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.
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.
You could also press the + (plus) or - (minus) key to raise or lower the fret number by one (chromatically). Remember that when you change the fret number, you are effectively changing its pitch. If there were notation in the accompanying staff, you would need to be sure to adjust the notation accordingly.
Note. Press the TAB key to enter rests. Since rests are generally not displayed on tab staves, the rest is hidden. It will display as a shaded rest in the score, and will not appear in the printout. To see a list of Simple Entry keyboard shortcuts from the Simple menu, choose TAB Specific Commands.
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