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To create tablature notation

  1. Notate the instrument’s music on a standard notation staff (transposed for guitar) as you would normally. Use the Setup Wizard to create a properly transposed guitar staff (written an octave up). If a TAB staff already exists below the standard staff, skip ahead to step 6.
  2. Click the Staff tool and from the Staff menu, choose New Staves (with Setup Wizard). For these steps, we’ll add a predefined TAB staff. To create a customized TAB staff, see To create a tablature staff from scratch.
  3. In the left column, choose the Fretted Instruments category.
  4. In the middle column, double-click the desired TAB staff to add it to the right column. All TAB staves contain the text [TAB] following the instrument name.
  5. Click Finish. A TAB staff appears at the bottom of the score.
  6. Click the Selection Tool and select all of the measures of the notation staff. See Selecting music for some region-selecting shortcuts.
  7. Click and drag the highlighted region down to the tablature staff. You should see the Lowest Fret dialog box. For now, we’ll leave these settings alone.
  8. Click OK. The music will translate into corresponding fret numbers in the tablature staff. To copy a portion of your music into a tablature staff, simply highlight a smaller region of the standard staff before drag-copying it down. You can also use the Selection tool to copy music from a tablature staff into a standard staff and Finale will translate the fret numbers into notes accordingly. See also To enter directly into a tablature staff.

 

 

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Finale 2014 for Windows

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