Finger-accurate MIDI Guitar Tablature
First of all, I'd like to congratulate the dev team on creating such an amazing piece of software for everyone to use. Here's a suggestion on how you can make MuseScore even better for guitarists:
Currently if you are writing tablature with a MIDI guitar, MuseScore guesses which string you've played the note on. Unfortunately, the guesses are usually wrong and MIDI guitar users have to spend extra time to correct the tablature (defeating the purpose of using a MIDI controller in the first place). Is it possible to make MuseScore write finger-accurate notation with MIDI guitars? You should be able to use existing information such as MIDI note channel, the number of strings and tuning to assign the correct string & fret positions, right?
For me personally, this is the only reason that I am still using Guitar Pro to write tabs. They seem to get the finger position correct in all situations (they assume channel 1 represents the highest pitched string).
Comments
Can you elaborate a bit more? If Channel 1 is the highest pitched string, and then each string is one channel higher or not necessarily?
When sorted out, let's open a feature request in the issue tracker https://musescore.org/en/project/issues
In reply to Can you elaborate a bit more? by [DELETED] 5
Sure thing. For a standard 6 string acoustic guitar in (EADGBe) tuning, it works like this in Guitar Pro:
E - channel 6
A - channel 5
D - channel 4
G - channel 3
B - channel 2
e - channel 1 (highest pitched string)
In Sibelius, there is an option for MIDI Guitars to specify "Number of Strings" and "MIDI channel of highest pitched string." I believe they assume the remaining lower pitched strings are just on the next +1 channel. In the official documentation [p.264], it says: "Sibelius assumes that the strings of your MIDI guitar are numbered sequentially."
Sibelius full reference: http://www.sibelius.com/download/documentation/pdfs/sibelius751-referen…
In reply to Sure thing. For a standard 6 by GuitarNick
How to get correct guitar tab (or any string instrument tabs, like bass or ukulele, cavaquinho...) when using a midi keyboard ? I don't own a midi guitar, just a midi keyboard. And when playing a chord, let's say Dm9, the resulting tab is nearly impossible to play for a guitarist.
In reply to How to get correct guitar… by jamalbee
Do you mean you are playing that chord using a voice you think should be playable more simply? Could you say, bottom to to top, which notes are in that voicing, which strings/frets you thing they should be played on, and what MuseScore does instead?
Anyhow, the normal way to enter tab into MuseScore wouldn't be to just play full chords and hope for the best it would be to enter each string/fret one by one, so you have complete control. See the Handbook for more info on how note input works in MuseScore. I'm not sure MIDI is a great tool for this though - hard to imagine it being more efficient for tab than the computer keyboard where you can easily be extremely precise about which string and which fret, no guesswork required anywhere.
In reply to Do you mean you are playing… by Marc Sabatella
Well if you play Dm9 on your midi keyboard, you should play D, F, A, C, E. When trying to get tabs out of this, I get something which is correct as far as pitch is concerned but absolutely unplayable for a guitarist. For midi guitars, the solution is indeed to attribute a midi channel to each string. A possible solution if you use a midi keyboard and if musescore can identify the chord you play, would be to display proper tabs based on the most common voicing, and not pitch, which I think is wrong. I don’t know if you play the guitar, but for jazz chords like Dm9, we rarely play the fifth. Actually, the fifth of extended chords are only played if they’re altered. So a correct (and common) voicing for such a chord would be x5355x ; x being unplayed strings. I don’t remember what musescore suggested, but it implied so much stretching that I gave up. Well, you’re probably right it is perhaps best to write chords straight from the tabs.
In reply to Do you mean you are playing… by Marc Sabatella
Somebody said that they wrote a patch for such problem in the following post. I’ll try to get more information about it. They use a midi guitar in the video though, not a midi keyboard :
https://musescore.org/en/node/63491
In reply to Somebody said that they… by jamalbee
Better #63491: Tablature should be finger-accurate for Guitar MIDI Controllers