Ottava notes from music staff do not translate correctly to linked tablature

What's the expected behavior?

The end result of the expected behavior is easy enough to describe: ottavas should not be included on tab staves, period. An ottava on a standard staff means a note is being displayed on the staff an octave (or two) lower (or higher) than the actual intended pitch. On a tab staff, you'd never do that - you'd simply display the appropriate fret/string for the actual intended pitch.

This means that when copying from a standard staff to a tab staff, the effect of the ottava must be taken into account in calculating the tab representation, but the ottava itself should not be copied. And the same must be true for the "copying" that occurs with linked staves, both when initially cloning the staff and when adding elements to either staff later. The ottava itself should not be copied, and the notes should be copied according their intended playback pitch, not the written pitch.

It's probably especially tricky to get right when copying from a tab to a standard staff if there is already an ottava in effect on the standard staff - the code would have to look for ottavas and make the adjustment before copying the note.

I am working on this.

The last comment by Marc (copying into a standard staff which already has ottavas) would apply to the best of possible worlds, but it is currently not implemented even when copying between standard staves: if the destination staff already has ottavas, they are not taken into account when filling with the notes copied from another staff (of whatever kind). I think I'll leave this as it is.

For the other aspects, I'm going along the following guide lines:

1) Dropping an ottava onto a TAB staff is simply ignored: no effect whatsoever.

2) Dropping an ottava onto a standard staff linked to a TAB staff: the TAB notes are shifted by appropriate number of semitones and the ottava itself is discarded.

3) Copying from a standard staff a selection containing ottavas onto a TAB staff (not linked): same as above.

I have already implemented the above; I still have issues with undoing 2) and when, in the linked standard staff, the ottava span is changed or the ottava removed altogether: in all these cases, the TAB staff is not notified of the changes in the notes of the standard staff linked to it.

I'll see what can be done.

Ah, good point about results in standard staves not being as one might expect either.

I had this on my "hit list" because I think we need to have a better story than we do now. But I can live with things not being perfect.

Two alternative PR pushed to github:

https://github.com/musescore/MuseScore/pull/1810 and https://github.com/musescore/MuseScore/pull/1811

Fixed in 4e68502b0f

As always, please provide *precise* steps to reproduce, from scratch (score created in older builds won't necessarily be valid). I just tried a simple example and it worked as expected.

In addition, I doubt the solution A) which has been merged could deal with changing a standard staff into a TAB, without extensively parsing the whole staff and rewriting all the involved notes; for sure, there would be no way to get back from TAB to standard and get the original ottavas back.

I had the general feeling that A) was a much harder way to implement (or better de-implement) ottava management in TAB. I know that solution B) was tricky, but it would have taken into account the point at #10 and the points described above automatically.

It has just been reverted

Came up again in https://musescore.org/en/node/98981

And in https://musescore.org/en/node/140896

Came up again in https://musescore.org/en/node/267510

Is this still not solved? The attached screenshot has been just made with 3.0.5

Apparently no change, s9 continue to use the workaround of marking it invisible.

And how about the frets numbers? Do they get the numbers for the actual pitches, after making the 8va line invisible in the tab staff?

Good point! So instead, maybe notate the tab correctly, then use the "Fix to line" on the standard staff notes in the Inspector to force them to appear in the desired octave.

Not a bug, as it just hasn't been implemented yet, so a feature request AKA suggestion

Came up again in #313680: Tablature Octave Does Not Match Linked Staff

Still struggling with this regularly in 2022. I feel like it's not just a feature suggestion - the tab representation for ottava notes on a standard staff is simply incorrect. Can we move to a major or minor bug?
e.g. an A (on the high E string of a guitar) should be shown as fifth fret on the tab. Add an ottava to this note on the standard notation, and it should be shown on the 17th fret on the tab - but it is not. Instead, the note remains on the 5th fret, but has an 8va added to it. This is never going to be correct when reading tab!

The workaround is laborious for anything more than a few notes. Can anyone improve on the workaround below?

Current workaround:
- notate part at pitch (so that the tab frets are correct)
- select each individual note in the standard staff and use 'fix to line' in the inspector to adjust note to an octave lower (this can take ages for long sections - I've not been able to find a shortcut).
- add in a manual 8va line by using the basic 'line' in the Lines palette, set to dashed, with a 90 degree hook at the end, and 'begin text' of 8va (or ottava) and text placement set to left
- select the line that now shows in the tab part and set to invisible
- standard staff and tab are now correct in display and in audio (although the ottava only displays the number, can't make it display 'va' after the number)

Seems a day one issue (well, rather MuseScore 2, as that added linked staves), none that started with 3.6

Here is my current workaround. I think it is simple, and it even works with linked staves.

tab 8va workaround3.mscz
non-transposing_ottava.mpal

https://musescore.org/en/node/194161

Is there any update on this matter?
I am now working with 4.0.1 and find the behavior different.
The linked TAB is now at the right pitch when a ottava is added to the normal staff,
but I can't adjust the fingering in the tableture (the last three notes should be on lower strings).

Might be best to report this issue on GitHub, https://github.com/musescore/MuseScore/issues/new/choose

I have a thread related to this bug with screenshots and log information:

https://musescore.org/en/node/355081

non-transposing_ottava.mpal didn't fix my input issue.

Though, I was able to kickstart things by adding an octave line to notes/chords when I had the issue and then removing it.

This issue tracker here has been discontinued, so issues here are as good as closed.

Reopen on GitHub

The tablature numbers work correctly on Musescore 4 when an ottava is added to the standard stave - however, as @gravifer reported, they then cannot be edited. One step forward, one step back!
I've opened a Github issue for this here: https://github.com/musescore/MuseScore/issues/19554

That is a duplicate of https://github.com/musescore/MuseScore/issues/14218
And that is fixed in 4.2 as far as I can tell?

The actual non-workaround solution has been backported to MuseScore 3.7.
Thanks Jojo!
It is working fine there now.

Deleted post; it's fixed now.