- 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.
- Click the Staff tool
and from the Staff menu,
choose New Staves (with Setup Wizard). For these steps, we’ll
add a pre-defined TAB staff. To create a customized TAB staff, see To create a tablature staff from scratch.
- In the left column, choose the Fretted Instruments
category.
- 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.
- Click Finish. A TAB staff appears at
the bottom of the score.
- Click the Selection
Tool
and select all of the measures of the notation staff. See
Selecting music
for some region-selecting shortcuts.
- 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.
- 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.
