by Jürg Hochweber,
English Translation by Leonard Cecil Music of Note
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Jürg Hochweber, born 1951 in Zürich, has authored/written many pieces for guitar for teaching purposes as well as concerts. He's a specialist for new learning methods (NLP, BrainGym, Accupressure). Hochweber teaches Guitar at the Kantonsschule Baden, Switzerland. |
a) Introduction
Setting sheet music for guitar, either as a guitarist, an arranger or composer presents a challenge for any computer program one might chose to use for this purpose. If you don't know what I'm talking about, just try setting an improvised guitar solo with a notation program and you'll see what I mean. There are a few reasons for this:
1. There is no standard way of notating certain passages. The following 4 examples are actually played the
same:
2. Sometimes there are several different voice squeezed together into one notational system:
3. There is a vast amount of special signs that are not used in a standardized way:
4. When you have to provide fingers for the fret hand (1,2,3,4) and for the picking hand (p,i,m,a) in addition to slurs, ties, articulations etc., you have to plan careful so that there are no collisions and everything stays clear and uncluttered. It just take one note that has too many such attributes to spoil the readability:
5. Many effects such as rasguado, pitch bend or percussive elements cannot be notated exactly.
b) Entering Guitar Chords to an Existing Melody
We can use the following method for the normal fingerings:
After we've entered the melody, we'll chose the chord tool. 
. Now we can see a new menu listing in the main menu called "Chord". Looking under this menu point we can see the different means of entering chords into a score. We'll make sure that "Type Into Score is chosen as well as "Show Fretboards". Next we'll click onto the first note and type "D" and then hit the enter key. The fingering and the chord symbol should now appear over the note. Next we'll continue along the same manner with the rest of the melody notes.
c) Unison
Something that is typical of guitar notation is the double-note which is in the upper and lower part as well:
How is this done? First I enter the upper notes in layer 1 and then the lower notes in layer 2. We then see the following notation:
In case the double notes appear next to each other, check that Options / Document Settings / Music Spacing Options / Unisons is not chosen (of course in certain cases this may however actually be desired).
Now the note heads from the half notes are covered by those belonging to the eighth notes. Because of this we have to change these covering eighth note noteheads to hollow noteheads.
First we choose Layer 1 and the Special Tools
, and then from the resulting collection of tools, we click onto the Notehead tool'
and then click into a measure with such overlapping notes.
After double-clicking on the desired note, we get a window from which we can chose the necessary notehead.
Let's look for and choose Symbol 250, which is the notehead associated with a half note, which is what we're looking for. (after setting this new notehead, it might be a good idea to refresh the screen with cntl-D/cmd-D)
Although you might be tempted to try it, it's not a good idea to use the empty Symbol 32, because the position of the note stem will not be correct.
(You can choose more than one note at a time in a measure by using the shift/click method to choose them)
Now we have a clean and readable piece of music, like we're used to seeing with guitar music:
d) Special Signs
How do we right all the special signs we normally need for guitar music? FINALE doesn't provide us with very much "right out of the box", but it does give us the ways and means to create all the signs we can dream up and then to save these into a template so that we only have to make them once but can use them in all pieces thereafter. For example, how do I make a 3 in a circle? Although these are all in my example which you can download, I'll explain how this was created:
First choose the Articulations Tool 
and then click on a note, after which the windows with which you can choose your articulation will appear. Click onto create / Font / and then choose the Windows Font Wingdings, set the size to 16 / original and the double-click onto nr. 131 / OK
Now you'll have the 3-in-a-circle next to the note.
FINALE also provides use the a symbol designing tool with which one can create every imaginable sign you can think of. You can even assign them dynamics, accents, changes in pitch etc. that can be heard during playback. But because this can become very involved and might demand extensive knowledge of the program, you'll find a link to my own Guitar template to be found at the following Web-address (in .ZIP format for Windows
www.hochweber.ch/gitarre.htm
Just download it and copy it into your Finale Template Folder (unzipped) or make it to your standard starting template as follows:
Options > Program Options > Other Options > Default File Name
When we open this template, enter some notes, then chose the Articulations Tool and then click onto a note, we'll see the following symbols as defined in this guitar template:
In a similar manner you can create staff/score expressions either as text or drawings. Here are the expressions found in this template:
What is the difference [in Finale] between expressions and articulations? There is no music difference, but rather in what you can do with them and how you can edit them. My template is designed, so that all articulations get additional horizontal space and that spacing for them is automatically considered, whereas this is not the case with expressions:
e) Special Lines
The following types of special lines are often used in guitar music:
In order to make the first example with the Roman III, we choose the smart shapes tool
, and we see the different types of smart shapes. We then Ctrl-click (Mac opt.-click) in this icon 
, and we then see a list with the different types of custom lines that I've defined in my template and we simply double-click on the line with the Roman III Then we can double-click anywhere in the score and this line will be created.
The only line that lets itself be drawn vertically downwards is the first one in the list. In order to get it absolutely straight up and down, be sure to hold the shift key while you are drawing the line.
f) Tabulature
Finale gives us a rather rudimentary way of notating guitar tabulature. Tabulature is an alternate way of writing music for fretted string instruments. In this manner the fret numbers are placed upon note-lines that represent the strings themselves. A 3 upon the top line means the third fret on the first string, on a guitar that would be a g. Tabulature is even older than traditional notation, being used as far back as the 16th century.
The advantages of tabulature are:
-it's a very compact and space-saving way of notating music.
-It's easy to read and easy to notate [by hand].
-It saves having to enter the fingerings on the fret-hand because the desired string is already determined.
The disadvantages of tabulature are:
- The tonality and key changes are not clearly visible.
-The rhythm is not clearly defined, meaning how long a note is to be played, only the beginning is defined.
-When playing together with other instruments the other musicians cannot readily understand tabulature.
FINALEs Tabulature-Plugin:
In order to write in Tabulature with Finale, we must first notate the piece in a traditional manner. [Then, after choosing the Mass Mover {maybe better with this mentioned - otherwise it may not be clear...)] we mark the area of the music which will be changed to Tabulature. We then go to the Plug-In menu and choose "Automatic Tabulature". Then we see a window where we have to choose some settings. If we noted our music in the usual quitar treble clef (an octave transposed), we'll have to reduce the numbers in the rows from 76, 71, 67, 62, 57, 52 to 64, 59, 55, 45, and 40 - which is a factor of 12 half-steps less than before. When we then click onto OK, Finale will set a new note-system below the existing one with our tabulature in it.
ABut watch out! This will only work if we have -not- set any double-notes as shown earlier. In such a case, Finale will try to set the second of the double note on another string, which is usually not correct. because the fingerings are not possible. In such a case with double notes, we must first replace one of the 2 double notes with a rest. We can do that by going to Simple Entry and using the erasure 
and clicking directly onto a notehead. If we do want to keep the original Notation, it would be a good idea to first make a backup copy.
But it's a well known fact, that a note can often be played on different strings. Finale always chooses the lowest fret, for example the third fret on the first string and not the 8th fret on the 2nd string. In the preceeding (or this) example, one would probably rather play the e (marked wit an x) on the 2nd string. How do we change this? First we click onto the Note Mover Tool 
and then in the 2nd line of the Tabulature. Every number on this line now has a little box. We then simple choose the desired marked fingering and drag it onto the 3rd line and Finale properly changes the 0 to a 5. Now we only have to remove the original marking. We click once again onto the first line to activate it, right-click (Mac = cntl-click) and choose "remove" We do the same with the next two notes.:
Tabulature in this manner is quite easy to read, but you must keep the standard notation because it contains the mandatory rhythm.
If we want complete Tabulatur with Note-stems, etc., in order to be able to remove the standard notation, we have to consider some things that are not covered in Finale's documentation. But also in this case we have to start by writing everything in standard notation, while avoided tied notes as much as possible. These are simply ignored and instead we use invisible rests. Then we proceed as described earlier in the section about automatic tabulature except for the setting in the dialogue box of Automatic Tabulature:
Rhythmic Notation: stems up and
Show TAB clef: First System only.
Then we get the following:
When we go about editing this tabulature, we must take the following into consideration: Finale handles the tabulature as a group of 6 individual systems, each with only 1 line with an extra one above just for the stem, in other words, 7 systems in total. So now the top system overlaps with following 3 systems. Because when we want to edit something Finale always chooses the stems to change, we have to shove the top system upwards away from the others. We do that by choosing the Staff Tool.
and we then drag the left box upwards. Now we can take the Note Mover Tool and again drag to the proper string.
And finally, when done we can drag the stems back down to the tabulature and the standard notation system can be removed:
There is even more one to do, especially with repeats, but that would overstep the bounds of this document.
g) The End
In conclusion, one can say, that even if there is a measurable working-in time needed by Finale, one can still work quickly and efficiently. And you can notate even the most complicated guitar passages with Finale.