I am writing scores for slide guitar, in which sometimes chords are fingered with non-slide fingers on the left hand and sometimes they are fingered with the slide. I can add left hand fingerings and they show up nicely on the score, but not on the tab. I tried to find how to do this in the help pages but couldn’t find anything.
I can’t visualise what sort of result you are expecting… How would you distinguish the fingering numbers from the fret numbers on a tab staff? Do you have a published example that shows how this would look?
I saw several instructional videos that claimed that Dorico’s tab notation and its score notation were essentially equal in expressive power. In the score notation, left hand fingerings appear just to the left of their note bodies, in a small and distinctive font. I would expect that in tab notation the left finger designator would appear just to the left of the normal fret number designator, perhaps circled or otherwise made to stand out.
That sounds like it would be very difficult to distinguish from e.g. a grace note fret number. Typically when publishers wish to indicate fingerings then they would do this on the notation staff, or possibly they would use a chord diagram above the staff to show the fingering. I don’t recall ever having seen fingering numbers on the tab staff in a published score - do you have an example?
Sorry for the delay. Here is an example. Since it is closely derived from a musical course by JJ Ronquillo, please do not use this example in any way other than as an explanation of a problem in notation.
Look at measure 11, beats 2,3, and 4. Normally you would play the three chords with the slide. However, this would interfere with any resonance in open string 4(D). So, the player is supposed to hold the slide off the strings and use left hand fingers 1 and 2 for the chords. This is easily shown in the note form of the score. However, most slide players would use the tab notation and I can’t figure out how to make Dorico display this vital information. Dorico’s instructional videos insist that anything that can be shown on the note version can also be shown in tab notation.
DustMyBroom - 2022-10-17.pdf (65.9 KB)
Oops, I meant open string 4 (D)
Sorry, I didn’t explain myself well. I am familiar with how fingerings are displayed on the notation staff, and Dorico supports this. However, I have never seen a published score which shows fingerings on the tab staff. Dorico doesn’t support this at present, and I can’t imagine how it would work in a way that would be readable.
Thank you, Richard for spending so much time on what I guess is a niche issue for Dorico. Somehow I thought that I had seen how to turn an option on, but it looks like the current version of Dorico does not support the representation of left hand fingering on tablature, even though it does so nicely in the note representation.
In the Steinberg instructional video “Tablature for fretted instruments: New features in Dorico 3” at the beginning, Anthony Hughes asserts that the tablature and note layouts are simply different representations of the same information. I guess that slide guitar is too much of a niche instrument to get much priority, but having a direct way to specify left hand (fretting hand) fingering would be very useful. My teacher tells me that many slide guitarists prefer to use tablature.
I will see if I can use something general in the layout options to make a temporary annotation of special left-hand fingerings until a standard emerges and Dorico supports it.
The chord-fretting diagrams that Dorico does provide will not help, since I am trying to annotate some special situations where a non-traditional fret fingering is called for.
If Left hand fingering is not an option in the Tab - and yes, it would be confusing - you could always use text, and position the fingerings outside the tab lines. A bit of work, but presumably you wouldn’t need to do too many of them, as the tab has already given so much topographical information.
Apologies for butting in here a little - the topic has got me curious…
As Richard already asked, can you point to any example that shows the desired LH fingering indication in the TAB please.? I’ve googled around for a little while now, to no avail…
TIA,
Bob
No, I cannot point to any current published tablature score which Dorico cannot handle. I was led astray by a video by Anthony Hughes, who seems to work for Steinberg. I documented that in the conversation thread. Putting special fret-hand guidelines on note scores seems to fulfill a valid purpose, such as happened in DustMyBroom. Anthony Hughes’ statement would imply that if it shows up in the note representation then there ought to be a logically equivalent way to show it on the tablature notation. This is especially true since apparently many slide guitarists never look at the note form, only the tablature. As it turns out, I have thought of an alternative. The problem is that strings that have no fret number in the tablature are usually muted. So if two strings have the same fret number and all other strings are muted, then the slide could be used. However, the author of the score wants the string in between to “ring out”, or vibrate sympathetically. So, perhaps it should be notated with a zero and a “dead note” indicator. So, if strings 3-5 show 3 nothing 3 then a slide can be used for the bichord. However, something like 3 x 3 would make it clear that string 4 must be left open and free to sound sympathetically.
In any case, one person suggested the use of free text in the engraving to solve the problem for the moment. I’ll probably do that.
Actually in many books left hand fingerings are shown on tab system too, right above the tablature itself, not inside the “strings” with fret numbers. So it’s not confusing at all and could be actually VERY useful in some situations, especially while writing exercises for students. It has a lot of sense because you have the finger number right above the tab and can see it while reading the tab without have to search for it on standard notation. (If I remember well all “Hot Licks” series from 80s/90s were written that way… but there’s tons of others).
Said that, at least the “T” for “thumb” is always written in tablature for Jimi Hendrix style chords.
Plus, if you decide to write in tablature only? How do you indicate fingerings?
Dorico can’t still do TONS of things with tablature and chord diagrams. Not to talk about chord shapes library which is a total mess.
It’s good enough to write a score for a professional/advanced guitarist but when it comes to writing educational stuff it is still really basic and restricted.
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Could you post an example of how this looks in a published book?
Sorry for the delay… I didn’t notice your reply.
Here’s two examples from two different books.
I found these on the fly.
It’s quite obvious that, while writing exercises or instructional books it could also be useful to put right hand fingering over the tablature and, even more useful, to put picking indications on tablature. I am forced to indicate everything in standard notation (cause you can’t put picking sign on tablature) and that can be VERY confusing for a beginner.
The only workaround for all these problems is to use two separate staves (2 players), one for standard notation and one for tablature, copying all the stuff from notation stave to tab stave (which implies other workarounds like hiding time signature for tab using independent time signature, which affects all bar lines that you have to set independently on both staves etc).
Still, with two separate staves you can’t put fingerings on tab. You could use text or lyrics maybe but it would obviously be a mess for stacked fingerings in chords.
Here’s an example with independent players for standard notation and tab (it has both picking and right hand fingerings, which it makes no sense 
but it’s only a reminder in a template I prepared):
Another problem, using a normal single player with notation and tab, is you can’t move horizontally tab numbers independently from standard notation and that is a HUGE problem when dealing with grace notes in chords.
Again, the only workaround is using two separate staves (which is basically how Finale works) and columns but it’s VERY time consuming.
Here’s an example of a lesson I wrote (this is how all major publishers write grace notes in chords in tablature):
As I said before, most of this is not needed for a professional player but, when writing instructional stuff, all these options should be available to use for different needs.
The problem with grace notes in chords, instead, it is something adopted by all major publishers and the work around is too time consuming. Transcribing blues parts can be a nightmare.
You can actually do this, at least to some extent. The “Voice column X offset” property in the properties panel in Engrave mode can have independent values for notation and tab:
With the earlier examples I have to say I find the “Scaling Down” one very difficult to read (as a mediocre guitarist). The top one is fine, but that you could probably emulate using lyrics for the fingerings as a workaround.
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Not really… you have to try grace notes in chord (Jimi Hendrix/Motown style)
Here’s what happens doing what you say (grace notes keep moving back and can’t be in the same column with normal notes):
To obtain my result, you have to write in an independent tab staff the whole chord as grace note and the hammer-ons as normal notes. Then change the size of the notes in grace note chords that will keep ringing to normal size. Then put slurs but you have to position all of them manually (position and length) to be on the right notes. You can imagine what it means to write a 4 minute long transcription.
I agree about fingerings in the second examples (I wouldn’t use that system too) but it’s anyway a Frank Gambale book published by DCI.
It’s an option that might be useful for small examples.
Also, I know many teachers who teach kids (I don’t) that use only TAB with no standard notation.
In that case, I totally agree you could use lyrics (with multiple levels for chord fingerings) but what about right fingerings? It could be useful…
Still, with normal single player notation and tab, you can’t put picking indications in tab… that you see all the time
Right, I see what you mean about the Voice column X offset property. I think in a classical context you’d be more inclined to notate the grace notes like this, which is something that Dorico can do (with the target note on the tab staff either hidden or parenthesized):
I do take your point about picking indications in tab also.
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Just to follow up on this, you can put picking indications in tab if you edit the upbow and downbow playing techniques and change this:
But it’s true that you can’t put them only in the tab staff - they’ll appear on the notation staff too. (Our ref: STEAM-9327.)
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That could be a solution (I tried that before).
The problem, and what I didn’t like about it, is that way it’s not really correct on the notation staff.
Also on TAB staff you should change the dimension to normal size of the notes that keep ringing but, if I am not missing something, that affects the dimension of the corresponding note on regular notation.
The fact is standard notation and TAB are not perfectly mirrored in this kind of situation (sorry, I’m a little OCD when it comes to notation aesthetics but, it my experience, that generates also quite a bit confusion in students and it wouldn’t be correct for publishing)
Here’s a couple of examples from printed books:
(Same problem occurs with double stops with bending)
For now I’ll keep writing it using two separate players, hoping this might be something addressed in the future.
This way I can also put picking signs only on tablature (thanks for the other tip by the way) and other signs independently from regular notation.
But still I can’t write right hand fingering on top of tablature (p, i, m, a, c) but I am using lyrics for that right now.
Thank you again for your tips.
I am sorry I put out this subjects in this post which was about something else, it might have been useful to others with same problems.