Musescore 4 has a very useful function for guitarists, bassists, mandolinists or any string instrument that you want to set up the tablature synchronized automatically with the score.
In previous versions of this software, it was necessary to create an independent tablature and then copy the notes from the score and paste them into the tablature. The drawback is that, by doing this way, any changes made in the score need to be manually updated in the tablature. With the linked score function available in Musescore 4, the synchronization problem has been solved.
Creating the Score
The first step to do this is to create a score from which the linked tablature will be generated. To do this, after you have created your score, click on the symbol “+” to add it. You can also use the option File> New.
By doing this, a new window will open for you, so you can choose an instrument. As we want to create a tablature linked with the score, we will choose a string instrument such as guitar, banjo,ukulele, mandolin, bass, etc. If you can’t find the instrument you are looking for in the list, try searching in the Search field.
Choosing the Instrument
In our example, we will create a score for acoustic guitar. Browse through the options on the left until you find plucked strings or simply search for guitar in the search box. You will see that by doing this, several options of guitars appear: acoustic guitar, which is what we want, but also bass guitar, electric guitar, etc. Choose one of them.
After you have chosen one of them, click on the arrow indicated in the following figure. It will insert your instrument into the score list. In our case, we will insert only the guitar, but we could also insert, for example, a flute to play the melody while the guitar does the accompaniment, or a bass and even a drum or tambourine. Let’s go ahead with the guitar score.
Click on the arrow and then on next and a new window will open. Now you will enter the song key and time signature, and and also the tempo. You can also fill in the title of the song, composer, lyricist and information the copyright. You can also choose to do this later, which would be a topic for another post.
the Score configuration
In this example, we will work with Joseph Kosma’s Autumn Leaves song which is in E minor. I also defined the tempo of 130 bpm and 4/4 time signature as shown below.
Inserting the Notes in the Score
After confirming by clicking done-buttom, you will see an empty score, that you can start inserting the notes. Notice that in the score we chose (acoustic guitar) there is an 8 on the treble clef indicating that the notes sound an octave lower than they are written on the score.
The next step then is to write down the music on the score. In this case we chose to show a complete arrangement for guitar, but you may only need the melody line. In this post we will not detail how to edit the score, which we will do in future posts. If you have a file saved in another version of Musescore, I suggest copying and pasting instead of simply opening the file and starting editing, which can generate some bugs.
For simplicity and copyright reasons, I chose to transcribe only part of the music as shown below:
Inserting a Linked-Tablature
The next step is to insert tablature linked with this score. To do this go to menu on left side and click on instruments.
By clicking on triangle next to instrument name it will open some options. Click on gear of score in question and you will see option to create a linked score. Go ahead and click.
This will duplicate score creating another one that is linked to it. Now just change linked score to appear as tablature which is our next step.
To do this click again on gear, but now choose linked score and you will see several options.
In our case it is a 6-string guitar, so we can choose the first option. And voilà here is our tablature.
In this case I have chosen a simple tablature option that shows less details since it is complementary information to the score. You can also test other options and use the one that suits you best.
After completing these steps, it is important to check if there is no note written on the wrong string in tablature. This is still a small problem not solved yet in Musescore. This is more common when there are bar chords, but in general it works very well. I hope this information is useful for you. Have a look also at my Youtube channels (@makingmusic4you and @mandolintabs4you).
