Guitar notation

Guitar parts are often more complex than other parts, because they often combine regular notation with slashes, or hash marks, representing chordal rhythms. There are three ways to accomplish this combination, depending on the kind of part you want to create.

If there’s a passage where you want to indicate ad lib comping, you can let Finale fill in the measures automatically with either stemless, evenly-spaced slashes, or beamed, stemmed rhythmic slashes. See Slashes.

If the part calls for a combination of notes and unpitched slashes, you can enter the melodic parts in one Finale layer, and add the slashes in another. See To combine notes with rhythmic notation slashes on one staff.

If there are only a few slashes that must fall on specific pitches, you can notate the entire part in one layer, temporarily notating the slashes as standard noteheads. Once that’s done, you can change the appropriate noteheads to slashes with the Special Tools Tool. See To create pitched slashes (note-by-note method).

Tip: See Tutorial 10: Guitar for a step-by-step tutorial overview of guitar notation in Finale.

See also:

Slashes

Tablature

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