Martin,

I’m going to take one more crack at this. Most musicians who play fretted stringed instruments prefer TAB to standard notation, If you import midi into notation software the standard notation will be correct but the TAB almost certainly will NOT be the way the music is actually played, although it will be plausible or technically correct. What you created may look similar to you, but the TAB and fretboard will almost certainly be wrong.

Why does this matter? For example, an open G string sounds different than a D string fretted at the 5th fret, or an A string fretted at the 10th fret, or a low E string fretted at the 15th fret. But they are all the same note and same octave, yet they sound different, especially on an acoustic guitar. Midi and std. notation treat all these notes the same. Here is an excerpt from something I wrote several years ago concerning TAB vs. std notation.

Quote:

Tablature vs standard notation for stringed/fretted instruments. It’s frequently maligned and often misunderstood by people who don’t play stringed instruments, (and occasionally by those who do play them).

For anyone who may not be familiar with tablature, the number of lines = the number of strings. For example, a guitar has 6 strings and therefore has 6 lines in the notation. A banjo has 5 strings and therefore has 5 lines. A bass guitar has 4 strings and 4 lines, etc. A 0, (zero), on a line means an open string. A number on a particular line means you fret that string on that fret.

In the following, I have given 8 examples of a G major scale, all played in the same octave, in 8 different positions on the guitar. There are other positions you could play this scale in this octave, but “Eight Is Enough”. (I’m showing my age here). Tablature and standard notation are shown.








So TAB doesn’t just tell you what note to play, but where to play it.

Since you don’t play guitar, you might ask “why does it matter which one you use?” It some cases it may not, but each position opens up different possibilities for phrases or licks or ease of fingering. And they sound different when played on an instrument vs. playback of a midi file.

When “pickers” create music notation, they usually aren’t going to be importing a file, but manually entering the notes in TAB instead of std. notation, unless they’re a classical or jazz musician.

While it may be possible to create something that looks similar to the original post in BIAB, it’s extremely unwieldy, time consuming and impractical. And the sheet music when printed is definitely not professional quality, or as Finale calls it, “engraver quality”. Lets add track limitations to the list of reasons.

BIABguy came to the forum for help. Trying to steer him to use BIAB as notation software isn't helping him.

I hope this clears things up. Whew!!!

Last edited by bobcflatpicker; 07/22/11 11:11 AM.
Bob
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