Preparing a Guitar Part

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If you are preparing a guitar part, here are some tips that you should find useful.

To prepare a guitar chord such that below, see instructions for Chord Chart:

ChordChart

Note that Composer version 2.0 does not support display or editing of guitar fret diagrams, nor tablature notation. These two guitar notation features are planned for a future version of Composer.

prcarrowIf the guitar notes are displayed one octave too low, perhaps in the bass clef instead of treble clef:

B816Follow the instructions in Transposing Key of an Instrument. Guitar notes are normally shown one octave higher than their actual pitch. In the Transpose Instrument Key step of theTranpose Wizard, set the transposition for the guitar staff to "Note read as 'C' actually sounds as 'C' below plus 1 octave".
B816When you display the guitar part, make sure that there is no check mark by the Show Concert Pitches menu item in the Staff menu.
B816If after transposing the guitar part, some bass clefs are left in the part, and you want to change them to treble clefs, add a treble clef at the beginning of the measure for the guitar part, and delete any subsequent bass clef in the guitar part.

prcarrowTo display chord names above the melody notes:

B816Determine which staves in the song have mostly notes that belong to the chord harmonies, as opposed to staves that have "passing notes" between chord notes, and other notes that do not belong to chord harmonies. Use the Transcribe Chord Names command, and select these staves as the ones that Composer will use to analyze and display the chord names.

prcarrowTo display rolled out chords as vertical chords rather than written-out arpeggios:

B816Follow the instructions in Editing Arpeggios.

prcarrowTo notate harmonics such as the following:

GuitarHarmonicExample

B816Follow the instructions in Editing Notehead Shapes.

prcarrowTo add a pitch bend to a note, such as the following:

PitchBendExample

B816Follow the instructions for graphical editing the pitch bend curve in Note Pitch Bend.

prcarrowTo add a vibrato to a note, such as the following:

ModulationWheelExample

B816Follow the instructions for graphical editing the Modulation Wheel Controller curve in MIDI Controller Data.

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