Is there a user friendly software that will allow me to type in tab but also show me the notes or vice versa. My goal is to be able to see tab and music at the same time and hopefully start to catch on to music notation.
What do you all do with the little bits of music to have available to you at a later time?
Thank You
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I use Crescendo. It’s very inexpensive for a lifetime license, and it’s quite handy.
I’m pretty sure you can write both the musical notation and the tab, but I’ve never tried it. I don’t ever play from tab so that part is of no interest to me.
They do have a free trial period of you want to check it out.
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One of the ones we had to choose from for my Berklee Music Theory class is MuseScore (free).
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+1 for Crescendo. As @PamPurrs mentions, it is fairly inexpensive for lifetime use which works for me because I don’t always use sheet music - kinda use to just using my ears more than anything else. It does come in handy when I’m putting together my own music though…
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I started taking the Simple Steps to Sight Reading at Talkingbass.com. It is a great class. Within the first 6 or 7 lessons, it explained alot, and I mean alot for even trying to read tab. A lot of those symbols that are on Tabs that come from Sheet are explained, and then the symbols that are on the sheet, not on the tab, THAT MATTER are explained. Plus it is, as the name suggests, SIMPLE STEPS to learning sight reading.
If your only real goal is to learn the sight reading, and not really for a software to help anything more, I think the price for the course at Talking Bass is well worth it. Plus it comes with course material pdf’s to print out and backing tracks you can download to have for practice anytime.
I think it is about $40, well worth it. I don’t know the real price because I got the All Access pass to the site, so I can do many classes there for a monthly fee. The pass is not available all the time, you can only get it when he puts it up for sale, so if you want to learn right away, you might have to get the course.
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You can do this for free with musescore (https://musescore.org/), but there is a learning curve to the program. The good news is that there’s plenty of online documentation to get you going (Handbook for MuseScore 4 | MuseScore) and it’s free as well.
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Yeah, that looks solid, I just downloaded. I think I will still benefit from the course I am taking, and I take it alongside other music theory courses for bass, and I only pay $16 per month for all the classes, but this will be cool to learn to write the music.
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I agree on the Sight Reading course. I’m on level 3 now and the exercises are getting harder and harder, but the results are worth it.
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I am just practicing thru the workbook pages 1-11 from the first section of the EASY side. It is amazing how quickly I am able to identify the benefit.
Even if I were to still read TAB, I know how. Reading tab is not the plan long term obviously, but I still do. I will drop it when I get more into the class, but for now, I only know the natural notes in the 1st position.
Plus, @JoshFossgreen works with me on Rhythm a lot. Rests are a big part of my focus, but I always get thrown off with all the other little things that are in the sheet, but I know understand a lot more.
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I just opened it up and started playing with it. There is a learning curve of course, but it has some great guided tours to begin.
I mean, I could actually transcribe an easy pc of music from tab from the get go, so I am sure with a little time invested that I could easily figure it out.
Thanks for the tip.
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Welcome @clintjthompson!
My go to software for those kind of matters is https://www.guitar-pro.com/.
In my opinion, It’s user-friendly enough to learn the basics just using it. Take it with a grain of salt, your mileage may vary.
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Yeah, I felt a little clumsy going thru it, but for a first time, not bad
I just made this really quick to test it out. I think it is correct, but I am really new to this. the D to F is a slide hammer on, and I couldn’t figure that one out, but I am sure this is capable to do it, and easy enough that I can figure it out enough to make this in 30 min.
For a FREE software, it is defiantly a WINNER
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For guitar and bass, the simplest tool is perhaps TuxGuitar. It’s a free software; TuxGuitar download | SourceForge.net , https://tuxguitar.en.softonic.com/, http://tuxguitar.com.ar/.
Otherwise, if you want to make a step further, MuseScore has my vote too.
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Looks pretty cool.
I just started playing with MuseScore, and have my hands full with it, but I will give that a try at some point. Thanks for the link
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Anyone with opinions on MuseScore? On sale now, seems to have decent-ish sheet music uploads.
(I’m talking about the service, not the free notation software they offer)
Doing a random sampling they seem to have a few interesting songs uploaded but it’s looking pretty spotty. interested in others opinions, particularly for more indie genres.
Confused. I thought MuseScore was free. I use it to render gp5 files. So far so good. Dont use it to write music on. Not at that level yet
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The app is free. The service (where people upload their scores) is expensive. But on sale now.
The primary interest to me is the scores others have produced.
Ah. I see.
Hmm, on second thought, while it’s nice that there’s an online sheet music repository, the first score I downloaded was wrong, just like a bad tab would be.
Not surprising (there’s almost assuredly as many bad scores out there as there are bad tabs) but disappointing 
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Late to the party, and I see you basically found the main answer yourself…
I like the idea of this repository, but, as you say, it is plagued by the same issues as the online tabs you can find… most of them are inadequate, perhaps just simplified, but often also containing errors, and so their value is limited.
That said, I have found some “gems” as well… stuff I am unlikely to find anywhere else. Often, when you play them using the MuseScore player, they sound good, but the notational choices might be un-orthodox, often in order to reproduce certain phrasings (and tremolos, trills, and such). So, they might be hard to work with as presented.
Still, it might mean you get a bit of a head-start on a project as you don’t have to start from scratch, but is that worth the money? I am not sure… It was good to get that “reminder” from you, Howard, as I had signed up for it and meant to more thoroughly test whether it was worth the cost or not…
I can’t say I am using it very often, but I probably should dig in more and test it.
Any particular scores you want me to look for??
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