FLAMENCÓMETRO OSCAR HERRERO TUTORIALS

First steps (05) GUITAR EDITOR

 

Hello, today the first steps in the Guitar Editor. Let’s look at its basic features.

This section has two areas: On the left our Virtual guitar with its Tablature editor and in the right panel the choosers for Tablatures, Chords, Scales, Arpeggios and My tabs (My tablatures). Let’s look at this area.

The section header shows the name of the active chooser and below are the tabs for opening all of them. Users can compose their own tablatures only in My tabs (My tablatures). The rest are banks containing Tablatures, Chords, Scales and Arpeggios, which are protected and cannot be modified. We will be expanding the repertoire little by little.

In the same panel is the search box so we can quickly find what we want.

Additionally, there are filters for Name and Type in the Chords, Scales and Arpeggios choosers.

Tablatures and My tabs (My tablatures) are organized in five columns:

Name. The name we give the tablature

Style. The flamenco style

Album. For organizing the tablatures better

Author. The author of the tablature

Observations. Add any observations

Chords also has five columns:

Name. The name we give the chord

Type. Major, minor, augmented, etc.

Position. Position of the left hand on the guitar

Form. Form of the chord: root or fundamental, 1st inversion, etc.

String. The string where the root note is played

Scales and Arpeggios have four columns:

Name

Type

Position

String

You can find the meanings of the abbreviations in each column on the Tutorials page on flamencometro.es: http://www.flamencometro.es/english-1/tutorials/

Now let’s look at our Virtual guitar.

On the left of the header we find the section name: GUITAR EDITOR.

In the center is the name of the item currently open.

To the right: Loop, set to 1 by default, which means that the tablature will play back only once. We can type whatever number we want in the box according to the number of times we want the tablature to repeat. If we click on “Loop”, it will play infinitely until we stop it.

Next on the right: BPM, beats per minute. We have a wide range, from 1 to 600 beats per minute, and two ways of doing it: we can click the double angle bracket on the right to increase the tempo or the one on the left to diminish it. Or we can type the BPM we want directly into the box.

And finally, the Options for this section, which are:

Add intro. Adds an Intro to the composition; i.e., a count of 3, 4 or 6 beats before the start. It plays with the sound of claves.

Reset all fingering. Returns the fingering to 1st position: fret 1 finger 1; fret 2 finger 2, etc.

Show fingers. Shows the fingering on the guitar neck

Show notes. Shows the notes on the neck

Cypress guitar. Plays the sounds on a cypress guitar

Rosewood guitar. Plays the sounds on a rosewood guitar

All the playback in this section will be shown on the guitar neck. By default the guitar is viewed as if you had a teacher in front of you, but on the left is a button to rotate the guitar and see it in tablature view.

Under the neck in the center is a sound slider for the chords, but we will look at this in a tutorial on advanced features.

Under the headstock at the far right of the panel is the well-known traditional capo. Clicking on it will place it on the first fret of the neck, and from there we can drag and drop it to whatever fret we want. We can also double click on it to type in the desired fret. We can remove it by clicking on the “x”.

Below the guitar: the Tablature. Here we see the written tablature. Click play or use the space bar shortcut to start the playback and read along with it as it plays.

When we are in the Tablature we can use the arrow keys on the computer keyboard to listen to the sound.

There are other important features below the tablature. Starting from the right we find:

Floating keyboard. This is used for writing a tablature and we will see how it works in a tutorial on advanced features.

Meter. We can set the type of meter we want on the tablature.

Go to measure… When we are in the tablature this will take us to the measure we indicate.

Import MIDI. Imports a MIDI file and shows the details on the tablature.

Export MIDI. Exports the selected tablature to your computer in MIDI format.

We have added MIDI import and export features as a Tablature aid. Because of the wide variety of MIDI systems on the market it is impossible for the Tablature to reproduce all of them correctly. To ensure the most accurate playback, the MIDI recording should have simple melodies in a single voice or part and no irregular rhythmic groupings. Otherwise, the user will have to correct any errors in the Tablature itself.