The Palettes

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The six palettes provided by TablEdit give you direct access to a wide variety of the features of the program, thus letting you avoid having to go into the menus for each operation you want to perform. The six palettes are:

Notes
Special Effects
Dynamics
Tools
Fingerings
Keyboard

The palettes can be moved around, docked or undocked and resized. The Fingerings (Hand) and Keyboard palettes cannot be resized.

You can move a palette to a new location by clicking within the title bar, itself, and keeping the left mouse button held down allows you to move the palette freely in any direction.

To resize a palette, move the mouse pointer to the right-hand or lower edge of the palette to be resized until it changes into a double-ended arrow and then press the left mouse button and "drag" the palette to the size of your choice. Repeat the procedure for each palette.

Pressing [F2] hides the floating palettes (and the ruler).

Several of the palette illustrations below are of the "click on me for information" type.

Many of the editing operations described below can be applied to more than just one note at a time using block operations (a.k.a. "extended selections").

Notes

The "Notes" palette contains controls relating to note duration, manual configuration of accidentals, tied notes and stem direction. These settings can also be made directly from the keyboard. The currently selected note duration is displayed as a pressed button. The duration value of the currently selected note is displayed with a purple border.

Special effects

This palette provides mouse access to the most commonly used special effects (note that several of these effects also have keyboard shortcuts). Keep in mind that this palette only contains the most common effects. To access all of TablEdit's special effects, or to combine effects, you have to use {Note}{Special effects...}. The currently selected special effect is displayed as a pressed button.

When the cursor is located directly on a note, any special effect that has previously been applied to that note is displayed with a purple border.

Dynamics

These settings affect the relative volume of each of the notes of the tablature. These differences in volume are reflected during MIDI playback and can be used to create a more life-like sound. The button corresponding to the dynamic value of the currently selected note is displayed with a purple border.

Tools

This palette contains various editing tools allowing you to edit global settings, insert elements such as text and custom chord diagrams, access various dialogs, move notes across the strings and Undo and Redo your latest editing actions.

 

Fingerings ("Hand")

Officially called the "Fingerings" palette, this is, for obvious reasons, just as often referred to as the "Hand" palette. It allows the entry of left and right hand fingering indications as well as pick direction indicators.  Thus, it provides the basic features found in {Note}{Pick strokes & Fingerings...}.

Clicking on the fingers of the hand attaches the corresponding fingering indicator to the note beneath the cursor. The indicator, itself,

is displayed beneath the tablature grid directly below the affected note. Alternatively, if you should need to be able to adjust the vertical position of the indicator or wish to use it in combination with an effect which doesn't allow itself to be combined with other markings (the "ringing" note effect, for example) you can place it on an adjacent free space. In this case, an anchor point will be inserted into the tablature.

Clicking with the left-hand mouse button enters a number enclosed in a circle to indicate a left hand fingering while clicking with the right-hand mouse button enters a free-standing letter to indicate a right hand fingering. Since different users may be used to different standards as to which letters are used to indicate these right hand fingerings, these can be configured to individual taste in {File}{Options...}>Preferences. If the letter "T" is selected to indicate the right-hand thumb it will also be used (enclosed within a circle) to indicate the use of the left-hand thumb for fretting. The palette gives also the ability to adjust the position of the number in the notation:  : D (Default right to the note) R (right) B (below) L (left) A (above).

At the bottom of the palette you'll find four small symbols. The two on the left are used to insert alternative right hand markings while the two on the right let you insert pick direction indicators.

As opposed to classical guitar notation,  where the right hand fingers used to pluck the strings are indicated individually with letters, many tablature systems use short, vertical lines displayed to the right of the affected note, instead. The theory, correct more often than not, is that it's unnecessary to indicate exactly which finger is actually being used, unlike the situation concerning left hand fingerings where the choice of fingerings is often crucial to fluid execution. In general, right hand fingerings come fairly naturally and the fact that players of different styles will use a different number of right hand fingers often makes exact notation meaningless.

Clicking on the first symbol on the left will place a short, vertical, descending line to the right of the note beneath the cursor to indicate that the string is to be plucked with the right-hand thumb.

Clicking on the second symbol will place a short, vertical, ascending line to the right of the selected note to indicate that the string is to be plucked by the finger of the players choice. There are, of course, several variations in usage. The use of this type of markings is very effective in the case of marking single note runs where the picking order may be important to setting up the right hand's position for the continuation of the run or for a return to the basic picking pattern. This can be especially important in the case of highly syncopated music such as the blues, ragtime and Kentucky thumbpicking, among others.

The third symbol from the left inserts an upstroke marking below the tablature, directly beneath the affected note. Clicking the symbol at the far right inserts a downstroke marking. These markings are important when writing out tablatures for any type of lead guitar, whether it be rock music or jazz. Again, this is often a question of setting up the flow of the pick from string to string to ensure fluidity.

Clicking on the "x" in the palm of the hand deletes all previously inserted fingering indicators.

Keyboard

The Keyboard palette allows you to enter notes by clicking on the keys of the keyboard. When TablEdit is in "Automatic duration" mode, the cursor is automatically advanced by a distance equal to the time you keep the key (mouse button) held down. If a current duration has been fixed, the cursor is advanced by a distance equal to this value (simple click). This palette also highlights the key(s) corresponding to the note(s) currently beneath the cursor or currently being played when the tablature is playing back.

The small black "x" indicates middle C.