[Harp-L] Converting Sheet Music to Tab

[David Fairweather]

I have some experience in the realm of converting sheet music to harmonica
tab. If I'm starting with printed sheet music I may begin with the
commercial program "SmartScore". If you want to use a free program try
"Omer". Both of those programs require that your sheet music be printed
not handwritten.

If you are starting with a PDF, you can try "PDF to Music". There is a
free trial version that will only convert the first page of your PDF. But
you can find a free PDF splitter that will split your multi-page PDF into
single pages before feeding them into the "PDF to Music" trial version.
Be aware, though, that "PDF to Music" only works on PDFs that were
originally created in a notation program (like Finale, for instance). If
the PDF was created in Adobe or some word processor, it won't contain the
necessary musical information for "PDF to Music" to do its thing. Also, if
I recall correctly, there's yet another (free) add-on you'll need if you
want to save directly to Harmony/Melody Assistant format. Otherwise "PDF
to Music" just spits out a a midi file.

Harmony/Melody Assistant will accept midi files, MusicXML files, Finale
files and several other formats and convert them to standard notation with
tablature for just about any instrument you can imagine from bagpipe to
chromatic harmonica. In the harmonica department it can handle almost any
altered tuning you can devise for diatonic or chromatic harmonica (although
it doesn't yet handle valved bends or the Sub-30). It has intelligent
handling of enharmonics to optimize breathing, with easy editing to change
the enharmonics if you don't agree with its choices. It allows for several
different tab symbol schemes (arrows, plus/minus, up/down triangles, etc.)
and colored note tab schemes (my favorite!)

All this power comes at the cost of a steep learning curve. Especially
when you consider that tabulation is just a snowflake on the tip of the
iceberg of what Harmony/Melody Assistant can do. (For example, singing the
lyrics of your songs with any number of computer generated voices or with
phonemes from samples of your own voice! Or scatting your melodies in
solfege, or in bebop dialect!) But again, you've really got to dig under
the hood and invest some time to even begin to tap the powers of this
program.

Harmony Assistant and it's little brother Melody Assistant are available
from Myriad-Online.Com. It's very reasonably priced and a fully
functional free trial version is also available.

[rex]

Lots of folk and traditional music is available on the internet as ABC files. ABC is a way to easily share music as text files. There is an online app that will convert ABC to harp tab:

http://abcharmotab.appspot.com/

There are many sites that can explain or provide ABC files. 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ABC_notation

http://abcnotation.com/

ABC has it limits. But it is easy to share and convert. 

[rex]

abcharmotab will not only give you the tab but also the sheet music. abcnotation.com will give you the sheet music and the abc. I just went there (it's been awhile so I was fuzzy on what it would do) and was able to copy and past the sheet music into Word and print it. I then copied the text of the abc file and pasted it into abcharmotab and it converted it to tab with standard notation above it. The standard notation from both sites matched exactly. Very useful if you can find the tune you want on the abcnotation.com site.