Tip #39 - How MusEdit determines fret position for tab

If you've experimented with translation from treble to tab (either mutual or post-facto) you'll see that MusEdit doesn't always choose tab fingering close to the open string positions when deciding how to finger notes on the fretboard. Instead, MusEdit usually "looks to the left" when doing the tab translation to try to figure out where to put the fingering.

What this means is, if you are playing a melody which moves up the fretboard to, say, the 12th fret and then you start playing lower notes again MusEdit doesn't march back down toward the open string position, but instead it "Looks to the left" to see where the last tab note was played and then it tries to keep subsequent notes near the same fret position by shifting them to lower strings (see image). This is usually the more natural way to play a melody like this.

This may not always be what you want however, but you don't have to worry if MusEdit isn't doing what you intended. For one thing, you can turn off "Look to the left" by putting the caret in the tab line and then select "Options|Set Tab Fret Position" (Ctrl+Alt+F) and then uncheck the "Set fret position based on previous fret positions" feature.

Alternatively, you can simply ignore what MusEdit is doing during translations, but after you're all done go back to the tab line and select those portions which you'd like to have fingered in different fret positions and select Options|Set Tab Fret Position again, then set the fret location you want.

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