Entering notes

Tabula is keyboard-first. How you enter a note depends on the instrument: fret numbers on a tab staff, letter keys for pitched instruments, and digit keys for drums. In every case you first arm a duration, then enter the pitch; the cursor advances so you can keep playing.

The location strip above the score always shows where the cursor is, so you never lose your place, and ends with a Next field naming where the next note you type will land (Next: beat 2, or Next: bar 3 once the current bar is full):

When you’re on an empty beat, a faint outline of the armed duration previews the note you’re about to enter, right where it’ll land — it moves with the cursor and updates as soon as you change the armed duration.

Filling an empty bar

A bar you haven’t written in yet holds a single bar-long rest. Type into it and the note takes the duration you have armed, not the whole bar: the rest is split, what’s left of it stays behind as rests, and the cursor moves onto the first of them. So an empty 4/4 bar with a quarter armed takes four digits as four beats, with no extra keys and the bar always adding up.

→ does the same thing without writing a note, so you can skip beat 1 and start on beat 2. Once there’s nothing left to split — the last rest of the bar is already the armed length — → moves on to the next bar as usual. Holding → down just walks the cursor; it doesn’t leave slots behind.

Two details worth knowing on a part-written bar:

• Typing splits a rest anywhere in the bar. Land on a half rest in the middle of a written bar with a quarter armed, type, and you get a quarter note followed by a quarter rest — the bar still adds up.
• → only splits at the end of the bar, where everything after the cursor is a rest. Stepping past a rest that has notes after it just moves the cursor, because rewriting the middle of a bar you’ve already written isn’t what you meant by pressing an arrow.

The split also covers a rest entered with N, a chord voicing, a drum piece, and arming a shorter duration while the cursor sits on a rest. A rest that’s already at or shorter than the armed duration is left alone, and so is a beat inside a tuplet.

The buttons labelled Beat ← and Beat → in the beat toolbar are a different thing — they insert a beat before or after the cursor, which makes the bar longer. The arrow keys are what move the cursor.

Guitar, bass, and other stringed instruments

On a tab staff, type fret numbers directly onto the active string.

• Type a digit 0–9 to place that fret on the active string.
• For frets 10 and above, type both digits quickly — Tabula buffers the first digit briefly and combines them (e.g. 1 then 2 → fret 12). If the combined number would exceed the maximum fret (24), the first digit commits on its own. Frets go from 0 to 24.
• ↑ / ↓ move the cursor between strings. The location strip shows the active string and its open pitch, e.g. String 6 (E2).
• After you commit a fret, the cursor advances to the next beat (this auto-advance is on by default; you can turn it off under View).

Building chords

To stack several notes on one beat, switch the cursor to the notation staff with Shift+Tab and press Enter at each pitch — Enter commits the note without advancing, so you can keep adding chord tones to the same beat. Tabula picks a sensible string and fret for each. Press → when the chord is complete.

Nudging pitch

• Alt+↑ / Alt+↓ nudge the selected note up or down by one semitone.
• Add Shift (Alt+Shift+↑/↓) to move by a full octave.

Piano, voice, winds, and other pitched instruments

Instruments without strings (piano, voice, brass, woodwinds, strings) are entered on the notation staff with letter keys:

• Press a pitch letter A–G to place that pitch. Tabula uses the nearest octave to the cursor (the same rule as MuseScore): if the cursor is near C4, pressing C gives C4; move up to G4 and press C again and you get C5, the nearer C.
• ↑ / ↓ step the cursor up and down the scale diatonically, respecting the song’s key signature.
• Alt+↑/↓ move chromatically by a semitone; add Shift for an octave.
• Press Enter to stack chord tones on the current beat without advancing.

Piano and organ use a grand staff (treble + bass). Move between the two staves with Ctrl+↑ / Ctrl+↓.

Drums

On a drum track, the digit keys 1–9 map to kit pieces:

Key	Piece	Key	Piece	Key	Piece
1	Kick	4	Open hat	7	Tom 1 (high)
2	Snare	5	Crash	8	Tom 2 (mid)
3	Closed hat	6	Ride	9	Tom 3 (floor)

• A plain digit toggles that piece on the current beat — press it again to remove it. Because drum beats are usually chords (kick + hat, snare + hat), plain digits stack on the same beat without advancing.
• Shift+digit stamps the piece and advances to the next beat — handy on sparse lines like a four-on-the-floor kick.
• ↑ / ↓ walk the cursor up and down the staff lines; Enter stamps the canonical piece for the current line.

Tip

This is the Notes view — a percussion staff you type onto. A drum track can also be shown as a step lattice you click hits into, which is often faster for programming a groove. See The drum grid.

Rests

Press N to enter a rest of the armed duration. The cursor advances just like a note.

Moving the cursor

Navigation works the same on every instrument:

Action	Keys
Previous / next beat	← / →
First / last beat of the measure	Home / End
Previous / next measure	Ctrl+← / Ctrl+→
Previous / next track	Page Up / Page Down
Switch between tab and notation staves	Shift+Tab
Move between staves of a grand staff	Ctrl+↑ / Ctrl+↓

Inside a bar you haven’t filled yet, → steps one armed duration at a time (see Filling an empty bar); ← walks back through the slots that are already there. Pressing → at the end of the song appends a new bar, so you can keep playing without stopping to add measures.

Tip

Forgot a shortcut? Press ? for the in-app reference, or Ctrl+Shift+P to search every action by name.

Next: choose how long each note lasts in Rhythm and durations.