Choose how a phrase is fingered

On a guitar, the same note can be played in several places on the neck. FlowChord picks a string and a fret for every note so the whole phrase sits well under the hand — short stretches, few jumps, a chord shape kept while its notes are picked, staying in one position when it can. But the sound alone often can’t tell where a solo was played, so your say matters most. These tools let you set a phrase’s fingering in a press or two, without retyping every note.

Before you start

• You need a project with a tab, zoomed in so you see the notes (see Fix notes in the guitar tab).
• The notes you settle are never moved. A note becomes settled when you type its fret, choose its string, write it yourself or lock it (Lock note, L). Every tool below works around those notes, and they’re marked Confirmed when you double-click them.
• Fixing a note changes that note alone. The notes around it stay where they are until you choose one of the tools below.
• None of these tools change a note’s pitch — only where it is played.

Steps

Pick from other fingerings

1. Pick a note of the phrase and press F (or choose Other fingerings in the note’s right-click menu).
2. Move through the cards with ← and →. Each one shows the phrase’s frets with the changed ones highlighted, a difficulty (Easy, Medium or Hard), and the neck below it. The tab’s lines preview it too.
3. Press Enter, or click the card, to use it.

Play a phrase around one fret

4. Pick a note and press P (or Around a fret in the menu). The fingerings open on the card that keeps the hand at one fret.
5. Change the fret with ↑ and ↓. At fret 0 the card reads Open position.
6. Press Enter to use it. The notes remember where your hand sits.

The chord diagram guides the tab

The diagram the video shows for a chord and the tab under it are one reading of your hands. When the tab is made, the notes played while a chord sounds are placed to agree with the shape the diagram shows — the same strings and frets for the notes in the shape, and the hand kept near it for the others, like an alternating bass or a passing note. A shape FlowChord guessed from the chord’s name counts only where what was heard agrees with it; a fingering you set on the chord always counts.

• Fix the chord’s diagram, and the tab follows: pick the chord, change its fingering (see Fix a chord, its fingering or its shape), and the notes under that chord move to the new shape in one step, and the history names the chord whose diagram the tab followed. Notes you settled yourself stay where they are, and no note changes its pitch. ⌘ Z takes the chord’s change back, and the tab follows it back.
• Fix the tab, and the diagram may follow: when the notes you settle under a chord sit on another of its shapes, the line above the tab asks whether to use that shape in the diagram. Use shape puts it on the chord; Not now leaves the diagram as it is. Nothing changes the diagram without your say.

Copy a fingering to the repeats

7. After you pick a card, the places the song plays the same phrase the way it was first heard take the same fingering, in the same step — the line above the tab’s lines says how many. When there are none, or you lock a phrase, FlowChord looks for the places a similar phrase is played and says how many similar passages there are.
8. Open Apply to all (or Review). Every passage is listed by its time and ticked; untick any you want to leave alone.
9. Press Apply. All the chosen passages change in one step, and settled notes in them stay where they are.

Options

The fingering cards you may see. FlowChord shows only the ones that really differ from what’s on the page and from each other, so sometimes there are just a few.

Card	What it tries
As it is	The phrase as it is now, to compare.
One position	The whole phrase in one hand position (there may be one card per position).
Least movement	As little travel along the neck as possible.
Open strings	Open strings wherever they fit.
As the file	The places your tab file prints, when you brought one (see how).
Around fret N	The hand at the fret you choose, with the stepper.

Tips

• When you know the position, P is the fastest: one fret, one press, the whole phrase.
• Lock a phrase you’re happy with (pick it with Select the phrase, then L) — that also offers it to its repeats.
• To work on more than one phrase at a time, hold Shift and press notes to pick a run first; the cards then cover what you picked.

Common problems

There are only one or two cards. The other ways to play the phrase came out the same as these, so they aren’t shown.

A note didn’t move with the rest. It’s settled — you fixed, wrote or locked it — or it can’t sound the same note in the new place. Unlock it with L if you want it to follow.