Help! How do I properly notate my song ideas?

I haven't played ukulele long, but I have a lot of song ideas. But, I never really learned how to write my song ideas out properly.

I have learned several ukulele chords, and know how to read tabs and a little bit about transposing for song composition.

While I can get on MS Word and write out a tab to indicate how I am breaking a chord up for a strum pattern or indicating a rough idea for a ukulele solo in a song, or write the names of chords above song lyrics - I don't have a good idea about have to write down strum patterns especially to indicate rhythm.

Is there is a good source anyone could direct me to that would help me better write down (notate) my song ideas (before I forget them - or have to re-remember my ideas - from ideas I put up on Youtube)?

You might have to learn a little bit about beats, and music notation to properly write down your ideas. You should do audio recordings of everything before you forget them. I use Guitar Pro 6 (http://www.guitar-pro.com), and you can set it up for "Exotic Guitar" > Ukulele. There you can generate tablature and standard notation at the same time, and it can play back what you have written as a MIDI file. That is great for checking your note durations, and to make sure it has all the proper timing. You can create and insert chord diagrams, and add lyrics too. If you don't care about the notation, you can turn that part off. They even have a map of the fretboard, if you want to click on the notes there instead of typing in the numbers on the tab staff. There might be other programs that are free that do the same thing, but I like the layout of this one, and it has been updated regularly.

–Lori

Thanks for the tip! I didn't know guitar pro 6 was also good for ukulele. Is tabledit also a good program? I heard it works for ukulele too...

timothypfox said:

Thanks for the tip! I didn't know guitar pro 6 was also good for ukulele. Is tabledit also a good program? I heard it works for ukulele too...

Click to expand...

Sorry, I haven't tried tabledit... just not enough time to experiment.

–Lori