TabIt Guide - Page 2
The first time you open up TabIt, it'll look like this:
The first thing I always do is set up the basic stuff, like how the thing looks, so go to the Tools menu and click Options.
You'll want TabIt to associate itself with .tbt files, so that when you click on them they'll open up in TabIt. I always turn on the bottom option also, which is off by default. I prefer the moving bar; it helps you keep track of just exactly where in your song is being played.
Fiddle around on the Colours tab if you like, I just use the default colours.
Now on the fonts tab. I always change the sizes so I can see more of my tab on the screen at a time. I think the default sizes are fairly large, and at least for me, when you're working with a few tracks it's nice to be able to see them all. If you want to copy mine, My font setup looks like this:
On the next tab you can pick a different MIDI output device if you have something that sounds better than the Microsoft synth. For the most part and while we're working on basic things, I'll be using the Microsoft SW Synth in this tutorial. If your soundcard has it's own synthesizer or you know how to use a software synthesizer you can assign those here. How exactly to use those is for another tutorial on another day though. You don't really need to change any of the other options.
Now that you have all of that done, your TabIt window actually will look pretty much the same. Boring-ish, though now we're going to get to work.
Now that you have your TabIt setup, right click on the one track that's there, and go to track properties. The first tab that you'll see is this one:
The default for any new track you make (or the first track on a new tabit file) is the standard 6 string guitar that has 24 frets. There's also a selection of other instruments there. Ignore the names, just look at the numbers. The number defines how many strings that track will have. So if you want a track for a standard 4-string bass, pick the obvious one here. There are options here where there's 2 of the same number; this just changes which the default instrument will be for that track. This doesn't really mater as you'll almost always be changing it anyway.
The Sole exception is the Drum track. Incidentally, you can only have 1 drum track ever, so trying to add another one won't work. This is a limitation of MIDI.
Fiddle with the options for text lines on top and/or bottom to be able to type notes, lyrics or comments above or below the track you're making.
The "highest number that may be entered" simulates the amount of frets on a guitar; so 24 is two octaves. You could always set this to 99 every time you make a track if you like, but then you'd probably get annoyed entering notes later on, as say typing a 5 then a 4 would enter 54 instead of first putting a 5 and then replacing it with a 4.
Anyway, now that you've picked those options, let's go onto the next tab, which is for tuning:
Here you can alter the settings for your strings. There's presets of the most standard ones to save you time, so normally you can just choose one of those unless you're after freaky tuning.
You can also transponse the entire instrument up or down here, without changing the displayed tuning. Though I'd recommend you ignore this, as there is a much better, simpler and easier way to do this which I'll cover later on.
Finally the Playback tab:
This is where you can pick the instrument for your track. There are 127 "instruments" - some of them aren't really instruments at all but rather are different sound effects. These are the MIDI standard instruments. You shouldn't change the bank or midi channel settings unless you know what you're doing.
The "let notes ring" option decides wether any new note(s) in a space on track will stop any previous ones. So for example:
With Let Notes Ring it turned on, you'd hear the 0, then later the 2 would come in and join the 0, creating the super basic chord. But with it off, the 2 would replace the 0, you'd just hear the E1 and then the A2. I normally have the notes ringing set to on; as it's easy to stop a note on a string with a "*" sign, like so:
Now that you've learnt the super basic stuff, lets do some music 
.