Finale TAB and fretboards for uke has been wrong since day 1, in spite of multiple complaints going back years. If you even get it to work, it will be the TAB for baritone, not soprano/tenor/concert.

One of these days, I'll get annoyed enough to really work it out, but…

I certainly wouldn't try to include more than one TAB staff!

If you need - in the same document - fretboards on both a guitar staff, and a ukulele staff, use two copies of each chord suffix:

One copy with the 12 guitar fretboards, and another copy with the 12 uke fretboards.

Thanks guys ... I'm a reasonably adept user and I thought I must be missing something. Obviously all my work-arounds are the best solution and the expectation. They really could help us out here. :-(

Now that they've moved to Boulder, I live just 20 minutes down the street ... maybe I should pack up the Rocky Mountain Ukulele Orchestra (over 100 members now playing the most advanced large-group ukulele repertoire on the planet thanks in no small "measure" to Finale) and go sit in their lobby and refuse to stop playing until their tablature dude gets off his mountain bike and agrees to fix this annoyance.

He's probably been busy working with movie stars in Hollywood and hoping the rest of us just stick with guitars.

If you do, be sure to get a video you can post somewhere. One hundred ukes playing together would be pretty awesome! :-)

When I try to get uke TAB I get 4 strings, but it populates the notes the wrong way (top string on bottom).  How do I fix that?

From the User Manual:

If you are using a non-standard tuning, or other fretted instrument (lute, banjo, etc.) you can manually customize your string tuning in the ScoreManager. Choose Window > ScoreManager, select the tab staff, and click the Settings button next to the "Tablature" pop-up menu, then click Edit Instruments.

Once you get there, just reverse the string numbers. Yes, I know it's not a non-standard instrument, and do you, but Finale has never figured it out...

How do I make stems, etc. on my ukulele tabs?  Thanks in advance...

… How do I make stems, etc. on my ukulele tabs? …

Stems are toggled on in the Staff Attributes (Staff Tool, double-click the staff):

Also, click the button “Stem Settings…” to customize the stem display.

@ECMS Band: Some iterations of Finale had the tuning wrong for ukulele. To fix:

Add a ukulele tablature to your score. Then (these are Macintosh directions):

Command K

Click on Instrument List

Highlight the ukulele tab

Bottom right, next to Notation style: Tablature, click "Settings"

Make sure the instrument box says Ukulele and then click "Edit Instruments"

At the bottom, the string pitches for High G ukulele are

69

64

60

67

For Low G ukulele, they are:

69

64

60

55

Click OK twice and you're all set.

I use the same blank over and over because Finale is just not prepared for a world where ukulele and tablature are a thing. I hope they catch on soon.

FYI: I always use "Low G" tuning for my ukulele tablature so when you drag and drop from a line of standard notation, it won't put notes on the fourth string (unless of course you have notes below Middle C, which you shouldn't if your band is using High G ukuleles). For those of you newer to ukulele arrangements, that fourth High G string is really only used for strumming, but I continue to see guitar arrangers (being published by prominent music publishing houses) using the ukulele's high fourth string as a replacement for notes that should be appearing on the second string. They just can't (won't?) understand reentrant tuning since it's not on their guitar, and they've already cashed the check.

I know it has been a while since this was posted, but I just wanted to address the above comment.  In regards to that use of the open G string (4th string) on reentrant ukulele, there is a common practice called "Campanella" where you let each string ring out as long as possible.  Campanella players intentionally use the reentrant G string to allow this to happen.  Every software that puts G4 on the reentrant 4th string is leaning towards that style of playing.

It's a challenge because most of us come from other instruments and reentrant tuning seems crazy.

I was just looking Finale 26, and the defaults for High Ukulele are in the tablature settings.  If you wanted baritone settings, you would have to figure them out, and for linear tuning of GCEA ukuleles, you'd have to change the 4th string to 55 as listed above.

Baritone strings are the same as the first four strings on guitar.

64

59

55

50

This is standard practice on baritone ukulele, however all baritones sound better when played solo if you tune them up two or three half steps. The short scale doesn't give you great sound at "guitar tuning" but can become much livelier if you tune things up a bit.

In case y'all were wondering, Version 26 has had NO CHANGE to fix this error ... I'm starting a timer for when Finale figures out that ukuleles are a thing in music and they'll put some work into fixing tablature. And as expected, it defaults to guitar chord grids on ukulele tablature ... and has no ukulele chords at all so I get to re-build them on a new master every year. Sigh.

If any of you have any real humans you talk to at Finale, I'd love to know who runs this department. I live down the street from their corporate headquarters ... should I go and knock on the door?

There are now lots of free alternatives to Finale out there and I'm wondering whether the hundreds of dollars of paid over the years is going to continue to make sense. Finale seems anxious to show they're working with Hollywood producers, but doesn't seem too keen on fixing problems that affect us lowly music teachers.

C'mon guys. It's TAB ... it should be easy.

… as expected, it defaults to guitar chord grids on ukulele tablature ... and has no ukulele chords at all so I get to re-build them on a new master every year …

No need to re-build the ukulele fretboards every year.

Just save your custom ukulele fretboards as a chord suffix library.

You can load your new ukulele chord suffix library into any document.

I have a ukulele fretboard library that I found somewhere online a long time ago. I 'load the library', but still have to set each individual chord it seems to get the correct chart. By default I get a 4 string fretboard, but with guitar chord shapes. The chord shapes loaded in the fretboard editor are 4 strings but guitar chords (baritone) What am I missing?

Hi Florence: You aren't missing anything. This is how Finale works.

The chord charts it defaults to will always be aggressively guitar-ish even if you only use four strings. I'm not sure if Finale knows there are any other fretted instruments other than guitar on this planet. (Sorry, sour grapes here.) Maybe they just want us to be experts in all non-guitar fretboard shapes and to prove it over and over.

Loading your chord library should add those diagrams into the options of pre-made chord charts, but it will most likely put them after the guitar chords. When you add a chord in your score, if you want anything other than standard guitar tuning chord diagrams, you'll need to double click on the chord diagram, then in the chord definition dialog box click "select," and you'll find all the possible shapes Finale thinks would work for the given chord -- and many of them will be wrong -- but your ukulele chords should be there.

If you're working in ukulele exclusively, you can delete all the guitar shapes and "edit" the chords that are there until you create the ones you want for ukulele. Be aware that every time you update Finale, all those deleted guitar chords will be back.

I do lots with multiple types of fretted instruments and when I open my select dialog box up, I have to keep them for baritone, ukulele, guitar, mandolin, banjo, and a couple other weird tunings. And they're all in the same dialog box which is a blessing and a curse. Also know if you have multiple fretted instruments on the same score, you have to be very careful when doing any type of mass editing (like transposing for example) because it will not necessarily pick the right chord charts to use.

I normally edit my fretboard diagrams as one of the last (and most aggravatingly time consuming) steps in writing.

The other cute challenge with having multiple chord diagrams is Finale will always put the first one into your score, even if you're working on a line that has nothing to do with that instrument, so you often have to open up every single chord for a different instrument and select the appropriate diagram you've already created.

For example, I always do my ukulele stuff first, then I have to go in and add the baritone chords one at a time with the alternate fingerings for the same chords. It takes a lot of extra manual work. While I'm doing that, the Finale software team is in Hollywood (I think) working on a movie soundtrack.

Thanks, it helps to know that I'm not a complete idiot... this is ridiculously awkward. I may try something else.. 

I successfully made a soprano Ukulele score that seems to be working.  Let me know if you would like a copy.  gwsherrill@gmail.com