How do I specify a Capo position on a guitar tune?

https://musescore.org/en/handbook/3/capo-playback

People raise this question and respond to it from different points of view.

If you notate according to prevailing norms it's likely you simply want to transpose the output, precisely as a physical capo does.

For instance, if you have guitar tablature written in C you want the performer to play with a capo at fret 2, and you likely want MuseScore to play the pitches as they would sound on a guitar capoed at the second fret. If so, you can do the following:

• Add a "staff text" object. (The text can say anything, but likely you'll set it to: "Capo" x)
• Exit text editing and click to select the text object
• Set the capo fret property to the fret you want in (fasten your seatbelt!):
Inspector>Properties button>Staff Text Properties button>Capo settings>Capo fret>the fret number of your choice. (Yes. Iit's a long dive down—and far from the location of other tablature properties—but it does the trick, mostly.)

Result:

• MuseScore correctly transposes pitch of the Treble Clef during playback and when you click notes in the treble clef.

• If your tablature staff is linked, MuseScore intelligently adds an instance of the Text object ("with" the capo setting) to the tablature staff, but oddly it sets its Capo fret property = "No capo" ... so when you click various frets in the "linked tablature staff" those pitches sound untransposed. This is inconsequential ... unless you plan to edit pitch via the tablature staff. If you want to hear the correct pitch when clicking notes in the tablature staff, select the tablature staff's "capo staff text" item (as you did in the treble clef instance of this object) and set its value in:
Inspector>Properties>Staff Text Properties button>Capo settings>Capo fret>the fret number of your choice. Or you can copy and paste the Staff Text object from the treble clef to the tablature staff.

There's one other big issue. Presently MuseScore does not transpose Chord Symbol playback according to the capo setting. Fortunately there is a topic on this in the Musescore Issue Tracker.

scorster