Hello all!
It seems that notation software for the shamisen is sort of a grail quest, so I’d love to hear how you notate your shamisen scores – pencil and paper, graphical cut and paste of some sort, or whatever. There are many really nice examples of printable scores all over the web …
And if you use some graphical software, where do you get the specialized symbols katakana (?) and others.
I have a Mac, so something that works on that box would be nice.
Thanks
Well… I don’t think there is a difference in transcribing… but yeah, IDK for pentagram… I mean, I write in Braille notation, so for me it’s the same… but the advantage is that you can hear what you write and easily delete what was wrong! While, if I write by hand, I have to delete with my hand… oh no… with… my… how to say in English? Neil? Nail?
I just use OneNote with a monospace font like Consolas. Using the ‘code’ preset works pretty well. The only trick is trying to get the katakana characters to line up under the correct numbers.
I use Makemusic Finale. Easy and fun. I can have a 3 lines tablatures and even program the numbers and spaces as on a shamisen. I can even hear my score whith an small sampler like Kontakt and a few shamisen sounds. For the kanjis katakana and hiragana, I use google tranlator.
Onenote… like the Windows incorporated? Wow coooool! I use a program called Braille music editor… but I think it’ll be really Tricky for shamisen/koto/whatever notation
I think certain versions of Windows 10 come with a special version of OneNote. I use the one that is part of Office 365. I don’t know what the differences are though.
I have never used Forte, but I came across an ad on Facebook today showing that they are giving away Forte 8.5 Basic for free. Evidently it’s normally $24. For free, it’s probably worth checking out.
Ah wow! So now it’s free! Well, IDK my program is not updated sine… 2011? And I have crashes in the pc!
I do it by hand. I really miss Karl’s shamisen tab project, though. I just use a regular generic Word program and make tablature sheets using tables - 1 column by two rows. Then I do the rest with a pencil.
Went to the web site and forte isn’t free any more.
Sorry Keith, but I wouldn’t worry about it. The tablature support is extremely weak. It only supports standard tuning for 6-string guitar from what I could tell. I couldn’t find a way to add/remove strings or change the individual string tuning. The online knowledgebase is minimal and only makes a small claim to support tablature, but nothing on how to actually do it. So, it’s pretty useless for Shamisen. 
Sorry Josh, no offense, but I downloaded it free, and I could easily have a three lines tablature, change the strings tuning and even change the spaces in order to have a right representation of the shamisen sao numbers. But as it is not better than Finale (but quite close, for me) I finally uninstalled it… So I can’t explain the process anymore… But it’s worth a try, for those who can have it free.
None taken. 
You must have spent more time with it than I did. Do you remember anything about how you were able to make those changes?
2 or 3 hours, I must admit. I’ll reinstall it tomorrow and let you know…
Thanks!
BTW, what version of Finale are you using? I see 3 that range in price from free to $600.
Finale 2014
So, I finally figured out how to do it. It was not intuitive at all. There isn’t much about that program that works the way you might expect. The workflow is clunky and I bet it would take forever to transcribe even a short piece of music. 
I also know that in some keyboards there may be the function to transcribe a score… but I really am not sure. I heard this news from someone not expert in this