Why tabulature?

Because tab score is built around relative pitch, relative to a small set of base line notes.  That is how portable instruments work, the guitar, keyed to finger out pitches relative to each other.  The piano is an entirely different story, it is like a calibration instrument, unique in that one finger strike a unique string

Humans are different, more like the guitar or trumpet, we contort the windpipes to get in  key, then work relative pitches from there. We do that in speech, lisening and singing, and the instruments follow suit because they have to be our size to make our sound ranges.  But the portable instruments cannot contort their resonators, so we have various shapes of them, each having a different key.

Except for the piano, it is all about relative pitches,  melodies are a set of timed, relative pitch changes.  That is  TAB. I generalize the idea to arbitrary ledger base notes on the left.

Score sheet work up in Open Office Calc

My latest project is Jingle Bell Rock. Here is my score sheet. I am moving it around and trying the melody over different parts of my guitar. In doing so, I begin to recognize key changes because they match the scale drills.  You can see above that timing is critical to the wave generator, and I need column space.  Each box is a score, eight columns long and can support eighth beats.  I don't do 16ths, and the tempo can always be raise or lowered.

Turn off automatic calculation. If you are working on score editing, comment out the calls to MakeWave or MoveScore.  I do that by removing the equals sign in front of the macro calls.  Then use recalc, but Open Office is a bit quirky about the rules, so retry if you do not see your results.