Below is a list of the best free and paid music notation software with support for guitar tablature.
Jul 31, 2014 Also student licences that are very cheep. The suport in Sweden is great. Another software is Guitar PRO 6 - which is half of the price for Siebelius Student. That software is easy to work with but it takes a long time to do tunes. A free software is Power TAB editor that works OK. All these software can import midi files. The be-all-end-all basic recording program for Mac. Endless learning opportunities as you record yourself to play with or track a song. Transposing With GarageBand. Tablature Creation Programs Guitar Pro. My longtime choice of tabbing software, Guitar Pro 6 is easy to navigate, nice to look at, and outputs a very professional-looking product. Easy chords placement. Select the root note, the bass note, the notation and just place it on the lyrics, right click or drag and drop, whaterever suits you best! Autofill repeating lyrics. Add the chords only to the first verse and let Chordastic autofill the chords to all the repeating lyrics.
I wanted to find some free software to easily create guitar tab snippets to post on this website alongside tutorials.
A lot times I’ll come across a cool lick or riff mentioned in a video or lesson online that I want to write down for easy reference instead of having to fast-forward and rewind back to where the notes are shown or mentioned over and over again.
Having music notation software that supports guitar tablature is good tool to have to help learn new guitar parts, patterns and shapes really fast.
Sometimes when you learn a new riff it pushes an old one out of your brain. A quick look at the tablature can bring the notes combinations all back again.
So without further ado, here’s the list of music notation software with tablature support for stringed instruments like guitars and bass. This list is in no particular order other than free options are listed first.
Music Notation Software
MuseScore – MuseScore is free open source music notation software with a solid amount of features. MuseScore can import and export MIDI and MusicXML files and export to PDF, image formats, WAV and other audio formats. There’s also a MuseScore Player for iOS and Android devices. MuseScore works with Windows, Mac, Debian/Ubuntu, and Linux.
LilyPond – LilyPond is free music writing software with special emphasis on creating beautiful sheet music following the best traditions of classical music engraving. LilyPond supports tablature notation and long list of features, and works with Windows, Mac and Linux.
Power Tab Editor – Designed for Windows, Power Tab Editor is a free tablature creating tool designed specifically for making guitar sheet music. The software includes chord names, chord diagrams, rhythm slashes, bends, slides, hammer-ons/pull-offs, harmonics and palm muting. It can import MIDI tracks and can export to ASCII Text, HTML and MIDI files. It hasn’t been updated in forever but it still works well once you get used to it.
TuxGuitar (Beta) – TuxGuitar is a guitar tablature editor written in Java-SWT. The software is free and supports GuitarPro, PowerTab and TablEdit files, and is listed as working with Windows, Mac, and Linux.
Guitar Pro 6 – One of the most popular commercial options for guitar tablature editing is Guitar Pro, which has a ton of features and includes extra goodies like importing and exporting MIDI files and playing sound libraries like drums and guitars. It sells for around $40-$60 depending on the version.
MusicEase Software – MusicEase has been developing music notation software for over 25 years, with special attention paid to creating a good user-friendly interface. The full version of their software can be downloaded and used for free; the only limitation is printouts are watermarked. To upgrade the standard version costs $80 and the Professional version is $250. The software works with both Windows and Mac computers.
Finale NotePad – NotePad is the entry-level free version of Finale’s music writing software. It works with Windows and Mac computers. But it requires setting up an account to download so I won’t be trying this one anytime soon…
TablEdit – TablEdit is designed for creating, editing, printing and listening to tablature and sheet music for guitar and other instruments. TablEdit runs on Windows and Macintosh, and Lite versions are available for iPad and Windows Mobile. The demo version is limited; the full version of the software costs $60.
Sibelius First – Avid’s Sibelius First is the big fish in the pond. Apparently it’s the world鈥檚 best-selling music notation software, according to their own claims. It costs around $120 and works with Windows and Mac computers.
I’ve had a number of people ask me which program I use to make tabs. So I’ve put together a quick review of the software I use: Guitar Pro 5.
Even though there are a number of free tab making softwares out there (most notably Power Tab), but as far as I’m concerned they’re no match for Guitar Pro. Even though it’s paid for software (currently 59 Euros), it’s well worth it if you’re seriously into tabbing. I started with Guitar Pro 3 and have immediately paid for an upgrade as soon as they’re available.
Guitar Pro: The Good Stuff
– Easy of Use: I find Guitar Pro very easy to use. It’s all well laid out and easy to get the basics down and start tabbing.
If you do as much tabbing as I do, it’s well worth learning the hot key options for stuff like slides, hammer-ons etc.
– Packed with Options: The number of things you can do with Guitar Pro can be overwhelming when you first start. There are huge amounts of things it can do, and I’m still discovering useful bits I never realised were there (usually by the ‘I wonder what that does’ method).
Tabs can be exported in a wide range of formats including MIDI, pdf, ASCII, WAV and bmp. The bmp format is particularly important to me as it means I can export in an image form that can be easily edited.
– The Interface: Guitar Pro has by far the most visually appealing interface.
Ukulele Tab Software For Mac Windows 10
– Download Tabs: There are a load of Guitar Pro tabs available online. Most of them guitar tabs but also uke tabs (such as Mark Occhionero’s). Guitar Pro is also capable of importing Power Tab files (such as those by Dominator) and even MIDI files. It can, in theory, import TablEdit files although I’ve found it very hit and miss in this case.
Tab For Ukulele Songs
Guitar Pro: The Not So Good Stuff
– Do not get Guitar Pro if you own a Mac. The Mac version is hampered and is forever crashing. Completely useless.
– Guitar Pro is designed primarily for making guitar tabs. That means it’s not entirely ideal for ukulele. The most obvious problem is the ukulele tuning. The default ukulele C tuning is two octaves too low (in terms of the pitch you hear). You can add a default tuning if you search hard enough (Track > Properties, change to standard ukulele tuning, click the + button just above the tuning – thanks Jordan).
Another problem is that when the pitch produced is correct the standard notation is an octave too high. As far as I can tell, there’s no way to change this.
Overall
If you’re serious about tabbing, I can highly recommend Guitar Pro. None of the other tab software really comes close to it.
You can learn more about Guitar Pro 5 and try out the demo for free here: Guitar Pro 5