As a Guitar Tutor, Classroom Music Teacher and often Sibelius Arranger it is hard to come across repertoire that a student enjoys, can play and that extends their technical skills as well as their musicality. Whereas I believe Tablature in itself is dangerous and sometimes just wrong it can be found everywhere on the net such as the famous guitar site Ultimate Guitar. In the meantime, a 2 programs have arisen (for Windows and Mac) that in my mind are fantastic for conquering all of these obstacles (as well as opening some doors to solving others).

Guitar TAB Application #1

Guitar Pro 6, made by Arobas Software is a complete Tablature reading/creating/playing back tool.  It has a note editor, Real Sound Engine (RSE) system for the playback of electric as opposed to acoustic guitars and it can open most TAB formats that you find for free (yes free) across the internet. It also saves as PDF, imports and exports MIDI and has a tuner, metronome, scale or chord wizard etc.

It costs $59.95US but for a program this versatile it is very much worth it. See the video for a brief run down:

I love the fact that this program exports any GuitarPro File as a MIDI file. Why? You can then import that MIDI file into Sibelius or Finale and begin your classroom arrangement with all the guitar, bass and drum parts already added! Furthermore, if the GP File has strings, synth or other percussion you will have less music to notate in your Sibelius or Finale arrangement! Very Cool.

Guitar TAB Application #2

TuXGuitar is a free, open source, Guitar Tablature notation and playback program not to far removed from Guitar Pro. I would look at it as Guitar Pro’s younger cousin, but remember, it is free (for Linux, Windows and Mac).

TuXGuitar opens all TAB files on the internet such as powertab, guitar pro, MIDI and so on. As a teacher I highly recommend that all of my students download and utilise this program till they can afford to buy Guitar Pro. It is really that good! Click the image below to download your free copy of TuXGuitar:








Each of these programs give you unlimited access to Guitar Tablature from all genres of music (especially rock). Furthermore, I can choose to hide the tablature or even change the fingering myself.
Search Ultimate Guitar for your chosen ‘song’ and make sure you download open that has a Guitar Pro Version available. It will then be up to you to play it 🙂

3 Comments

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.