Tab Writing Software for Mac

brimmer

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Once again, I seek advice... The last Guitar Pro thread on this forum was in 2012. The reviews then were very positive. I am looking for a way to publish tabs in a high quality format. I need to include notations like left and right hand fingerings, downward and upward strums, barres, etc. Does Guitar Pro do these things? How does the final product look?

Hoping to save $40, I bought Tabular for my Mac. It works, but lacks any bells or whistles. You can't add a pickup measure at the beginning of the song, for example. Also, there is a way to add in fingerings but they don't always line up with the notes. Tabular would be a good option for someone on a budget, but I would like to self publish a tab book, so I need a higher quality finished product. I looked at Lilypond, which creates a nice page of music (Wilfried Welti's tab books look great and were created in Lilypond) but I think I lack the programming skill to master it.

So I am eager to get some Guitar Pro input. I promise I will post some uke arrangements on UU!
 
Yes, Guitar Pro will do those things. Hard to go wrong for $40+/- or whatever it is these days. Pretty much all the nicest tabs you see on the web are made with GP6.
 
...I need a higher quality finished product. I looked at Lilypond, which creates a nice page of music (Wilfried Welti's tab books look great and were created in Lilypond) but I think I lack the programming skill to master it.

So I am eager to get some Guitar Pro input. I promise I will post some uke arrangements on UU!
The Guitar Pro demo was so crippled as to be unusable to really be able to evaluate the product, and that was a big turn-off for me.

I agree that the input for Lilypond is really convoluted and not intuitive at all, but it does make a beautiful engraving. :)

TuxGuitar is available for Mac and free. Appears to be quite capable in many ways, e.g., it will let you transpose, shift up/down by increments, etc.

The downside is that the output from it is not exactly elegant. The PDFs it makes are pretty damned fugly.

BUT! It also exports to the Lilypond format, which means you can have that beautiful engraving without having to know the first thing about how to use Lilypond. :p
 
Thanks for the advice. I'll give Tux a try, and go with Guitar Pro if Tux can't do what I need it to. I didn't realize your could get a Lilypond engraving via another application. thanks!
 
The Guitar Pro demo was so crippled as to be unusable to really be able to evaluate the product, and that was a big turn-off for me.

I agree completely, and it made me hesitant to use GP for a long time since the demo was so awful. I took a chance and bought the full version, and once I got past the initial obstacle of having to look under "Exotic Guitars" to find ukulele, I've found it fairly obvious to know what to do when. Well, most of the time!

I had considered Lilypond and Sibelius since I found the output more aesthetically pleasing, but in the end opted for GP since most of the uke players I know use it and I figured it would be useful for collaborating or sharing files.
 
Thanks for the advice. I'll give Tux a try, and go with Guitar Pro if Tux can't do what I need it to. I didn't realize your could get a Lilypond engraving via another application. thanks!
You will still have to install Lilypond to open the file exported using Tux. From there, you can just "print" it using a PDF driver instead of sending it to your physical printer.

I would really like to try doing some transcriptions of classical guitar pieces for uke, and this is what I plan to try first.

Good luck, and I look forward to seeing your arrangements. :)
 
I'm working on some celtic arrangements right now. Its interesting to arrange them in a campanella style.

I urge you to try your hand at some classical arrangements - because the repertoire is still so limited. I enjoy James Holding and Wilfried Welti's PDF books, and Rob MacKillop's books...but we still need more uke arrangements. Someone just posted a link on UU to Sanz works in the public domain, and a tutorial on how to arrange them for uke. Hopefully someone will give that tutorial a try and post the results!
 
I'm working on some celtic arrangements right now. Its interesting to arrange them in a campanella style.

I urge you to try your hand at some classical arrangements - because the repertoire is still so limited. I enjoy James Holding and Wilfried Welti's PDF books, and Rob MacKillop's books...but we still need more uke arrangements. Someone just posted a link on UU to Sanz works in the public domain, and a tutorial on how to arrange them for uke. Hopefully someone will give that tutorial a try and post the results!
I love the work that Holding, Welti and MacKillop have done. Not to mention a couple other guys like John King and Tony Mizen. :p

I really would like to give it another try. Only I need to set a less ambitious goal to start with before I'm ready to tackle the Mertz Elegy, one of my favorites.

So I'll look at some etudes. There's been some Sor transcribed for uke, and I've seen a few Giuliani and Aguado pieces, but I don't think I've seen much of any Diabelli yet. There's a vast repertoire to tap on.

I did see that post about transcribing Sanz, but I'll leave that to someone else. :)

Looking forward to your celtic arrangements. I think I'm going to try a few linear arrangements before I attempt campanella, or even high G. Baby steps. Gotta crawl before you can walk, and walk before you can run.
 
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