Program to write music with tab, as well as chord lead sheets?

For my students, I've been hand writing a lot of my music and my handwriting is pretty awful. I would love to start transcribing some stuff for my kids using an actual program so it's neat and clean.

I want to be able to write something out in both standard and tab notation with lyrics, but also do just lyric sheets with chord charts above.

Thanks for your help!

I like Guitar Pro. That is a program that is not free, but has a lot of features. It will do all you need, and you can set it for ukulele - under add instrument– exotic guitar.

–Lori

lilypond is free (open source):
http://lilypond.org/

I'm with Lori, Guitar Pro 6 is really great.

Guitar pro looks cool, and they offer a free version to schools! Woot woot!

Lily pond seems like a cool concept, apparently you create music through a coded text file and the program converts it to music automatically. Very different from a traditional music notation software like finale or Sibelius. But I am going to play with it because a program like that maybe easier for students to use.

IMHO, If your students are used to writing regular music notation or tablature, I think Guitar Pro has less of a learning curve. No coding (or text creation) required. Just select the place you want to enter a note on the staff, and select the duration, and move on to the next notes. If your students are all computer programmers, then the text thing is not a big deal. Check out the instructional videos for Guitar Pro. I haven't tried Lilypond, but I don't really like spending time looking at text based tabs during the creation phase. Can Lilypond play back what you have written? That is a very helpful feature that GP has for double checking your work.
-Lori

Lori introduced me to GP 4, I have done all the upgrades ever since, great program.

Lori said:

IMHO, If your students are used to writing regular music notation or tablature, I think Guitar Pro has less of a learning curve. No coding (or text creation) required. Just select the place you want to enter a note on the staff, and select the duration, and move on to the next notes. If your students are all computer programmers, then the text thing is not a big deal. Check out the instructional videos for Guitar Pro. I haven't tried Lilypond, but I don't really like spending time looking at text based tabs during the creation phase. Can Lilypond play back what you have written? That is a very helpful feature that GP has for double checking your work.
-Lori

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Will definitely check out guitar pro. Just filled out to receive their free educational license! Will allow me to install on computers in computer lab and kids can work on creating lead sheets and such. I agree something with a graphical interface is more user friendly, I simply have been frustrated more often than not with most programs such as finale and Sibelius. Guitar pro probably has been successful because it's focused primarily on fretted instruments, yes?

Lilypond is easier than you think - I am not a coder at all but I've already transcribed 3 pieces for my kids with tab and fretboard chord charts above, lyrics, all done with beautiful spacing and perfect alignment, I've never made music look this good, very professional. I'm taking a few of the James hill UITC lessons and adding tab and other visuals and in my opinion it looks as good as the published book if not better.

I am using a web editor version of lilypond that allows me to preview and see actual music as I write in the text based code. Literally if you want to write a major scale it is as simply as typing c d e f g a b c and there you go. It does do midi playback as well. I am finding the text based nature effective because if there are parts of the music that repeat,I simply copy into a different line and it's there. Writing lyrics is a breeze, you literally type the words and the program aligns it perfectly with the notes down to the syllable. Don't get me started on the quality of the built in ukulele chord diagrams

For simple lead sheets (lyrics with chords), anyone use chordette or similar programs?

Recstar24 said:

Lilypond is easier than you think - I am not a coder at all but I've already transcribed 3 pieces for my kids with tab and fretboard chord charts above, lyrics, all done with beautiful spacing and perfect alignment, I've never made music look this good, very professional.

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Lilypond is great; howerver, I was also a programmer in a former life, so I hesitate to recommend it to non-techie types. If you have ever worked with a markup language (like HTML or XML), it should be fairly straightforward for you. Lilypond is based on the TeX typesetting language, so the output is about as pretty as you can get.

Guitar Pro is a nice idea, but if you have a recent Mac, forget it. It doesn't work at all on the latest version of OS X (Yosemite), and Arobas support is non-existant. There is a large Mac community that are irate because it has been many months with no word on progress. The Windows and Mac versions crash far too often for my taste, but they are fairly easy to understand (when they work). Just don't expect any help from the company.

OregonJim said:

Lilypond is great, but I was also a programmer in a former life, so I hesitate to recommend it to non-techie types. Lilypond is based on the TeX typesetting language, so the output is about as pretty as you can get.

Guitar Pro is a nice idea, but if you have a recent Mac, forget it. It doesn't work at all on the latest version of OS X (Yosemite), and Arobas support is non-existant. There is a large Mac community that are irate because it has been many months with no word on progress. The Windows and Mac versions crash far too often for my taste, but they are fairly easy to understand (when they work). Just don't expect any help from the company.

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Ouch, my school is all OS X Yosemite being a school, the support for troubleshooting is very important, we will see how this goes...

I have never programmed or coded anything in my life, and I'm impressed at how much I can do in lilypond. The output is just gorgeous, it literally matches my books if not even better.

Recstar24 said:

Ouch, my school is all OS X Yosemite being a school, the support for troubleshooting is very important, we will see how this goes...

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Well, we've been waiting since May for an update. Here is their official statement:

https://support.guitar-pro.com/hc/en-us/articles/202116891-GP6-Issue-for-Mac-users-under-Yosemite

Does your school have iPads? I hear the iPad version of Guitar Pro is pretty good, though it lacks some features from the desktop version. I haven't tried it myself - I just keep an older Mac with Snow Leopard on it for when I need to fire up Guitar Pro.

Lori said:

IMHO, Can Lilypond play back what you have written?
-Lori

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lilypond can generate a midi file of what you have written

Is there anything out there that generates ukulele chord diagrams? There used to be a site where you could enter the chord names (ex. C|D|F|G, etc.) and it would translate the string of chord names into a string of chord diagrams. I used it a lot but the site disappeared. For my song book I put the lyrics on a Word document and then I place the chord names in brackets (ex. [C], [D], [F], etc.) where the chord changes occur. At the bottom of the page I place chord diagrams for each chord that appears in the song.

I have been using Guitar Pro on a newish iMac running Mavericks. I normally don't upgrade unless I have to for a really good reason. Guitar Pro does chord diagrams too. They can appear at the beginning of the score, or within the score over the music/ lyrics/ or strum info. Diagram size can be changed with a slider bar in the information window. You can create your own custom chord shapes. GP sometimes crashes, but that is nothing new. I just get used to saving often (it's a good idea with any program). Size of everything can be adjusted, so that can be very handy for those of us with vision issues. There are a few things I wish it did differently, but it is a pretty good app for the money.

Lori

Maybe I am a little late for the party, but you - as a mac user - should really try MuseScore. Free. Comfortable. Every export option you can think of. From Beta 2.0 (running 90% stable on my Yosemite System) it has the option to create tabs WITHOUT the paper wasting standard notation. Also has chord symbols, but I never tested that because I do not really need it. And: permanently updated. Check it out, its worth it.

And, from my personal point of view, The Guitar Pro tabs I find on the net everywhere are plain ugly.

phrunk said:

Maybe I am a little late for the party, but you - as a mac user - should really try MuseScore. Free. Comfortable. Every export option you can think of. From Beta 2.0 (running 90% stable on my Yosemite System) it has the option to create tabs WITHOUT the paper wasting standard notation. Also has chord symbols, but I never tested that because I do not really need it. And: permanently updated. Check it out, its worth it.

And, from my personal point of view, The Guitar Pro tabs I find on the net everywhere are plain ugly.

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Thank you! Will check it out! With lilypond the tabs look beautiful. For me the visual is important as it gives it a more professional polished look, I want the students to really be able to read clearly but also respect the music

I like to use standard notation with tab so at least the kids get some exposure to realt notation. In lilypond it tabs it automatically, or you can just write it out in tab only. MuseScore seems to be of a similar vein, and will definitely
Check out.

Does the iPad GP6 offer a ukulele fretboard too?

Yes, you can tap on the virtual ukulele fretboard to enter a note or tab. You can even choose a keyboard if you are better at reading notation for piano. Very handy.

I also use a function that checks your measures to make sure the beats add up properly. I am constantly checking my work that way.

Lori

Recstar, while I agree that Lilypond makes a beautiful engraving, I personally think the input is convoluted and not real intuitive.

Haven't seen TuxGuitar mentioned here yet. It is free, and available for Windows, Mac and Linux. Its PDFs come out butt-ugly. However, it also will export to the Lilypond file format. I'm not sure what, if any, other programs do that but it would be worth looking into.

So if you don't mind an extra step, you could do your input with another program like Tux and then just use Lilypond for printing/PDF creation.