How to use TabCraft

Getting started

The app has three tabs:

• Compose: write your piece on a staff, and choose its tuning, capo, time signature and tempo.
• Tab & Play: the guitar tab for your piece, with playback.
• Library: the examples, the pieces you've saved, and importing and exporting files.

A quick way in: open an example from the Library and press Play. When you write your own, click Make the tab at the bottom of Compose. Whenever you change the notes or settings, Tab & Play makes the tab again the next time you open it.

To hear your piece without leaving the staff, press ▶ Play at the bottom of Compose: each note lights up as it plays. Playback carries on if you switch tabs.

Your work is kept in this browser as you go, so it's still there when you come back.

Compose

Adding notes

• Click the staff to add a note at that pitch. Each click starts a new beat.
• Shift+click adds another note to the same beat, making a chord (up to 6 notes, one per string).
• Pick the length first: Whole, Half, Quarter, Eighth or 16th.
• Dotted makes notes half as long again (a dotted quarter lasts one and a half beats). Triplet fits three notes in the time of two (three triplet eighths fill one beat).
• ♯ makes the next note sharp. Rest adds a silent beat of the chosen length.
• Tie joins the next note to the previous one of the same pitch, to hold a note across a bar line.

Using the keyboard

Click the staff once so it has focus, then:

• ↑ and ↓ add a note one step above or below the last one.
• Shift+↑/↓ adds it to the current chord instead.
• 1, 2, 4, 8 and 6 pick whole, half, quarter, eighth and sixteenth notes.
• . turns Dotted on or off, and 3 Triplet.

Recording from a microphone

• Press 🎤 Record (at the bottom of Compose) and allow the microphone. After one bar of count-in clicks, play or sing your melody one note at a time, in time with the clicks, then press ■ Stop.
• The notes are added at the end of the piece (or at the green line after Insert Before), snapped to the nearest sixteenth at the piece's tempo, so set the tempo and time signature first. Undo takes them all out again.
• Headphones help: then the clicks don't reach the microphone. Single notes only; chords aren't picked up. The sound itself never leaves your computer: only the pitches it hears are sent to work out the notes.

Bars and layout

• Bar lines appear by themselves when a bar is full.
• New Measure ends the bar early, for a pickup bar at the start of a piece.
• Repeat Measure copies the last bar, for a repeated riff or phrase.
• Guide Lines shows dashed lines above and below the staff, so it's easier to click notes far from the five lines.

Editing

• Click a note on the staff (or in the list under it) to select it; it turns green. Click it again, or press Esc, to cancel.
• With a note selected: click the staff to move it to that pitch, Set Length to give it the length chosen in the toolbar, or Delete Selected (or Delete) to erase it. A selected rest becomes a note when you click the staff.
• Insert Before adds new notes in front of the selected one instead of at the end, at the green line. Add at End goes back to adding at the end.
• ← and → select the previous or next note.
• String chooses which string plays the selected note, from the strings it can be played on (with the fret each needs). The note shows the string number in a circle, and TabCraft works out the rest of the fingering around it. Auto lets TabCraft choose again.
• Inserting, deleting or lengthening a note moves the notes after it along; a note that ends up crossing a bar line is split and tied.
• Undo and Redo step through your changes. Clear erases all the notes (and can be undone).

Tuning, capo, time and tempo

• Tunings: Standard, Drop D, Open G, Open D and DADGAD. Capo up to the 7th fret.
• Time signatures: 4/4, 3/4, 2/4, 6/8 and 9/8. Tempo from 20 to 300 beats per minute.
• Like most guitar music, the staff is written an octave above how the guitar sounds.

Typing notes

The list of notes under the staff can be edited as text: click into it and type, and the staff updates as you go. Lengths are w, h, q, 8 and 16 (whole, half, quarter, eighth, sixteenth). Add . for dotted (q.) or t for a triplet (8t).

Chords

• Chord Labels shows a best guess at each bar's chord above the staff and the tab. It only labels; it never changes your notes. To correct a label, type it into the note list (see above).
• Arpeggiate Chords adds an accompaniment under your melody that plays each bar's chord, in the Pattern you choose: Roll (low to high in eighth notes), Alternating Bass (fingerstyle, bass on the beat) or Strum (the whole chord once per beat). It works in standard tuning, for bars that clearly spell a major, minor, seventh or suspended chord, and never changes your melody.
• Chord shapes (the fingerings guitarists know, like an open E major) are recognised in standard tuning only.

Tab & Play

• How the fingering is chosen: most notes can be played on more than one string. TabCraft looks at the whole piece and picks positions that keep your hand moving as little as possible and avoid wide stretches between fingers.
• Click anywhere in the tab to start playback from there (it jumps straight there if already playing); double-click to start playing at once.
• Play, Pause and Stop. The page scrolls to keep the bar being played near the top, under the controls.
• Sound: Classical (nylon), Acoustic (steel), Electric (clean) or Jazz guitar.
• Finger Numbers shows which left-hand finger plays each note, beside the notes on the tab: 1 index, 2 middle, 3 ring, 4 little. Open strings have none. The hand stays in one position while it can, and chords get their usual fingerings.
• Metronome clicks on every beat while it plays; Count-in plays one bar of clicks before it starts. Both are remembered in this browser.
• Loop repeats a range of bars, for practising a hard passage. Speed plays it slower or faster (50% to 125%) without changing the pitch.
• Output chooses which speakers or headphones to play through, if your browser allows it.
• Audio effects: reverb, room, echo, bass, treble, warmth and a compressor. They start on a preset that suits a solo guitar, change the sound instantly while it plays, and are remembered in this browser. Reset effects brings the preset back.
• Convert makes the tab again from what's on the staff right now.

Library and files

• Examples: four pieces to listen to and learn from.
• Your compositions: Save keeps a piece under a name. Saved pieces live in this browser only, so they don't move to another computer, and clearing your browser's data deletes them. Export a file to keep a copy.
• Share link saves the current piece online and copies a short link to it (tabcraft.org/s/…). Anyone with the link can open the piece, and it opens on their Tab & Play. Share again after changes: each link keeps the piece as it was.
• Start New clears the staff and goes back to the default settings.
• Import opens a TabCraft file (.json), MusicXML (.musicxml or .xml) or MIDI (.mid). Notes that cross a bar line are split and tied.
• Export saves the current piece as a TabCraft file (.json), AlphaTeX, plain-text tab, MusicXML, Guitar Pro 7 (.gp), MIDI, or a PDF file: clean US Letter pages with the title, page numbers, and lines of music never split across pages. PDF (print dialog) prints the tab as it is on screen instead. Guitar Pro, MIDI and printing use the tab, so make the tab first.

Questions

Is it free?

Yes. It runs in your browser, with nothing to install or sign up for.

Why does the tab put a note on a different string than I would?

There's often more than one good choice. TabCraft weighs the whole piece rather than each note alone, so a note may move to keep the next few within reach. Changing the tuning or capo changes the options it has.

I can't hear anything

Check your device's volume and the Output setting, and that the Volume effect isn't turned down. The guitar sounds load the first time you press Play, which can take a moment.

Something's wrong, or missing

Please send feedback: it goes straight to the people who make TabCraft.

What happens to my music?

Your notes are sent to the TabCraft server to work out the fingering and aren't stored there. Saved pieces stay in your browser. Only a piece you Share is stored on the server, so the link can open it. The site counts page views without cookies.