Ideas For Guitar TAB

Subject: Ideas For Guitar TAB
From: John in Brisbane
Date: 31 May 99 - 09:31 PM

There has been some recent minor discussion on this subject, including the 'Ashokan Farewell' thread. I only recently discovered that the TAB display and printing options exist on a sequencing package that I have owned for a couple of years known as Power Tracks Pro. It is produced by PG Music, the company that makes Band In A Box, and was a freebie when I bought BIAB. It seems to do a fairly good job of producing TAB, but I'm no expert on this subject.

Some quick thoughts on this:

If you download a MIDI from the Mudcat search box, you can transform it into TAB using a few key strokes in Power Tracks Pro, as well as playing it, transposing it, changing speed. The registered version lets you print and save it. The more money conscious could conceivably copy and paste the screens into Word or similar. It prints the standard notation immediately above the tab, and if you're very keen I believe you can also enter the lyrics to play along with or print.

I suspect that there are quite a few older versions of this package in the market place that were distributed as freebies. I've seen them in the second hand classifieds here for just a few dollars. My version is 3.5 (DOS and 3.1) and it works just fine on Win95.

You can download V5 of Power Tracks at the following address, but it won't save or print. I don't know what happens after the 30 day demo period.

http://www.pgmusic.com/demo.htm

My older version of this doesn't have the fancy digital recording options but is otherwise almost identical in terms of looks and function.

While Power Tracks doesn't pretend to be a fair dinkum manual score entry program like NoteWorthy Composer, it works quite well with piano keyboard MIDI scoring and is fantastic if you like fiddling with the volume controls for each MIDI channel (that part is virtually freeware.

Regards

John

PS The one part of Power Tracks which is not particularly intuitive is finding the Notation window. Just Click Windows, New, Notation. Then you just open any MIDI file you have saved on disc, press the Options button in the Notation Screen, then Click the Tablature Option.

Subject: RE: Ideas For Guitar TAB
From: alison
Date: 01 Jun 99 - 01:16 AM

Hi,

Musicator can convert to guitar tab too,..... I volunteered before that if I had the tune or if people wanted to send me MIDIs I would convert them and send back a GIF..... the offer still stands....

slainte

alison

Subject: RE: Ideas For Guitar TAB
From: Garry Of Australia
Date: 01 Jun 99 - 06:09 AM

Tab is a waste of time you are better off learning to read music in the first place, Tab misses too many important clues as to how to play the music, also if you can read music, you can then play any solo piece written for any instrument and not be restricted to Guitar Tab

Subject: RE: Ideas For Guitar TAB
From: Ted from Australia
Date: 01 Jun 99 - 09:23 AM

I have tried this and it works Tab Transcriber is a notation software for fretted string instruments, including guitar, bass, banjo, mandolin, etc... The software transcribes standard midi files into the tablature of your choice: http://www.cam.org/~mibra/ Get It Here

Subject: RE: Ideas For Guitar TAB
From: alison
Date: 01 Jun 99 - 09:44 AM

Tab has it's uses.... I can read music no problem.. but I have no idea where to find those notes on a guitar, or which of the many positions of that particular note is handiest or best to play........ that's where tab helps me... and probably others.....

which I suppose means not needing to learn how to read music but learning the geography of the fret board.

slainte

alison

Subject: RE: Ideas For Guitar TAB
From: Roger in Baltimore
Date: 01 Jun 99 - 09:49 AM

Alison,

I bet these "transcription" programs don't know which position to seek on the fingerboard either.

Roger in Baltimore

Subject: RE: Ideas For Guitar TAB
From: alison
Date: 01 Jun 99 - 10:04 AM

Any chance of some lessons if I'm ever passing through the US, Roger?

Slainte

alison

Subject: RE: Ideas For Guitar TAB
From: John in Brisbane
Date: 02 Jun 99 - 09:34 AM

My aim in starting this thread was to help anybody who could get some benefit from reading TAB to better enjoy the music locked up in the DT and elsewhere. If a single person benefits I'll be more than happy. Judging from the reasonable number of TAB sites around I have presumed that this is an acceptable medium for a number of people to play music and have some fun.

Regards
John

Subject: RE: Ideas For Guitar TAB
From: Ted from Australia
Date: 03 Jun 99 - 07:40 AM

Spot on John