Power Tab Editor is a free

tablature Tablature (or tabulature, or tab for short) is a form of musical notation indicating instrument fingering rather than musical pitches. Tablature is common for fretted stringed instruments such as the guitar, lute or vihuela, as well as many fr ...

authoring tool created by Brad Larsen for

Windows Windows is a group of several proprietary graphical operating system families developed and marketed by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. For example, Windows NT for consumers, Windows Server for serv ...

. It is used to create

guitar The guitar is a fretted musical instrument that typically has six strings. It is usually held flat against the player's body and played by strumming or plucking the strings with the dominant hand, while simultaneously pressing selected stri ...

, bass and

ukulele The ukulele ( ; from haw, ukulele , approximately ), also called Uke, is a member of the lute family of instruments of Portuguese origin and popularized in Hawaii. It generally employs four nylon strings. The tone and volume of the instrumen ...

scores, among many others. The current version uses the *.ptb file format. The Power Tab Editor is able to import

MIDI MIDI (; Musical Instrument Digital Interface) is a technical standard that describes a communications protocol, digital interface, and electrical connectors that connect a wide variety of electronic musical instruments, computers, and re ...

tracks, and can export to

ASCII ASCII ( ), abbreviated from American Standard Code for Information Interchange, is a character encoding standard for electronic communication. ASCII codes represent text in computers, telecommunications equipment, and other devices. Because of ...

Text,

HTML The HyperText Markup Language or HTML is the standard markup language for documents designed to be displayed in a web browser. It can be assisted by technologies such as Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) and scripting languages such as JavaScri ...

, and MIDI formats. In addition, individual sections may be exported as bitmap files. The program allows for tablature scores to be created alongside standard

musical notation Music notation or musical notation is any system used to visually represent aurally perceived music played with instruments or sung by the human voice through the use of written, printed, or otherwise-produced symbols, including notation fo ...

. The software achieves this through the input of tablature. Each Power Tab file contains two scores: guitar and bass. Only one score needs to be used for a Power Tab file. For proper playback, it is required that the

time signature The time signature (also known as meter signature, metre signature, or measure signature) is a notational convention used in Western musical notation to specify how many beats (pulses) are contained in each measure (bar), and which note value ...

s and

tempo In musical terminology, tempo (Italian, 'time'; plural ''tempos'', or ''tempi'' from the Italian plural) is the speed or pace of a given piece. In classical music, tempo is typically indicated with an instruction at the start of a piece (often ...

markers be consistent between the two scores. The latest version was released in 2000. In 2006, the author released an open-source

wxWidgets wxWidgets (formerly wxWindows) is a widget toolkit and tools library for creating graphical user interfaces (GUIs) for cross-platform applications. wxWidgets enables a program's GUI code to compile and run on several computer platforms with mini ...

based program named the PT Parser. This code contains useful information for developers who want to write software that can convert, view, play, or edit Power Tab (.ptb) files. The PT Parser project is hosted at Google Cod

PowerTab 2.0 project

There is a project on GitHub since July 2014 to develop a new version of Power Tab from the scratch, called PowerTab 2.0. It's a cross-platform (Windows, Linux, OS X) open-source solution. This new version can read the old PowerTab 1.7 files as well as

Guitar Pro Guitar Pro is a multitrack editor of guitar and bass tablature and musical scores, possessing a built-in MIDI-editor, a plotter of chords, a player, a metronome and other tools for musicians. It has versions for Windows and Mac OS X (Intel proce ...

files. A main change is that guitar and bass score are now in the same window. Currently (March 2021) the Alpha 14 version is publishe

resp

Features

The software primarily uses tablature notation entry. This is very useful for guitarists who are not familiar with standard notation and for instructing proper positioning on the neck. Other than the expected buttons for normal notation (i.e.

markers, etc.), there are many others that are directed more at the guitarist. These include: * Slur (music), Slurs - in the form of slides or hammer-ons/pull-offs *

Vibrato Vibrato (Italian language, Italian, from past participle of "wikt:vibrare, vibrare", to vibrate) is a musical effect consisting of a regular, pulsating change of pitch (music), pitch. It is used to add expression to vocal and instrumental music. ...

s and bends *

Harmonic A harmonic is a wave with a frequency that is a positive integer multiple of the ''fundamental frequency'', the frequency of the original periodic signal, such as a sinusoidal wave. The original signal is also called the ''1st harmonic'', the ...

s - natural and artificial * Mutes and

palm mute The palm mute is a playing technique for guitar and bass guitar, executed by placing the side of the picking hand below the little finger across the strings to be plucked, very close to the bridge, and then plucking the strings while the damp ...

s *

Tremolo In music, ''tremolo'' (), or ''tremolando'' (), is a trembling effect. There are two types of tremolo. The first is a rapid reiteration: * Of a single Musical note, note, particularly used on String instrument#Bowing, bowed string instrument ...

s and arpeggiated chords *

Whammy bar A vibrato system on a guitar is a mechanical device used to temporarily change the pitch of the strings. Instruments without a vibrato have other bridge and tailpiece systems. They add vibrato to the sound by changing the tension of the string ...

dips and dives These buttons can be used in either score and the guitar and bass scores are not restricted to the

clef A clef (from French: 'key') is a Musical notation, musical symbol used to indicate which Musical note, notes are represented by the lines and spaces on a musical staff (music), stave. Placing a clef on a stave assigns a particular pitch to ...

, either. It is possible to switch between treble and

bass clef A clef (from French: 'key') is a musical symbol used to indicate which notes are represented by the lines and spaces on a musical stave. Placing a clef on a stave assigns a particular pitch to one of the five lines, which defines the pit ...

s. Power Tab also features several tools to enhance appearance, accuracy and playback for the transcribed music; * Score checker - this checks that there are no notation errors in the score * Score polisher - this aligns ('justifies') the written music so that it is evenly laid out with no gaps * Chord Identification - this tells you the possible names for the chords entered into Power Tab * Shifter tool - this moves groups of

note Note, notes, or NOTE may refer to: Music and entertainment * Musical note, a pitched sound (or a symbol for a sound) in music * ''Notes'' (album), a 1987 album by Paul Bley and Paul Motian * ''Notes'', a common (yet unofficial) shortened version ...

s, whether chords or a

melody A melody (from Greek language, Greek μελῳδία, ''melōidía'', "singing, chanting"), also tune, voice or line, is a Linearity#Music, linear succession of musical tones that the listener perceives as a single entity. In its most liter ...

, in pitch or around the

fingerboard The fingerboard (also known as a fretboard on fretted instruments) is an important component of most stringed instruments. It is a thin, long strip of material, usually wood, that is laminated to the front of the neck of an instrument. The stri ...

(maintaining pitch) *

Tonality Tonality is the arrangement of pitches and/or chords of a musical work in a hierarchy of perceived relations, stabilities, attractions and directionality. In this hierarchy, the single pitch or triadic chord with the greatest stability is call ...

tools - gives the key signatures that fit best with the music entered * Chord/

Tuning Tuning can refer to: Common uses * Tuning, the process of tuning a tuned amplifier or other electronic component * Musical tuning, musical systems of tuning, and the act of tuning an instrument or voice ** Guitar tunings ** Piano tuning, adjusti ...

dictionary

Limitations

Some limitations of the software include: * Notes can only be inserted i
tablature
it is not possible to enter music in standard modern music notation. * Power Tab Editor can only utilize up to a maximum of seven guitars across both scores (i.e. MIDI voices). *

Pick-up measure In metre (poetry), poetic and metre (music), musical meter, and by analogy in publishing, an anacrusis (from , , literally: 'pushing up', plural ''anacruses'') is a brief introduction (distinct from a introduction (writing), literary or introduc ...

s, for example, are counted as errors although they are commonly used in music. * Swing/shuffle time with swing notes cannot be applied to start or stop part-way through a measure. Conversely, notes in 'even time' cannot be notated within a measure where swing time applies. * When using high and low melodies, redundant rests that are left out (as in regular notation) are counted as errors. * A Segno cannot be used for more than one D.S. A Double Segno must be added in the same position. * The

tremolo In music, ''tremolo'' (), or ''tremolando'' (), is a trembling effect. There are two types of tremolo. The first is a rapid reiteration: * Of a single Musical note, note, particularly used on String instrument#Bowing, bowed string instrument ...

reverb Reverberation (also known as reverb), in acoustics, is a persistence of sound, after a sound is produced. Reverberation is created when a sound or signal is reflected causing numerous reflections to build up and then decay as the sound is abso ...

and

chorus effect Chorus (or chorusing, choruser or chorused effect) is an audio effect that occurs when individual sounds with approximately the same time, and very similar pitches, converge. While similar sounds coming from multiple sources can occur naturally, ...

s only work on computers where their

drivers and hardware support it. Detailed bugs are listed in the Power Ta
Knowledge Base

Legal action

Based on allegations of copyright violations, the

Music Publishers Association The Music Publishers Association of the United States (MPA) is a non-profit music publishing organization based in New York City. Founded in 1895, the MPA is the oldest music trade organization in the United States which addresses issues pertain ...

has encouraged its members to seek legal action against those sites which distribute Power Tab files of commercial artists. The creator of the Power Tab Editor, Brad Larsen, has stated on his website that the program is not directly affiliated with these sites.FAQ: Where Can I Download Tabs (.ptb files) for Power Tab Editor?
/ref> However, the MPA working with the founders of powertabs.net opened a legal powertabs site calle
Tab Library

References

External links