Anybody else out there using Power Tab?
I've been on the receiving end of it for a while, courtesy of John van Nierop who makes extensive use of it for guitar tuition. He uses Power Tab to create tabs and notations for pieces that he is teaching. I've started using it to prepare some tabs for the Travis picking workshop at X-Stock.
It's pretty cool. Essentially you get a music staff and a tab staff. As you add to the tab the software creates the notation for you.
Here's a screen dump. I've been typing in the tab, the software has created the notation above it.
Some neat things.
- You have a "guitar setup" section where you can punch in the tuning of the guitar. So it copes with drop-D, DADGAD, capos etc etc
- You can set up multiple guitars so that your scores can have parts for more than one guitar.
- It can handle bass guitar
- It allows you to punch in proper note values and justify the tab so that the distance from left-to-right gives an indication of note values in the tab (you can see this in the screen shot above)
- You can add in bends, slides etc
- Has " triplet tool"
- Allows you to add in chord names and even has a "chord finder" tool
So it's pretty complete. You can play the score back via MIDI, adjust the timing, turn on a click track.
You have to tip your hat to people who create a tool like this and put it out in the public domain.
It's free, but I don't know if it's freeware as in "you get the source code".
