Blank tab paper, drawn to the sheet you actually want and printed from your browser. Choose how many strings, from 4 to 8, how many systems fit on a page, portrait or landscape, then send the result to a printer or save it as a PDF. The preview below redraws as you change a setting, so you see the sheet before you use the paper. No account, nothing to install, like the rest of our free guitar tools.
What you can set
Every setting under the preview, and what it changes on the printed sheet. The preview redraws on each change, so you can try one and look rather than read.
| Setting | What it does |
|---|---|
| Strings | Anything from 4 to 8 lines. Six for guitar, four or five for bass, seven and eight for extended range instruments. |
| Tuning shown | The text printed above each system. E A D G B E by default. Type D A D G B E for drop D, or add Capo 2 beside it. |
| Systems per page | How many groups of string lines a sheet holds. Fewer systems leaves more room around each one. |
| Space between systems px | The gap under every system. That gap is where chord names, counting and reminders end up, so it is worth more than it looks. |
| Bars per system | Vertical bar lines across each system, evenly spaced. Zero leaves the lines bare, which suits a riff you have not counted yet. |
| Ghost frets 0 to 24 | Prints a faint row of fret numbers over every string. Useful while you are still finding your way around the neck. |
| Final double bar | A thick double line at the end of the last system, the way printed music closes a piece. |
| Orientation and outer margin | Landscape gives each system more width, which suits long riffs. Portrait fits more systems on a sheet. |
| Title, footer and font | A heading at the top and a line at the bottom, in the font, size and weight of your choice. |
| Colors and theme | Text, lines and page background, one by one, or one of the ready themes: classic light, ivory paper, soft dark. |
| Export | Print / PDF opens your browser print dialog, where you can print or save a PDF. Export PNG and Export SVG save image files instead, one per sheet. |
The settings stay as you left them while you are on the page, so you can print one sheet, change a single value and print the next without starting over.
Tab paper for bass, 7 and 8 string
The same sheet covers all of them: set the number of strings, then type the tuning you play in. Here are the usual ones, and what to put in each field.
| Instrument | Strings | Tuning shown |
|---|---|---|
| Bass, 4 strings | 4 | E A D G |
| Bass, 5 strings | 5 | B E A D G |
| Guitar, 6 strings | 6 | E A D G B E |
| Guitar, 7 strings | 7 | B E A D G B E |
| Guitar, 8 strings | 8 | F# B E A D G B E |
On six, seven and eight strings the lines are labeled with their note names down the left edge. On four and five they are numbered instead, from the highest line down, and the tuning you type above the system is what says which line is which. Bass players usually want landscape and fewer systems: bass lines run long, and the numbers are often two digits.
Extended range guitars are worth a wider sheet too. Eight strings make each system taller, so ten systems in landscape leaves more usable room than twelve.
Tab and staff on the same page
A sheet with a standard staff above the tab, for writing rhythm exactly rather than by habit, exists on the French side of this site and is not translated yet. Until it is, the closest thing here is a system with bar lines and enough space above it to draw stems and beams by hand, which is what most players end up doing anyway.
How to write a clean tab by hand
A tab you wrote three weeks ago is only useful if you can still read it. A few habits make the difference, and they all come down to deciding something before you write rather than during.
- Set bars per system first. Four bars to a system is the common choice. The lines give you a grid, and a number lands inside a bar instead of floating somewhere along the string.
- Write the fret numbers small and low. Sit each number on its string line rather than between two. A 3 drifting upward reads as a 3 on the wrong string, and that is the mistake that costs the most time later.
- Line up notes played together. A chord is a vertical stack. If the numbers are not aligned, you will play it as a quick arpeggio next time without knowing why.
- Count under the line, not in your head. Write 1 and 2 and under the notes that fall on those beats. It takes a few seconds and it is the only part of the rhythm the tab itself cannot hold.
- Mark the technique as you go. h for a hammer on, p for a pull off, a slash for a slide up, a backslash for a slide down, b for a bend, x for a muted note. Adding them later means guessing at what you meant.
- Fill the header. The title line and the footer are there for a reason: the song, the tuning, a capo position, the tempo and the date. A loose sheet with none of that is the one you throw away.
Writing a tab out by hand is also practice in itself. Working out which string and which fret, one note at a time, makes you listen harder than reading someone else's version ever does, and what you write that way tends to stay.
If you would rather type than write, our guitar tab maker does the same job on screen: you click a string, type a fret, and it writes the staff above the tab and plays the result back. And if the symbols themselves are what you are unsure about, how to read guitar tabs goes through all nine of them with short written examples, which is worth ten minutes before you fill a sheet with marks you will have to decode later.
For chords rather than single notes, the blank guitar chord chart does the same job for chord diagrams: a grid of empty neck pictures instead of staves.
Frequently asked questions
Which line is the high E string?
How do I print the tab paper or save it as a PDF?
Can I use this for bass, or for a 7 string guitar?
How do I write rhythm on tab paper?
Who made this
Guitar Social Club is the work of Yohann Abbou, a guitar teacher in Paris. He teaches adults, which shapes everything here: people with jobs, limited practice time and a clear idea of the songs they want to play. This sheet exists because his students kept writing riffs on whatever paper was nearby and losing them, and because a fixed PDF never has the right number of strings. The rest of our free guitar tools work the same way, and none of them asks you to sign up first. There is more on who he is and why this site exists in about Guitar Social Club.