This is a guitar tab maker. You write a tablature by clicking a string and typing a fret number, the staff above it fills in on its own, and a Play button tells you whether what you wrote is what you meant. Free, in your browser, no account and nothing to install. It sits alongside the rest of our free guitar tools.
If you have never used a tab writer before, four moves cover most of it. Pick a duration in the Duration row. Click the string you want on the tab and type the fret. Press Play. Then Print, or export the file.
How to write a tab here
Nothing has to be set up first. The editor opens on a quarter note in 4/4, in the key of C, in standard tuning, and you can start typing into it right away. What follows is the order that makes the fewest corrections later.
1. Set the duration first
A note is written with the duration that is active, so choose it before you place the note. The Duration row holds all six, and each one has a key: 1, 2, 4, 8, 6 and 3. Change it as often as the music does.
2. Click the string, type the fret
Click a tab line where you want the note and a small box appears. Type the number and press Enter. The staff note appears above it, spelled according to the key you picked. You can also use the String and Fret fields in the Note tab of the inspector, then press A.
3. Chords in one field
For a chord, type its positions as string and fret pairs in the Chord or note field, separated by commas, then press Add the chord. If you would rather see the shape, open the fretboard picker, tap the notes on the neck and confirm.
4. Fix the rhythm as you go
Select a note and the Writing buttons change that note instead of the next one. Dotted lengthens it, Rest turns it into a rest, Tie joins it to the note after it, Triplet splits it into three. Right click a note for the same actions in a menu, plus Delete.
5. Hear it before you trust it
Press Play. Set a tempo in BPM in the Project tab and turn the metronome on if you want a click under it. A tab that sounds wrong on playback is usually a duration that was left on the wrong value, and this is the fastest way to catch it.
6. Then the page
Measures per line decides how much fits across. Display switches between staff and tab and both together. Rhythm on tab adds stems, beams and rests to the tab lines, which is what makes a tab playable in time by someone else.
The keys worth learning
Six keys set the duration: 1 for a whole note, 2 for a half, 4 for a quarter, 8 for an eighth, 6 for a sixteenth, 3 for a thirty-second. Then the dot is the period key, R writes a rest, L adds a tie, T makes a triplet, B, # and N write a flat, a sharp and a natural, A adds the note you set up, and Backspace deletes. The left and right arrows walk through the notes one at a time. The Help button lists all of them inside the tool.
Techniques you can notate
This is where an honest line has to be drawn, because tab makers are often described as doing more than they do. Here is exactly what this one writes, and what it does not.
Pitch and rhythm, in full
Every note is placed as a string and a fret, from the open string up to the twenty-fourth fret. Durations run from the whole note to the thirty-second note, and each can be dotted. Rests use the same durations. A tie joins two notes into one longer sound. A triplet fits three notes where one used to be, and a sextuplet does the same with six. Flats, sharps and naturals change how a note is spelled on the staff.
| Duration | In 4/4 | Key |
|---|---|---|
| Whole note | 4 beats | 1 |
| Half note | 2 beats | 2 |
| Quarter note | 1 beat | 4 |
| Eighth note | half a beat | 8 |
| Sixteenth note | a quarter of a beat | 6 |
| Thirty-second note | an eighth of a beat | 3 |
The frame around the notes
Time signatures cover 4/4, 3/4, 2/4, 6/8, 9/8 and 12/8. The key signature goes all the way around the circle, in major or minor, and the Relative button jumps to the relative key without rewriting anything. Tuning offers standard, Drop D and DADGAD, and a capo position shifts the sound while the fret numbers you wrote stay put. Transpose moves everything already written up or down by half steps.
What it does not write
There are no technique symbols. No h for a hammer-on, no p for a pull-off, no slash for a slide, no b and r for a bend and its release, no squiggle for vibrato, no PM for palm mute, no x for a dead note. The editor writes pitches, durations and rests, which is enough for a riff, a progression or an exercise, and it is better to say so than to let you look for a button that is not there.
Two ways around it, depending on where the tab is going. If it is going to a person, print it and add the marks by hand: that is one pen stroke per note and it reads fine. If it is going to another program, export MusicXML and add the articulations there, where they will stay in the file.
One more limit worth knowing before you start a long piece. The staff is a six-string guitar staff, and there is one voice: a melody and a bass line written as separate parts on the same staff is not something this tool does.
Export, copy, print
Everything that leaves the page lives in the Export tab of the inspector. There is no copy to clipboard button and no plain text or ASCII tab export: what the tool gives you is files and a printed page.
MusicXML, in and out
The format other notation programs read. Export it to carry your tab somewhere with more features, and import an .xml or .mxl file to keep editing something written elsewhere. This is the only import the tool has, and the only round trip.
SVG and PNG
Pictures of the page as it looks on screen. SVG stays sharp at any size, which is what you want for a document or a handout. PNG is the one to use when something only accepts an image.
JSON
The editor's own save file: notes, durations, key, tuning and tempo as written. It is a backup and a way to read your tab with your own scripts. It is not a music format other programs open, so use MusicXML for that.
Print, which is also PDF
Print hides the toolbar, the inspector and the hints and leaves only the music. There is no separate PDF button because your browser already has one: choose Save as PDF in the print dialog.
Zoom is a screen control: use it to see what you are doing, not to decide how big an export comes out. And a tab that is going to someone else is worth one look in the print preview before it leaves, because that is the only view that shows them exactly what you are sending.
Tab maker or full notation software?
Both answers are reasonable, and they answer different questions. A tab maker in a browser is for the moment an idea arrives: you want it written down, heard back and out of your head in a few minutes. Notation software is for the finished edition: several instruments, several voices, page layout, a project you will come back to for weeks.
| This tab maker | Notation software | |
|---|---|---|
| What it is for | Writing a short tab fast, hearing it back, printing it or handing it on. | Editing a long score, holding a multi-track arrangement, opening and saving its own file format. |
| Getting started | A browser tab. Nothing to install, no account. | A download, an install, often a license and an account. |
| Formats | MusicXML in and out, SVG, PNG, JSON, print to PDF. | Its own project format, MIDI, MusicXML, audio, and usually more print control. |
| Techniques | Pitches, durations, rests, ties, triplets and sextuplets. No technique symbols. | The full set of articulations, plus fingering, dynamics and lyrics. |
| Where it stops | One guitar part, six strings, as many measures as you like but one voice at a time. | Several instruments, several voices per staff, page layout. |
The practical answer for most people is both, in that order. Write the idea here, play it back, and if it grows into something larger, export MusicXML and open it in the bigger program. That is the whole reason MusicXML export is on this page.
Three nearby pages, when you want something simpler. If you are learning to read the numbers rather than write them, start with how to read guitar tabs, because the writing gets much faster afterwards. If you only want lines to fill in with a pencil, a sheet of blank tab paper beats any editor, and it comes out with the number of strings and bars you asked for. And if what you are writing down is a strummed song rather than a riff, a page of blank chord diagrams holds it in far less space than a tab of the same thing.
Playing it is the next step, and two of our other tools help there. Tune first with the online guitar tuner, because a tab played out of tune teaches you the wrong thing. Then put the tempo under it with the online metronome, or find the tempo of the song you are copying with tap tempo and write that number into the BPM field here.
Frequently asked questions
Can I write bass tabs with this guitar tab generator?
Is there a free alternative to paid tablature software?
Can I import a tab from another program?
How do I save my tab as a PDF?
Does my work stay here if I close the tab?
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 editor exists because writing a riff down for a student by hand, every week, is slow, and because a tab without durations cannot be played in time by the person who receives it. That is why the rhythm is the first thing the toolbar asks you for, and why the page says plainly that there are no technique symbols instead of leaving you to find out.
The rest of our free guitar tools work the same way: in the browser, no account, built because a student needed it. There is more on who he is and why this site exists in about Guitar Social Club.