TuxGuitar is a multitrack guitar tablature editor and player for composing, arranging and practising music. It combines tablature with conventional staff notation, making it useful for guitarists, bassists and musicians working with other instruments.
The application provides graphical tools for entering notes, building chords and arranging compositions across multiple tracks. It supports many of the techniques commonly found in guitar music, including bends, slides, vibrato and hammer-ons.
TuxGuitar also functions as a practice companion. Musicians can play compositions, follow the notation as it progresses and use its fretboard and instrument views to study individual passages. Its support for established tablature formats makes it useful for working with existing guitar arrangements.
This is free and open source software.
Key Features
- Multitrack tablature editing – creates and modifies compositions containing multiple instrumental parts.
- Standard music notation – displays conventional notation alongside guitar and bass tablature.
- Interactive fretboard – visualises note positions and fingering across the instrument neck.
- Chord tools – provides chord construction, identification and diagram facilities.
- Guitar techniques – supports bends, slides, vibrato, hammer-ons, pull-offs and other playing effects.
- Rhythmic notation – handles note durations, rests, tuplets, ties and dotted notes.
- Score structure – manages time signatures, key signatures, tempo changes and repeats.
- Integrated playback – plays multitrack compositions using supported MIDI synthesis systems.
- Playback navigation – scrolls through tablature and notation during playback.
- Tempo controls – adjusts playback speed for studying difficult passages.
- Guitar Pro compatibility – imports and exports supported Guitar Pro file formats.
- Additional file interchange – supports compatible Power Tab, TablEdit and MIDI files.
- Score printing – prepares tablature and notation for printing and PDF export.
- Instrument configuration – assigns instruments, tunings and other track properties.
- Cross-platform support – runs on Linux, macOS, Windows, FreeBSD, and Android.
Website: github.com/helge17/tuxguitar
Support:
Developer: Julián Casadesús, guiv42, helge17, and contributors
License: GNU Lesser General Public License v2.1
TuxGuitar is written in Java. Learn Java with our recommended free books and free tutorials.
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