Drum & music notation software

evolving_machine

Silver Member
I recently purchased a software called Guitar Pro. A few individuals I practice with regularly suggested the software for documentation of arrangements and to be able to work on material at different locations.

At first I had some resistance to this software, but that soon vanished when I started using the software. The software has a guitar, keyboard and drum instruments. I have not used any of this type of software before, but now that I have used it, I do recommend using this software for assisting in arranging and writing down your bands tunes.

The guitar player sent me a file, I wrote in my drum tracks and they sound pretty good. I had an idea for a tune and I wrote it down, and emailed it away to the others It is really working out.

So I am curious, what other types of notation software is out there and what have the rest of you been doing with them?
 
TabIt. All day all the way.

I've tried guitarpro and tuxguitar and a few others and they weren't for me. They just seemed like they had too much going on, to the point of being distracting from laying the music down. TabIt is much more minimalistic in a lot of ways. It's a very small program that runs very light and the .tbt files are puny. It also lacks some features like staff notation, but it does everything I need. Also its sounds rely entirely on your computer's midi; I'm pretty sure that guitarpro and tuxguitar have almost plugin-like instruments for better guitar sounds. The microsoft wavetable synth on my pc sounds best to me.

I was turned on to tabit pretty much the same way you were to guitarpro. My band tabs out literally everything we make and most of our songwriting process is done that way. The learning curve is pretty steep with a lot of software like that but I got a pretty good handle on all the different functions and keyboard shortcuts after a year or two. We swap tabs by email much the same way you seem to be doing.

One real crappy thing about tabit is that there is no version for Mac. The bass player has had tons of fun trying to port it through wine or something. It also has a significantly smaller following than guitarpro. Their online tab library has a lot less to offer than UltimateGuitar. On the other hand, you don't feel like you need to take a shower after visiting tabit's website.

I think a lot of people could stand to benefit from taking the time to learn some decent notation software. It's helped me become much better at writing music and I've had a lot of fun with it. But it's definitely not for everyone; I can't see a bunch of old jazz cats bothering to tab out anything ever. It's more for technically-minded musicians who like to beat around the bush and nitpick at songwriting than jammers. That's probably why there is a strong metal representation in the tabs that are out there on the internet. But I think a good transcription can be better than a recording for a lot of situations.
 
Jankowske,

I am not a guitar player, I fool around with the piano and used to do alto saxophone. I like writing all the parts and see how they sound together. With Guitar Pro I can write the parts of all the instruments and play them at the same time, including the drums.

Without the ability to do staff notation I can not see how you can add a decent drum track. But, perhaps it is just because I have not see that program you mentioned Tabit.

I really do not need a guitar tab like software, so I would be interested in another software that has good music notation with other instruments.
 
Drums in tabit are actually really easy once you figure it out. There's no constraints that I've found as far as complicated rhythms or weird-tuples. To do stuff like doubles and triples and sixes and what have you, you can make "alternate time regions" of any ratio you want. Also things like ghost notes and volume changes are really easy.

That said, tabit is not for anyone who wants or needs staff notation. I can see how trying to sight-read a strange drum tab would be impossible if you're used to staff. Notating non-string instruments is doable but sometimes awkward. I have even done piano but if any pianist looked at it they would be at a loss. Guitarpro is probably much better suited for your uses.

I have a cool old program that I've only used a few times called midi orchestrator plus that has staff notation and a piano roll. I have very limited experience with musescore, which is free and I think only has staff. If you're looking into getting some high-end notation and arrangement software then you should probably look into sibelius
 
Guitar Pro is just full of so much yes. perfect for long distance bands, tracking drums to a perfect computerized scratch track, writing your own music when there's other instruments you can't play yourself. I've composed several songs on guitar pro, since my fingers won't do what I tell them on an actual guitar.
 
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