List of guitar tablature software

This is a list of notable scorewriter software for creating and editing tablature notation for guitar and other fretted instruments.


 * Finale
 * G7, part of Sibelius
 * GuitarTabsX
 * Guitar Pro
 * LilyPond
 * MagicScore/Maestro
 * Mozart the music processor
 * MuseScore
 * MusicEase
 * MusEdit
 * Notion and Progression, a smaller version of Notion, specially for guitar
 * Power Tab Editor
 * TabbyPro
 * TuxGuitar

History
The first tablature program was written for the Amstrad CPC 464 in 1986. "Tab Composer CPC" was implemented in Locomotive BASIC 1.0. It offered a multi-page graphical WYSIWYG, 3channel polyphonic playback and volume and tone envelope functionality, as well as save and load. BASIC programs could be generated for direct playback without the program as well, facilitating easy integration of the created musical content into other programs such as games. The user interface was in German only.

An attempt was made to publish the program as a type-in listing in the German Happy Computer magazine. The program was rejected mainly due to poor (handwritten) documentation, and a tedious user interface. The author is still in possession of the original correspondence with the Happy Computer editorial staff, including the letter of rejection.