Most online tab sucks. That is not to say that they are incor­rect or incom­plete (though this is a com­mon crime of online tab) but that often they are an unread­able mash of ASCII that is from a sys­tem pro­duced when mon­i­tors could only dis­play 16 colours. Just look at the exam­ple below. As far as nota­tion goes, it’s very bare bones, and requires great work pick­ing through it to get it sound­ing right. Blame the lack of rhythm infor­ma­tion, blame it on the lack of spac­ing, but ASCII tab is all too often a big mess.

e|----------------------------------------------|
B|----------------------1-------0--------1---4--|
G|----2----------3b----2---2-------1----2-------|
D|--3---------2-------2--------1-----3----------|
A|--3-------1--1-------------2------------------|
E|----------------------------------------------|

When I came across Song­sterr it was like the heav­ens opened up. Finally a place with full fea­tured tab, the way it was meant to be writ­ten. Take a look at this screen­shot. It’s beautiful!

Click to see full size

It has note lengths below the bars, full fledged bend and vibrato nota­tion, and the real kicker: IT WILL PLAY THE MUSIC FOR YOU! That’s right, the fancy play but­ton isn’t just for show. You can play, pause, skip around the tab till your heart is burst­ing with glee. A marker will run along the nota­tion so you know where you are.  Just when you thought it couldn’t get bet­ter the songs let you choose which part you want to look at the tab for.

Click to see full size

There are of course two lev­els of fea­tures, the ones that are free and the ones that you pay for. On the list of paid ser­vices are: Play­ing at half speed, Fullscreen mode, Print­ing,  Part vol­ume con­trol, and Part solo­ing. The ‘plus’ account is $9.90 per month. I don’t have that much of a need for tab, but if I were in a work­ing cover band I’m sure I’d get my monies worth. If your tired of slough­ing through the tons of crappy tab on the inter­net check into Song­sterr, you won’t regret it.

Tags: Guitar, Music Software, Notation, Tab

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 28th, 2009 at 6:10 am and is filed under Of Interest. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.