Alright everyone! The long awaited arival of powertab is finally here! I'm here to help out anybody who has any question or problems using this revolutionary new program. I just want to make it clear that powertab isn't easy to use, so don't become discouraged. Over time you'll master it easily.

First off, you'll need to download the software, which is free by the way. Go here: http://www.power-tab.net/downloads.php

Once you've downloaded the program, I recommend listening to a few of my tabs. This will give you an Idea of how the program works. Secondly, read the "help" menu located in the upper right corner of the powertab screen. This will get you off on the right foot.

The hard part is learning how to use the note durations, tempos, timing signatures, ect. At first this will seem overwhelming. Esspecially if you've never studied musical theory and tablature. This program will teach you it if you don't aready know.

And as I said before, I'm here to ensure your success. So fell free to throw any questions you have at me.

On another note. The tabs you submit MUST be of good quality. If you have any boubts send me the tab prior to submition and I'll see what I can do. You MUST also use the "score checker and score polisher" to ensure there are no score errors. Failure to comply will result in denial of you tab being archived.

Cheers and welcome to the next generation of tabbing!

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I think a lot of people do get discouraged and therefor switch to Guitar Pro, wich is (in my eyes) more friendly to use.

not just for writing, but also for learning.

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Doc, with all do respect, I couldn't disagree more. Guitarpro4 tabs looks like a mess. I don't see how people can even read the things. They tried to reinvert the wheel. If you look at powertab, it's the same EXACT format as authentic tab books (like cherry lane). Guitarpro4 is all out of wack.

As far as being user friendly goes, they are equaly as difficult to learn. The principles are the same though. GTP4 has just been around years longer then powertab and therefore has a head start over powertab. I think that over time more tabbers will come to their senses and switch. Besides, GTP4 cost like $50! Powertab is free.

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Personaly when I first used the program, I tab out riffs that I knew off by heart, like slayers angel of death, so for first timers the best thing to do is tab out a riff that you know well, and work with it untill it sounds like the real thing.

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Powertab is a LOT better than Guitar Pro. I've been using it for a few years now.

its free on kazaa

and guitar pro has drums, with makes it also more fun to learn te songs, play-a-long is cool and very educative

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I don't want to get involved with Kazaa. I love the drum feature of gtp though. Powertab will have it soon too though. I have patience.

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By the way James, are you an active member of pt.net community? If you are, do you know if there're any metalheads over there? May be you could recommend MetalTabs to them

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Nomad, I've been a member for a while now. Most of my tabs are there and I know a number of other people as well. I am going to contact all the ones I've befriended and convert them to dedicated metaltabs members!

I don't think it will be too hard to recruit. Esspecially with all the SUPER ANAL submition rules www.powertabs.net have. Like only being able to have one pending tab at a time. Or "sorry your tab was declined becaues you forgot a chord name." "Sorry resubmit because you missed a key sig." "DECLINED because you forgot to capitalize a word in the title." Oh, you have a "bad" score polish. The bullshit goes on and on. I fell that more people will come here because we have more realistic expectations.

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I used to be an active member, commenting on tabs and such. I kinda forgot it existed though.

Yeah ? Really ? If they're able to put the drum feature as well, Powertab will definitively be the best tabbing program out there.

Is there any way to get rid of the disgusting distorted sound they have on there and actually have something that sounds remotely related to metal?

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What tab are you listening to?

You can chage the guitar midi by clicking on the little red guitat on the top left.

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I don't think so. It's called MIDI

You must have a shitty sound card, Corpsevomit.

I have shitty everything, but im talking about when you put your own notes on there.

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Microsoft GS Wavetable SW synth sounds the best in powertab

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Corpsevomit: I know what you are talking about, but the quality of the MIDI depends on your soundcard.

yeah click the red guitar, then click on the list that will say acoustic and scroll down to distorted guitar or overdriven guitar

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Inverted: I'm not attacking you personally or anything, but I'd like to make afew points about the Power Tab Editor.

I tried to use PTEditor and found it clumsy. I did not find it very user friendly at all. Also, the whole point of being able to tab something is not to show off your skills, but so others can learn songs. Learning songs is annoying in PTEditor (although watching the notes being highlighted is useful). All I wanted to do was slow down or pause the MIDI playback, or changing the position would have been good; but no, the only way I could slow it down was to use a tempo marker. And they've been rambling on about how they're putting drums in and making a separate power tab player for several years now, and where is it?

On top of that, I have 2 soundcards, a SB16 and another brand new 6.1 channel card, and neither have a MIDI pitch wheel. So all bends and slides are left out in the MIDI playback. (And if you try to look at the specs of cards to see if they have a MIDI pitch wheel, they rarely tell you).

Plus I have also seen some stoopid kids that don't have album recordings of songs, just going and learning off the sound of the power tab. They don't want get caught up in the satanic lyrics, but they want to shred metal on their guitar; now that annoys me. And quite afew power tabs have mistakes I have noticed, so those idiots learn the songs wrong anyway lol.

I admit, the quality and content of a power tab is better than a regular tab, but there are way more normal tabs on the net. I don't think most metalheads want to go through the learning curve of the program, it's just easier to peck away at the keyboard in notepad, and leave some of the detail for the player to fill in. I personally ditched the program, as my timing is good enough to compensate for the inadequacies of regular tabs. But it's good to see that you're trying to expand the collection of power tabs to metal. Maybe when the program is updated, and if more metalheads start tabbing in the program, I might come back and use it one day.

Where can we post our powertabs on metaltabs

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Same location:
http://metaltabs.com/submit.php

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http://www.metaltabs.com/forum/%5Csubmit.php

Im just going to post it

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Thanks for the comment. However, how is powertab a way to "show off"?

As far as I'm concerned there are 2 different ways to write a tab. The easy way and the right way. When you go the Guitar Center and buy a tab book, it has the exact same format as powertab. Note durations, tempo, timing sigs, ect... Imagin getting the same tab book, but instead of it being transcribed like tabs have been for HUNDREDS if not THOUSANDS of years, somone dicided to use notepad... It would be worthless.

For example, my Mom play the piano. She has tablature laying around thats been collecting dust for decades. She doesn't have any of the music to listen to on tape. She has to relay on the tablature to tell her the note durations, tempo, timing sigs, ect... That how it been since the dawn of music. You can't rewrite the rules.

As far as powertab is concered. Forget about listening to it play. Forget about drums. Forget about the shitty sound cards fucking up MIDI. If you click the "print" button you will get a high qualit authentic style tab with all the little details that real tabs have. That is why I make powertabs. As far as errors go. That the way it is. Nobody is perfect. It happens.

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I found the program amzing. Ive gotten used to the shitty sound it has. I bought a brand new sound card, a pretty expensive one too, and it still sounds like the music was from a NES videogame. But its all good. Once you learn the program it is a good tool, but i prefer the original way of transcribing the music. And INVERTED, do you think that it would be possible for someone to put the power tabs in original format for those who dont have powertab.

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It's free to download and to install, isn't it?...

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Thats true

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"And INVERTED, do you think that it would be possible for someone to put the power tabs in original format for those who dont have powertab?"

Yeah, go to "file" and export the tab to ASCII.

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Heh, don't get me wrong. I am a busy individual.

I have, however, actually copied out "PowerTab" tab onto paper before because I didn't have access to a printer. If you don't like powertab, copy it out on paper. No problems there.

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I was a bit hasty in what I said, but I'm usually the type of person that takes time to appreciate something. e.g when I listen to metal, I like stuff with instant appeal; it's easy to get into at any time. However, something that only starts to sound good once you have listened to it many times is alot better, but its annoying getting to that stage where u like it. Anyway, it's like that with PTEditor, I expected it to be like a graphical editor (drag and drop), but I found the user interface to be quite stupid and unintuitive, without easy to learn idioms.

And what I meant about showing off, was because I could only really see 2 uses for power tabs; learning songs and showing off your understanding of musical thoery. And since allowing you to learn songs is something the program doesn't do well, that leaves option number two. But you say "musical notation!"; how many metalheads besides your mum have the time to learn music theory well enough to use this program on something worthwhile (i.e not 4/4 timing), and in addition learn the program as well. I certainly don't. And we have CDs nowadays too, so it's not absolutely necessary to have piano music, etc.

Well I'm not too hot on theory, but I can read music. Even reading through the help in PTEditor about timing signatures got me confused, though. They could have at least put in afew concrete examples of weird timing signatures. I just play in different timings by ear; I don't consciously think about the name of the timing. That's why I can get by with normal tabs (if you look at the tabs I have done, I try to use spacing within bars to show timing).

I think the program is actually useful for learning solos, but the program needs improvement. By the way, what sound cards support the MIDI pitch wheel, etc? I might get one and a new PC (it's time to ditch the Pentium 233 methinks!). Maybe a faster printer too; at the moment I can only afford to print out regular tabs (and listen to the song for timing details), not 500 pages of musical notation out of the PTEditor.

I like what you're doing spreading the realm of power tabs to metal, since one of the reasons I didn't use it was because most songs I want to learn are not there. If I seen some more technical tabs that actually make use of the ability of power tabs to show complicated timing, then I'd start using it. e.g. maybe some stuff off The Haunted, or Cryptopsy's Whisper Supremacy, or even Nile - Amongst the Catacombs of Nephran Ka. (I'd even use regular tabs and listen to the song to learn it). But I mainly see stuff in timing like 4/4 which don't utilise the very thing the program is for.

So if it's not too much to ask, perhaps you could provide a quick tutorial, Inverted, as to using PTEditor (I mean, pfft, who uses the help files). Gradually develop our skills and throw in some concrete examples of music theory, to get the ball rolling on some more tabs of the metal kind. Hopefully afew tips on how to speed up the process of tabbing too. As much as I'd like to see quantity of power tabs, I think quality is the issue here. (I admit, I find alot of regular tabs on this site are dodgy and useless for people like me that want to learn stuff note for note. Maybe power tabs will rectify the situation).

Just play with it. It took me like a week to get everything down

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I haven't read much of the thread, but I've got some things to say.

You can do drums in PT. Just use channel 10 for one of the staffs, and you're ready to go. Sure, it doesn't give you a drum tab, but it gives you a drum track, for playing along.

I found the program really easy to use, though I haven't tried any other programs. I don't see why you'd become discouraged by it's "difficulty". I do, however, have 5+ years of classic musical schooling in my backpack, so that may be why.

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for anyone that doubts powertabs abilitys, download the Inspector gadget theme2

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I just got this powertab thingy and started to experiment.
does anyone else have a problem getting the timing right.
(im not talking about being retarded about timings and notes and things)
for example : I told it to play a series of strait crotchets and it seems to play them with an almost swing feel. also there seems to be no control over volume. is this something normal? my computer? my ears?

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Hey Amon rA,

I can't pinpoint your exact problem unless you want to email me the file. I can however, offer some advise.

The timing consist of 3 elements. Tempo, note duration and timing signatures; with an optional "triplet" timing.

The tempo marker is located in the upper left corner and looks kinda like this "d=" Use it to change the speed of the song. Note durations are at the bottom of the screen. Use them to program the durations of the notes themselves. The timing sig is also in the top left corner, just right to the tempo marker. It looks like this: 3/4. You can use this for odd timing like 5/8 1/4 ect...


Now for sound, there are two ways to addjust it. First you can click on the little red guitar and change it there or you can change it for any given measure. It's in musical notation so I'll write an example out for you. "off ppp pp p mp f ff fff" The way to change it by each measure is with the "mf" icon located on the upper part of the screen.

Hope it helps...

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I like this idea. I think I'll do it. Give me a litte time to get it done though. The best way for me to show examples, is if I make a powertab with "text" to guide to viewer along. That way you can actually see it work and read about it at the same time. Thanks for the idea!

Btw, I'm no computer gump or anything, and I'm not familliar with all the different sound cards available. So I'm gonna post this like and let the pro's tell you.

http://pagebiz.com/fish/music.html I recommend the Sound Blaster 128, 64 0r 32 sound card. The most compatible and best supported sound cards for the PC are made by Creative Labs and they are called Sound Blasters.
A Sound Blaster 16 is good but a Sound Blaster 32 up sounds much better. Here is why. Most Sound cards use a Yamaha OPL2 or OPL3 FM synthesis chip to produce MIDI music. The big advantage of the Sound Blaster 32 up is that the MIDI sounds are produced from "Wave Tables", actual recorded sound samples of each instrument using an E-mu Systems® EMU8000 sound and effects generator.

Before Creative labs started putting the E-mu chip into the SB 32 up they were only available in high priced commercial synthesizers used by professional entertainers. The sound quality and clarity of the instruments, especially the high pitched ones piccolo are amazing with the SB 32 up, approaching CD quality.

I recently bought a PCI soundblaster for $26.00 at computer show. Other companys have so called Wave Table sound cards but nothing comes even close to the Soundblaster 32/64/128.

Creative Labs Sound Blaster Info

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Yeah tabbing is dificult because a 8 at 200bpm can be the same thing as a 16 at 100bpm

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your smart

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I want to create a tab in simple txt/ascii format. Can this be done with powertab? if so how? If not how can i create .txt files for tabs?

You can export the tab to ASCII format. It's under "File." If you plan on exporting, it must be your own work. Fair warning to all who read.

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I am thinking of getting powertab. (i hate to sound like a commercial, but...) what are the advantages of downloading it? What exactly is it?

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Just download it and find out. Im too lazy to explain it but it kicks ass. The files are all pretty small too. And powertabs always seem to be correct.

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Alright. I'll ask my dad today. (he has bullshit admin rules on the comp. fucking nazi with 200gb of fucking space.)

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AHAHAHAHA! What an asshole, smack him for me

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Awsome. Thx for the program Inverted. Just downloaded it today and am lovin it. its so simple too but i was gonna ask if anyone knew of a website where you could get some mass PTs to download and chek out. I dont feel like goin through all my favorite song tabs and makin em Powertabs lol. Thx in Advance.

http://www.powertabs.net

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gracias

hey...this program is great ... while working on it ...beginners can learn notes and so on too with it !! And it makes fun to try creatin new riffs ...and many more I think ...

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www.deathwarp.com has some PTs too....

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thankyou inverted for finally making powertabs on metaltabs possible...i hope this could finally revolutionize metal tabs and convert this website to electronic tabs someday

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Ill probably tab some songs out soon, powertab is so fun! I always end up make a kickass riff whenever im just fuckin around on it also.

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can anyone tell me how to get the section thing working so you can replay sections, rather than having to re-type the bastard?

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I don't know either, but you can just select the whole line (black marked), copy it and paste it on a blank line. That's what I do for now

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Hi James,
I think you know why we have these "anal submission rules"... just take a look at this one...
BTW. I have submitted some ascii tabs in here like three or four years ago... It has grown to a pretty cool page!

put the cursor to the section you want to be copied and press ctrl+1 and choose what you want from the following options...

WOWWWWW!!!!!!!!!!!!!! That was horrible! Thats why I talked about quality in my opening post. The problem I've had with powertabs.net in the past, was stuff like this: "you missed a chord name." solo shoud be on the first staff not the second." "Spelled Eric wrong." Ect................. However, I love you guys! You're all my friends and make great tabs. I just think there should be a little margin for error. Even authentic tab books have mistakes in them.

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btw. Haven't seen you for a longer time on powertabs.net... Are you busy?

Yeah, I've been working 6 days a week plus overtime. Times that by school and my personal life and I end up with little or no time for tabs anymore.

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is there ne thing like this the drums?

Guitar Pro

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Could anyone tell me why when I try to download it, it sends me to a page to download stickynote 9.0 or some shit?, I've tried like 10 bloody times and won't do it.

Not that anyone cares but I got it, and it's pretty bloody incredible, I can't use it very well though, I can't get it to sound how I would play it, as in the tempo changes, and for some reason I can't link up a pull off?, I'm gonna keep messin with it though. Lol, it's pretty funny hearin metal in nintendo styles haha.

Swoit, pretty much got what I need dialled, though I have a question, the palm muting...it's not palm muting the notes I selected?, is there something I'm not doing? , everything else I do is working fine but the notes I want muted just won't playback muted.

Righto, I have another question and although it seems I'm talkin with myself in here, I'll ask it anyway just in case. Now, when you's are tabbin, do you find the beat on the metronome first or last?, cause I can't for the life of me get that fucker to run in time consistently throughout the whole song. it's quite distressing.

Wow!!, the level of help and support in this thread is unmatched .

I usually just turn the metronome off.

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Same here.

yes power tabs are the devil

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Thanks.

Quit your bitching.

If the metronome doesn't stay in beat consistently, you have a wrong time signature in there somewhere. Just comb through it again. I have more of a problem trying to nail down the tempo than I do keeping the metronome in the right time.

As for the palm muting, as long as you make sure it's noted that a part is palm muted, it doesn't matter if it isn't represented in the playback. The only way to get the palm muted notes to actually sound palm muted is to put those notes in a different stave, add a new guitar for the stave, and change the MIDI to 'Electric Guitar (muted)'.

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there actually is a difference in midi when using palm mutes... it's really minimal but the notes sound a bit shorter than without using palm mutes...

I don't see how saying thanks is bitching, but hey, it's the internet, things get interpreted wrong. Anyway cheers for your help, but I deleted power tab off my computer along with a heap of other shit so it has more room for recording, i'll be stickin with yee ole' note pad from now I think.

you have to spend a couple of hours til you realize how helpful powertab can be...

The strange thing is, you don't learn PowerTab. You learn from Powertab. At least I did. I'm much better now when it comes to things like time signatures, note duration, and tempo than I ever was before.

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Same here. I can figure out note durations of whole riffs (and technical ones too) in my head now thanks to Powertab.

Shit, that sounded like an infomercial.

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Haha! And it's free, too, unlike some other midi tabbing programs. Or at least it was last time I downloaded it.

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ok, I've been messing a little with powertab and I think I've figured out most of the things I need to know exept for one thing, how do you choose only a certan part of the song and play that? Like in guitar pro you can "play the current bar" or somthing like that? so you don't always have to play the whole song to listen to one part of it?

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It's simple. There are two play buttons, one pause button, and one stop button. The play button to the left plays from the beginning of the song. The play button next to the pause button plays the song starting from the stave the bar is currently on.

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Yeah i know what you mean, i learned a lot of shit from powertab

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This wont submit for me on tab submission, does it work for you guys?

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it works for me..

For some reason it worked for me too, but was the wrong format to submit here I'll try it again now (I was at school before)

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I don't know what you guys are all talking about. A person doesn't have to know ANY theory to be able to use powertab properly.

Unless you count understanding note durations tempos and time sigs as theory, but I've never heard someone call that theory. Anyway it's still pretty easy to learn the timing aspects of the program, even in funny time signatures. It always displays how many notes you need to add (or delete) from the bar you're working on to get it to be perfect.


I also found that in most powertabs I have seen there is at least one error somewhere if you look for it. This of course makes it waaaaay better than regular tabs that on average seem to contain more errors.

Perhaps one of the coolest features of the program is the 'import function'. If you have (or find on the net) a midi file that you would like to learn, you can import it into powertab and it is all automatically tabbed out for you. All you do is click 'file' then 'import' then 'midi' and you select the midi you want. I've heard the coolest Holy Wars (there were mistakes of course, but it sounded awesome!) midi a couple of years ago and was amazed that it w could be so easily converted to powertab.

The ability to slow down songs with the tempo marker makes this program my favorite way to learn a song (other than by having someone else personally teach me it that is).

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I feel almost like im cheating using this thing! It makes it so much easier to plan songs out then wasting tons of paper, erasing, blah. And you can hear it right there! So awesome!!!

I even wrote a solo that I cant even play up to speed (yet) and it plays it perfectly how i want it. Im in love

I understood everything I needed to make a song within 30 minutes. Its not hard. Yeah I think you need to know some theory (notes, intervals, time signatures, tempos, triplets, blah), and how time is kept. But thats about it! Very easy. I give it a

I havn't really read through the Powertabs thread yet but i can't figure this out for shit i can't even work out how to delete a wrong note. I got it today and i been using guitar pro 4 for a while and i can use that fine.

Also i'd like to know about i can hear a bass line in other tabs on here but i can't find the bass line on the actual tab.

To delete a note: click on the note (so that it is selected), then press 'delete' on your keyboard.

The bass and treble sections are separated. Press F3 to get to the bass section and F2 to get back to the treble section.

If this pisses you off you can just put a bass in the guitar section so that all the instruments are on one page. Go to 'guitar in' and create a new guitar but make it a bass, then add a bass clef.

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small hint - if you want to insert a music bar (i.e. this > | ) shortcut and click "F"

Don't know whether anyone else has picked up on that.



Go to the berzerker.com > tabs. Click on one, you'll notice that they appear in the exact same format as a Power Tab would if you were to export it to notepad/html.

Whether this was done before or after recording, who knows. I'm betting on before.

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