14. Bringing music in

Text tab

Most tabs shared on the web are plain text: a line for each string, with the frets along it. Stab reads them, from a .txt file or pasted, and turns them into tab you can play, slow down and edit.

Plain-text tab

Available on every platform.

Opening a text tab

1. Choose Open… (⌘O)Open… (Ctrl+O)Import… from the File menu, or Import a File under Bring a Song In on the home. On the home, under Bring a Song In, choose Import a File.
2. Pick a .txt or .tab file.

Pasting a tab into a song

What Stab reads

• Staves: lines of a string each, the highest at the top, like e|--0--3--|. The letters before the lines are the tuning: D A D G B E reads as drop D. A staff without them is in standard tuning, a four-line staff a bass.
• Bars between the | lines. A count after a staff, like x2 or (x4), plays its bars that many times.
• Techniques: x a dead note, (5) a ghost note, <12> a natural harmonic, 5h7 and 7p5 a hammer-on and a pull-off, 5/7, 7\5 and 5s7 slides, /5 slid into, 7b9 a bend (and 7b9r7 bent and released), 5~ vibrato, t12 a tap. A PM---- line over a staff palm-mutes the notes under it.
• Chords written over a staff, at the columns they stand over, and words written under it, each on the note under its first letter.
• Headings: [Chorus] or Verse: over a staff becomes a section. A part’s name, like Guitar 2, Bass or Drums, puts its staves on a track of their own; the staves of a text tab without names follow each other on one track.
• Drums, by the pieces’ names: HH, SD, BD, CC, RC, T1, FT and the others, hits written x or o.

Rhythm

A text tab doesn’t write rhythm: Stab reads it from the spacing. Each bar is a bar of 4/4, its columns spread evenly over it, every note placed on the nearest sixteenth (or triplet, where those fit the bar better). A note lasts until the next one. A long staff with no bars inside it is read as eighth notes. Check the rhythm against a recording, and fix what the spacing didn’t say.