15. Saving and exporting

Exporting Guitar Pro

Stab writes Guitar Pro files in two formats, so you can hand a tab to someone who doesn’t use Stab:

• Guitar Pro 7 and 8 (.gp), Guitar Pro’s own format today. It holds more of the song: four voices, keys parts, every grace note. See Guitar Pro 7 and 8 (.gp).
• Guitar Pro 5 (.gp5), which older versions of Guitar Pro and most tab apps and sites open.

Either way, Stab writes the song as it plays, its timing turned into notation.

Exporting Guitar Pro

Available on every platform.

Exporting

1. Open the Export sheet and pick Guitar Pro (or choose File › Export As › Guitar Pro…).
2. Choose What and Tracks, the Version (Guitar Pro 7 and 8 (.gp), or Guitar Pro 5 (.gp5)) and the Rhythm: As Played or Clean for Reading (see below). Under them, the sheet says what the version won’t hold.
3. Choose Export.Choose Download. If the format had to change something as it wrote, the note that says it’s done says what.

Exact timing or clean notation

What you play in Stab can sit anywhere in time; notation has a grid. The export writes each note on a straight or triplet grid, with ties and rests added. You choose how:

• As Played: each note as close as notation gets to where it was played, so the file plays back close to the song. Notes the grid had to move are counted in the message.
• Clean for Reading: the coarsest grid that fits, notes held on to the next one, short notes written full length as staccato, ties on the beats. The file reads well; the small offsets of the playing are lost.

What a Guitar Pro 5 file holds

• Fretted tracks and drums, with their tuning, capo, instrument, volume, pan, mute and solo.
• The first two voices of each track. Guitar Pro 5 has two; a third is left out.
• Time signatures, tempo changes and markers. Repeats and jumps (D.C., D.S., a coda) are written out as they play.
• Techniques: ties, dead and ghost notes, accents, dynamics, hammer-ons, pull-offs and slides, palm mute, let ring, staccato, vibrato, harmonics (natural, artificial, tapped, pinch and semi), bends, one grace note per note, tremolo picking and trills, strums (a stroke and its speed; an arpeggio as a stroke), pick direction, and rasgueados (Guitar Pro 5 keeps only that there is one).
• Lyrics of one track. Guitar Pro 5 gives each note in turn the next syllable, so when a note without a syllable sits among them, the lyrics are left out rather than shifted.
• Smart Tracks as the notes they play, and the Chords track’s chords on a part.

Keys lanes aren’t written (Guitar Pro 5 tracks are fretted), and a song with no fretted track and no drums can’t be exported as .gp5. A slur is written only where it’s a hammer-on or pull-off on one string.

Guitar Pro 7 and 8 (.gp)

A .gp file opens in Guitar Pro 7 and 8 and in the apps that read them. It holds the same song, written the same way, and more:

• Four voices a track.
• Keys lanes, as pitched tracks (a piano’s, a synth’s), with their notes’ pitches.
• Every grace note of a note, before the beat or on it.
• Any tuplet, five in the time of three as well as triplets and quintuplets.
• Tempo ramps, as Guitar Pro’s gradual tempo changes.
• Lyrics on their notes, each pass its verse, and a rasgueado’s pattern.
• Text as it is, accents and symbols included (♯, é).

Audio and chord tracks hold no notes, so they’re left out. A bend keeps its start, its peak and its end. Drum hits are written on a kit of the General MIDI notes the track plays, and a keys track on one staff. Fingering isn’t written in a .gp; a .gp5 keeps it.

What neither format keeps

Some of a song stays in Stab: its sound (amps, effects and the mix’s chains), automation lanes (volume, pan or instrument changing over time), the whammy bar, and crescendo and diminuendo hairpins (the dynamics themselves are written). Repeats are played out rather than written as repeat signs. For a score to finish in a notation app, export MusicXML; to print or read it, a PDF.

The message after exporting

When something didn’t fit, Stab says so, a line each: notes placed on the notation grid, short notes written as staccato, keys lanes left out (in a .gp: audio and chord tracks), voices past the second left out (in a .gp: past the fourth), notes left out for want of room on their beat (a drum chord of more than six hits, or one string played twice at once), slurs left out, lyrics left out, bends simplified (in a .gp). A fret you dragged past the neck is moved to a string that plays the note, or, when no string can, put on the nearest fret, so it sounds a different pitch; the message says how many and where the first one is (its track and bar). Nothing is said when the file holds it all.

A song shared with you whose owner keeps it in Stab has no exports; see Shared songs. Any song you can open, you can export.