Guitar and Bass Tablatures

GuitarTeX knows two new directives for printing tablature lines:

Every guitartab or basstab directive represents one line of tablature. You can even create empty tablatures by typing {guitartab: } or {basstab: }. Leave an empty line before the tab directive to make it start at the left margin.

Between the brackets you can type

Figure 5-1. Tablature icons

Instead of typing the lines by yourself, you can use the tablature icons (see Figure 5-1). Clicking on the Guitar or Bass button inserts the directive at the cursor position. To insert a note, type the fret number into the input field and then ckick on a button to choose a string. The note will be inserted at the cursor position. After this the focus comes back to the input field (not to the main text field) so you can enter several notes by always typing the fret number and clicking the string button.

Examples

Example 5-14. Empty guitar tablature

{guitartab:}

Tablature example

Example 5-15. A bass tab with some text

{basstab:some text}

Tablature example

Example 5-16. Typesetting notes, bars and extra spaces

{guitartab:[2;3][3;0][3;2][3;3]|[4;0]__[4;2]__[5;0]__[5;1]|}

Tablature example

Example 5-17. Putting text under the notes

{guitartab:[2;3]do [3;0]re [3;2]mi [3;3]fa |[4;0]so [4;2]la [5;0]si [5;1]do|}

Tablature example

Example 5-18. A simple bass tab

{basstab:[2;5][2;5]|[2;5][2;5]|[3;5][3;5]|[2;5][2;5]|[3;7][3;7]|[3;5][3;5]|[2;5]}

Tablature example

Example 5-19. Chords

{guitartab:[2;3]&[3;5]&[4;5]C (power chord) |[2;3]&[3;2]&[4;0]&[5;1]C chord}

Tablature example