TuxGuitar for Windows

Quick summary

TuxGuitar is a free, multitrack tablature editor and player geared toward musicians who compose, transcribe, or arrange music. It provides professional-level features for creating and auditioning tablature and standard notation without any cost, but beginners may find its feature set and layout initially intimidating.

Look and feel — interface and input options

• The layout is clean and uncluttered, designed to streamline composition tasks.
• You can enter notes directly on a staff, or use a virtual guitar fretboard or a piano keyboard to input material.
• The editor supports all common note values (whole through sixty-fourth notes), clefs, time signatures, and tempo settings.
• Standard notation markings and articulations are available, as are tools to raise or lower a note’s pitch.

Playback, file compatibility, and instruments

• TuxGuitar includes a built-in player so you can listen to your composition as you edit and make iterative improvements.
• It ships with a collection of instrument sounds and allows you to hear an accurate rendition of the current score.
• Import and export are supported for Guitar Pro formats (GP3, GP4, GP5), making it easy to move files between tools.

Learning curve and support resources

• New users often find the program overwhelming at first because of the many tools and settings.
• The bundled help documentation and extensive user guides are useful for learning the workflow and shortening the ramp-up time.
• Once you become familiar with the interface, routine tasks become much faster and more intuitive.

Alternative to consider

If you prefer a different layout or a simpler entry point, Power Tab Editor is a commonly recommended free alternative for tablature editing and playback.

Recent enhancements and fixes

• Numerous bug fixes and stability improvements.
• Added support for Audio Unit plugin hosting.
• Introduced native Cocoa integration on supported platforms.
• New community integration features for easier collaboration.
• Added JACK audio backend support.
• Improved FluidSynth integration for better sound rendering.
• Enhanced LilyPond export plugin.
• Track clipboard improvements: configurable paste count.
• Tools to clean multiple measures at once.
• New capability to add several measures in a single operation.
• Expanded song/property options for finer project control.
• Move beats left and right functionality added.
• Optional automatic transposition of affected notes when changing tuning.
• New transpose-notes tool for shifting pitch across selections.
• Measure-range loop support for focused playback of a section.