intabulo ?

intabulo

Sheet music, written out as lute or guitar tablature.

Upload a PDF, choose your instrument and its tuning, and a tablature PDF comes back. Free to try, and no account is needed for that.

Greensleeves, the opening bars ♯ The same bars as tablature, for a 6-course lute in Renaissance G 0 3 0 2 4 2 0 2 3 0 2 3 0 0
  1. 1Upload the sheet music as a PDF, or a corrected MusicXML.
  2. 2A model reads the notes off the page. A MusicXML file already holds them.
  3. 3You get the tablature back as a PDF.

Convert a piece

3 of 3 conversions left today.

Sheet music (PDF or MusicXML)
No file chosen yet

PDF or MusicXML, up to 10 MB and 4 pages.

A MusicXML file is read straight out of the file, with no model and at no cost: correct what was misread in MuseScore, send it back, and the tablature has no mistakes in it.

Naming a conversion needs an account.

Automatic picks the shift that keeps the frets lowest.

Further formats to send back Sign in to use these. The tablature PDF comes back either way.

None of these costs anything or takes any longer: they are worked out from the same reading, with no further use of the model.

To play from. Always included.

To check by eye what was read off your page before trusting the tablature. Not for editing — it is a picture of the reading, not the reading.

To open in MuseScore, correct what was misread, and upload again for a perfect tablature. Carries both the notes and the fret numbers. This is the most useful of the four.

To hear the reading. The ear catches a wrong pitch faster than the eye, and a voice that has gone astray is obvious within a bar. Not for performance and not for judging timing: rests are not read yet, so the voices drift apart as the piece goes on.

Model: Local model (free) Open to choose a different one

This one needs an account.

You can convert without an account. What comes back stays here for 24 hours and is then deleted.

How it works

A model reads the notes off your PDF. Every pitch is then placed on your instrument: the highest voice keeps its ordinary notation, and everything below it becomes a course and a fret. That second step is arithmetic, so it is exact — the automatic transposition simply tries every shift and keeps the one with the lowest frets.

The reading is the uncertain part. A modern printed edition comes out well; a poor scan of a 16th-century facsimile does not. Ask for the notes as they were read, and compare them with your original before you learn a piece.