Guitar Pro 5 - Tablature Composing and Playing Software

Tabs are really great for learning how to play guitar. They show you exactly how to play a song note for note and you don’t have to know very much about playing a guitar to understand them. However, a major problem with tabs is they do not represent tempo or timing accurately. This can be a real problem when you are trying to figure out the rhythm of a riff. Unlike sheet music, a tab will tell you everything about what to do with your fretting hand, but very little about how to strum. I found this program called Guitar Pro a few years ago. Basically what it does is it takes a tab file and it plays it back to you in the form of a MIDI. If you aren’t familiar with the sound of a MIDI, it’s similar to the sound of a polyphonic cell phone ring. Now although you wouldn’t want to jam with a cell phone, it does the trick for helping you learn a song because you can see the tab being played as you hear the notes. Also, the program gives you the ability to slow down the tempo so you can hear and see it played slowly. This feature alone is what makes it an amazing tool. Guitar Pro isn’t a simple program either, it interprets all different forms of guitar technique including slides, hammer-ons and pull-offs bends, muting, harmonics, tapping, tremolo and much more.