Guitar tablatures typesetting?

Question

So I kindof wanted to leave old and ugly ascii-art tabs and produce something nice, but found there's probably no method to typeset actual guitar tabs in TeX.

All I found was:

• MusiXTeX for classical music notation
• songbook for lyrics+chords above
• guitar.sty for something similar.

Is there something that does tabs and I missed it?

edit: I need TeX text around, it's for a (kind of) guitar textbook.

Answer 1

Are you searching for something like this? http://www.texample.net/tikz/examples/guitar-chords/

Answer 2

My recommendation is to use LilyPond, which I believe was formerly based on TeX. It is possibly the best solution you can get for free. The file in my comment to your question is said to be typeset in it. Here is another possible output with displayed chords.

Answer 3

In case anybody stumbles onto this question (like I just did):

I remembered having tried something like a tabulature with musixtex a little while ago. It is only a start and far from being perfect but shows that tabulatures can be done with a little effort.

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{musixtex,graphicx}

% custom clef
\newcommand\TAB[1]{%
  \setclefsymbol{#1}{\,\rotatebox{90}{TAB}}%
  \setclef{#1}9}

% internal string choosing command
%  #1: string (a number from 1--6)
%  #2: finger
\makeatletter
\newcommand\@str[2]{%
  \ifcase#1\relax\@strerror
  \or\def\@strnr{-1}%
  \or\def\@strnr{1}%
  \or\def\@strnr{3}%
  \or\def\@strnr{5}%
  \or\def\@strnr{7}%
  \or\def\@strnr{9}%
  \else\@strerror
  \fi
  \zchar\@strnr{\footnotesize#2}}
% \@strerror could be defined to issue some warning/error

% User level commands
\newcommand\STr[2]{\@str{#1}{#2}\sk}  % with a full note skip
\newcommand\Str[2]{\@str{#1}{#2}\hsk} % with a half note skip
\newcommand\str[2]{\@str{#1}{#2}}     % with no skip
\makeatother
\begin{document}

\setlength\parindent{0pt}
\begin{music}
 \instrumentnumber{1}
 \nobarnumbers
 \TAB1
 \setlines1{6}
 \startpiece
   \Notes\hsk\STr37\en
   \Notes\Str45\en
   \Notes\Str55\en
   \Notes\Str65\en
 \bar
   \Notes\str67\Str36\en
   \Notes\Str45\en
   \Notes\Str55\en
   \Notes\Str67\en
 \bar
   \Notes\str68\Str35\en
   \Notes\Str45\en
   \Notes\Str55\en
   \Notes\Str68\en
  \bar
   \Notes\Str34\en
   \Notes\Str42\en
   \Notes\Str53\en
   \Notes\Str62\en
  \bar
   \Notes\Str33\en
   \Notes\Str42\en
   \Notes\Str51\en
   \Notes\itieu0r\Str60\en
  \bar
   \Notes\ttie0\Str60\en
   \Notes\Str51\en
   \Notes\Str42\en
   \Notes\Str33\en
  \bar
   \Notes\Str13\en
   \Notes\Str20\en
   \Notes\STr20\en
  \bar
   \Notes\STr20\en
   \Notes\Str28\en
   \Notes\STr27\en
  \endpiece
\end{music}

\end{document}

_{Any one able to spot the song? ;)}

Answer 4

I recently wanted to recreate chord tablature sheets that my guitar teacher used to use in his lessons. They were basically a grid of small tables with 5 times 4 cells. These tables were then filled by hand with the chords I was supposed to remember. Creating these tables is a piece of cake but I wanted the possibility to add the chord schemes with LaTeX, adding position, fingers, barrés, specify the root etc. with an easy syntax. I also wanted a similarly easy syntax for creating tablatures of scales.

I did what I always do in these cases: I wrote me a little package, guitarchordschemes, that allows to do that. Below are a few examples:

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage[T1]{fontenc}
\usepackage{guitarchordschemes}

\begin{document}

\chordscheme[
  name     = Gmi\textsuperscript{7($\flat$5)} ,
  position = IX ,
  finger   = {3/4, 2/3, 3/2} ,
  root     = {2/5} ,
  mute     = {1,6}
]

\end{document}

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage[T1]{fontenc}
\usepackage{guitarchordschemes}

\begin{document}

\chordscheme[
  name      = Gmi\textsuperscript{7($\flat$5)} ,
  position  = IX ,
  finger    = {3/4:3, 2/3:2, 3/2:4} ,
  root      = {2/5:1} ,
  show-root = {4/3} ,
  mute      = {1,6}
]

\end{document}

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage[T1]{fontenc}
\usepackage{guitarchordschemes}

\begin{document}

\scales[
  name      = D major/position II ,
  position  = I ,
  fingering = type 3
]

\end{document}