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Tablature Viewer

Available at https://tabviewer.app. Here is a demo tablature.

  • Paste a regular plain text tablature or chord sheet and then view it in a nicely formatted and colorized way.
  • Transpose chords
  • Autoscroll feature
  • All the tablature information is stored in the URL, so you easily can bookmark and save your tabs. No more dealing with all them ad-heavy tablature sites :)
  • Search for tabs and chords in third party databases. Currently we only search the database from ultimate-guitar.com, but more may follow.
  • Optionally view the tablature in the base twelve numerical system. (Turn option dozenalization on)

Can I print the sheets on paper?

Yes you can. Press Ctrl/Cmd-P in the browser.

Can I customize the color theme?

Yes you can. Install the Stylish browser extension and override the color CSS variables in index.css.

I want to undo my changes after I've already saved it

Every saved version is added to your browser history. You can navigate them by going back and forth just like you would on other websites.

How do I keep my bookmark up-to-date when modifying a tab?

There are browser-extensions which can help you with this. For firefox there is Update Bookmark which reduces the amount of clicks you have to do to update an existing bookmark.

What is the base twelve numerical system?

The base twelve system (also called dozenal or duodecimal system) is a number system in which we count till twelve instead of ten, and have dedicated symbols for ten (↊, a turned two) and eleven (↋, a turned three).

Subsequent numbers in the dozenal system:

  • 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 6, 7, 8, 9, ↊, ↋, 10, 11, ...

Subsequent numbers in the decimal system:

  • 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, ...

The reason that a turned two and three have been chosen as symbols for ten and eleven is because the Dozenal Society of Great Britain has proposed this and it is a generally accepted notation. Akin to hexadecimal notation, a and b are also widely used, but these have other meanings in guitar tablature already.

Why would you want to use the base twelve numerical system?

In the end it is just a matter of fun or personal preference, but you might like because an octave consists of 12 frets. This makes the counting above the octave a little easier, because in the dozenal system, fret 15 would mean "five frets above the octave". The idea is that once you get used to using the dozenal system for reading tablature you require less mental work when reading tablature. But it's mostly for fun.

How do you pronounce numbers in the dozenal system?

↊ and ↋ are usually just pronounced ten and eleven respectively. 10 is pronounced do, 11 do one, 12 do two and so on. So five notes above the octave is called do five. It's funny coincidence here that the octave note has been called do in musical solfège for centuries. For more information about pronounciation read more about the do-gro-mo system.

How do I keep tabs that are already dozenal themselves from being redozenalized?

You can put the word "dozenal" or "dozenalized" in the title (first line) of your tab, e.g. by appending (dozenal) to it. This will turn off dozenalization for that tab, regardless of your settings.

Setup dev environment

  • Install Node.js (64 bit)
  • Clone the repo
  • Run npm install
  • Run npm run serve

Feature roadmap