Stop emailing Guitar Pro files to your band

ControlTab is a shared library for your band's tabs. It keeps every version of every song, shows what changed between two of them bar by bar, and lets the band agree on a change before it replaces the version everyone is practising.

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See what changed between two versions

When you upload a new version of a song, ControlTab lines it up against the previous one, bar by bar and track by track. Bars that were added, removed or rewritten are marked on both scores. You can step through the changes one at a time and listen to either side.

Inside a rewritten bar the notes are marked too: blue for a note that changed, green for one that was added, red for one that was removed, and a dashed outline for one that only shifted.

Two versions of a lead guitar part side by side in ControlTab. Bars 9 and 10 are highlighted, with changed notes outlined in blue, one added note in green and one removed note in red. — Bars 9 and 10 of the lead guitar in the demo song every new band starts with, Vivaldi's Summer. The current version is on the left and the proposed one on the right.

Sound checks: the band approves a change first

A new version doesn't have to replace the current one straight away. Open it as a sound check, with a note about what you changed, and everyone in the band sees the comparison. Anyone can comment on a specific bar, and then someone approves the version or dismisses it.

Until it is approved, the version people open and practise stays the same.

The top of an open sound check for the song Four Seasons: who proposed it and when, Dismiss and Approve and go live buttons, the description of what changed, and a count of 13 bars changed across four tracks. — Two parts of the open sound check on the demo song. The top of the page has the note about what changed and the buttons that settle it; the comment below it is pinned to bar 9 of the lead guitar.

The comments under the same sound check. One comment, tagged Bar 9, Lead - Distortion Guitar, reads: Love the jump up to the 9th fret here, keep it. — Two parts of the open sound check on the demo song. The top of the page has the note about what changed and the buttons that settle it; the comment below it is pinned to bar 9 of the lead guitar.

Play the tab in the browser

Every song opens as notation and tablature that plays back, so nobody needs Guitar Pro installed to hear a part.

You can slow it down to a quarter of the tempo or push it to double, put it on loop, mute or solo any track, and turn on a metronome and a count-in.

The ControlTab player showing the first bars of Vivaldi's Summer as notation and tablature, with the transport bar along the bottom: track selector, play button, loop, metronome, count-in and speed.

Setlists for rehearsals and gigs

A setlist is an ordered list of the band's songs with whatever goes between them: a break, a sample to trigger, a speech. Each entry can carry a note, such as a tuning change or who starts, and you drag entries to reorder them. A band can keep several setlists.

Press Play and ControlTab opens the first song in the player and moves on to the next one when it finishes, so you can run the whole set in order at a rehearsal. For the stage you can print a setlist or save it as a PDF, as a styled list or a plain three-column table. You can also export it as CSV, or copy it as text to paste into the band chat.

A setlist called Friday rehearsal in ControlTab with four numbered entries, each with a note: a sample called Intro tape, the song Four Seasons, a speech called Say hello and a short break. Above the list are buttons to add a song, break, sample or speech, and to play, export or save the setlist. — A demo setlist with one of each kind of entry. The coloured edge shows the kind: sample, song, speech, break.

What else is in it

Albums: Group songs into albums and keep them in track order.
Click tracks: Download a metronome track for any song as a WAV file, at the song's own tempo.
Public page: Mark a song as public and it appears on a page for your band that anyone can open without an account. Everything else stays with the band.
Members: Invite bandmates by email. One account can belong to several bands.
File formats: Guitar Pro .gp, .gp3, .gp4 and .gp5, and MusicXML (.musicxml, .xml, .mxl). Guitar Pro 6 .gpx files can't be read; open them in Guitar Pro and save them as .gp.

A side project by three friends

ControlTab is free, with no ads and no tracking. Three friends build it in their spare time and it is still in early access, so if something breaks, the bug button in the app reaches us directly.

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