tabscroll - Neat guitar tab scroller.

tabscroll is a (Ruby-powered) guitar tab scroller on the terminal.

It supports forward and backwards auto-scrolling and currently reads a nice range of guitar tabs.

Usage and Screenshots

$ tabscroll my-guitar-tab.txt

Guitar tab file format and troubleshooting

tabscroll only works with textual guitar tabs, not chords with lyrics.

It attempts to read any kind of tab format (although it works better with tabs exported from Guitar Pro). For now it requires you to split each tab row with a blank line. For example, this would work:

  E  S S S S S  S Q    S S S S    E  S S S S S  S E  S S S S S  S
--0--------0------0----L---0-1-|--0----------0h-1-0----------0h-1-|
--1----------0h-1-1----L-1-----|--1----1----------1----1----------|
------------------0----L-------|--2--2-----2------0--0-----0------|
-----0-2----------2----L-------|--3------3--------2------2--------|
--3------3--------3----L-------|----------------------------------|
-------------------------------|----------------------------------|

  E  S S S S S S E  S S S S  S S    E  S S S S S  S E  S S S S S  S
--0----3---0-----5--3---0------0-|--L----------0h-1-0----------3p-1-|
--1----------1-3-0--------3p-0---|--1----1----------1----1----------|
--2--2---2-------0----0----------|--2--2-----2------0--0-----0------|
---------------------------------|--3------3--------2------2--------|
--0------------------------------|----------------------------------|
-----------------3------3--------|----------------------------------|

But this wouldn't:

--0--------0------0----L---0-1-|--0----------0h-1-0----------0h-1-|
--1----------0h-1-1----L-1-----|--1----1----------1----1----------|
------------------0----L-------|--2--2-----2------0--0-----0------|
-----0-2----------2----L-------|--3------3--------2------2--------|
--3------3--------3----L-------|----------------------------------|
-------------------------------|----------------------------------|
--0----3---0-----5--3---0------0-|--L----------0h-1-0----------3p-1-|
--1----------1-3-0--------3p-0---|--1----1----------1----1----------|
--2--2---2-------0----0----------|--2--2-----2------0--0-----0------|
---------------------------------|--3------3--------2------2--------|
--0------------------------------|----------------------------------|
-----------------3------3--------|----------------------------------|

So if something bad happens and the program crashes, edit the tab making sure to keep a consistent tab format (6 in 6 lines, or 5 in 5) each with a blank line inbetween.

At worse, please comment (add # at the start of) any line that's not the tab (you know, author info, instructions, etc). Sorry for the inconvenience, I plan to improve a lot the detection of tabs on the future.

Contact

Hi, I'm Alexandre Dantas! Thanks for having interest in this project. Please take the time to visit any of the links below.

• tabscroll homepage: http://www.alexdantas.net/projects/tabscroll
• Contact: eu @ alexdantas.net
• My homepage: http://www.alexdantas.net