What is Tabula?
Tabula is a collaborative tablature and notation editor that runs in your browser. It lets you and your bandmates write, arrange, and share music together in real time — no installs, no emailing files back and forth, no arguing over which version is current.
What you can do
Section titled “What you can do”- Write music your way — Type fret numbers on a tab staff for guitar and bass, letter keys for pitched instruments (piano, voice, winds), and digit keys for drum-kit pieces. Standard notation is rendered alongside the tab automatically.
- Collaborate in real time — See your bandmates’ cursors as they edit, with live presence avatars. Every change syncs instantly to everyone with the song open.
- Play it back together — Hear your song through General MIDI playback in the browser, and play together so everyone who joins hears the same thing at the same time.
- Try things safely — Branch a take to test an idea without touching the version the band is relying on, then merge back the parts that worked.
- Talk in context — Leave comments pinned to a specific beat, measure, or run, and resolve them when they’re handled.
- Plan the gig — Put songs in a running order with breaks and notes, fit it to your slot with a target length, and print it for the stage.
- Stay organized — Group songs into folders inside a band, search your library, and keep a full activity history of who changed what.
- Export anywhere — Download your music as PDF, MIDI, MusicXML, or Tabula’s native format. Your music is yours.
- Bring an AI assistant — Connect Claude, or any MCP client, and ask for changes in words. It edits the real song, live, alongside everyone else.
Who it’s for
Section titled “Who it’s for”Tabula is built for bands. If you’ve ever emailed tab files back and forth, lost track of which version of the bridge is current, or wished you could just edit the same song at the same time — that’s what Tabula solves.
How it fits together
Section titled “How it fits together”Everything in Tabula lives inside a band — a shared workspace for you and your collaborators. A band holds your songs (optionally grouped into folders), your set lists, your members and their roles, and a record of recent activity. When you open a song you land in the editor, where you write notation, play it back, and discuss it with comments.
The rest of these docs walk through each of those areas in depth:
- Editing — entering notes, rhythm, techniques, song structure, and the full keyboard reference.
- Collaboration — real-time editing, bands and roles, invites, and the activity feed.
- Playback — the transport, the mixer, and playing together in sync.
- Takes — branching alternate versions of a song, and merging them back.
- Set lists — running orders for a gig or rehearsal, their timings, and printing them.
- Comments — pinning discussion to the score.
- Organizing your music — folders, search, trash, and creating or importing songs.
- Exporting — taking your music out as PDF, MIDI, MusicXML, or NSF.
- AI Assistants — connecting an assistant to your bands, and what it can do once it’s there.