Real-time collaboration

Tabula’s whole reason for existing is that your band can work on the same song at the same time. Open a song that a bandmate also has open and you’ll see each other live.

Presence

Everyone currently in a song appears as a colored avatar in the top bar — a profile picture if they have one, otherwise their initials on a color that’s unique and consistent to them (so “the purple one” is always the same person). The avatars update live as people come and go.

Live cursors

As your bandmates edit, their cursors appear right on the score, labeled with their initials, so you can see who’s working where. In the screenshot above, one collaborator’s caret is parked on a beat in bar 3. A cursor disappears when that person switches to another tab or window, so you’re never chasing a stale marker.

How edits merge

Tabula syncs continuously and is built so that simultaneous edits don’t clobber each other. Two people can work in different parts of the song — or even the same bar — and both sets of changes are kept and merged automatically. There’s no “lock”, no “check out”, and no overwriting someone else’s work by saving. The Saved indicator in the top bar confirms your changes are persisted.

Undo operates on your own edits, so undoing won’t reach over and revert a bandmate’s note.

When someone’s offline

You don’t all have to be online together. Because the song is stored centrally, anyone can pick it up later, and their view reflects everything that’s happened since they were last in. If your connection drops, Tabula reconnects and catches you up.

Talking while you work

Live cursors tell you where someone is; for why, use comments to pin a note to a specific beat or section, or start a synchronized playback session so the whole band hears the same passage at the same instant.