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 start a synchronized playback session so the whole band hears the same thing at the same time.
- Talk in context — Leave comments pinned to a specific beat, measure, or run, and resolve them when they’re handled.
- 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.
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 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 synchronized “follow the leader” playback.
- Comments — pinning discussion to the score.
- Organizing your music — folders, set lists, search, trash, and creating or importing songs.
- Exporting — taking your music out as PDF, MIDI, MusicXML, or NSF.