What this does
It reads a guitar tab PDF and writes a Guitar Pro file from it, so a
transcription you only have as a PDF can be opened, played, slowed down,
edited and re-exported like any other. The notes, strings and frets come
from the tab; the rhythm comes from the notation staff above it; the time
signature, tempo and a named tuning come from the page. It writes .gp5,
which Guitar Pro 5 through 8, TuxGuitar and MuseScore all open, and
MusicXML for everything else.
Everything happens in your browser. The PDF never leaves your machine.
How to use it
- Drop a tab PDF onto the tool, or press “Choose a tab PDF”.
- Read the report: bars, notes, time signature, tempo and tuning, and any bars whose rhythm had to be fitted.
- Check the preview against your PDF. It is drawn from the converted file, not from the PDF, so what you see is what you get.
- Download the
.gp5, or the MusicXML, and open it.
What it reads, measured
A converter should be judged on files with known answers, so this one is scored against PDFs that have the original Guitar Pro file beside them, where every note and length is known. On a set of Guitar Pro 7 and 8 exports it reads 98% of beats’ notes correctly, 93% of bars exactly, and gets 97% of note lengths right. Across a wider and messier set of 150 exports from Guitar Pro 5 to 8, many of them exercises whose answer files hold a whole band or more bars than the printed part, it reads 88% of beats’ notes and 81% of bars exactly, gets at least 95% of the notes right on 112 of the 150 files, and gets the lengths right on 92% of the beats it reads. The failures are measured too: mostly files whose answer file does not match the printed part bar for bar, and rhythm marks not yet read. Each release moves those numbers, and this page will say when they move; these are from 14 October 2026, after a set of test pages written to combine every note length, time signature and marking found a dozen smaller faults.
How a tab PDF is read
A PDF exported from notation software is not a picture. The fret numbers are text with positions, the staff lines are lines, the beams are shapes, and the noteheads, rests and flags are glyphs from a music font. The converter reads those, finds the tab staves by their evenly spaced lines, the bars by their bar lines, and each fret number by the string line it is centred on. Rhythm comes from the notation: a stem per beat, beams between stems for eighths and shorter, flags on lone short notes, hollow heads for halves and wholes, dots, rests and tuplet numbers. Every bar’s readings are checked against the time signature, printed or inferred from the bars themselves.
Limitations
Scans and photographs are not read. A scanned tab book is a picture of a page, and reading digits out of a picture is a different and harder job, which this version does not attempt. Phone photographs of pages are not planned.
Articulations are not read. Bends, slides, hammer-ons, pull-offs, vibrato, palm muting and harmonics are left for you to add in Guitar Pro.
One part per tab staff. A PDF with two tab staves per system becomes two tracks when their bar lines align. Lyrics, chord diagrams and text between systems are ignored.
Tuning is read from a printed name. “Drop D tuning”, “Eb standard” and the like are recognised; a tuning only shown by the notation’s pitches is not yet, so a file without a tuning line comes out in standard tuning and can be changed in Guitar Pro.
Guitar Pro and this page
Guitar Pro is a trademark of Arobas Music, which has no connection with this page. This converts a file you already have, on your own machine; it hosts no tab and sees none.