Guitar Tab to MIDI

Turn ASCII tablature into a playable MIDI file

Paste the kind of text tab that lives in forums, song archives and text files — one line per string, fret numbers on the strings, dashes for rests — and download a real Standard MIDI File you can drop into a DAW, notation editor or any MIDI player.

The model is the familiar one: a stave is a grid of character columns, and the pitch of a fret number is open string + capo + fret + transpose. Every string carrying a fret in the same column starts together, so chords stay chords. A run of digits is one fret (12 is the twelfth fret, not a 1 and a 2), a column that is | on every string is a bar line and consumes no time, and articulation marks (h p b r s t / \ ~ ^ * . ( )) are skipped while the frets around them still sound. Several staves separated by blank or prose lines are concatenated in reading order, so a whole song file converts in one pass.

Open strings come from a tuning preset — auto reads the number of string lines (4 → bass, 5 → 5-string bass, 6 → guitar, 7/8 → extended range) or you can pick drop D, half/full step down, drop C, open G, open D, DADGAD or ukulele, or list exact pitches in custom tuning. Set a capo, transpose, tempo, velocity and a General MIDI instrument, choose how long one column lasts, and decide whether notes ring until the string's next note or stop after a single column.

Worked example

This eighth-note power-chord riff:

e|-------------|
B|-------------|
G|-------------|
D|--2--2--5--5-|
A|--2--2--5--5-|
E|--0--0--3--3-|

converts to 12 notes (four three-note chords: E5 twice, then G5 twice) on a 6-string stave in standard tuning, spanning E2 to D4. At the default 120 BPM with eighth-note columns each column lasts 0.25 s.

Headlessly, the same conversion runs through the CLI — the base64 .mid comes back in the response envelope:

gizza tool guitar-tab-to-midi "e|-------------|
B|-------------|
G|-------------|
D|--2--2--5--5-|
A|--2--2--5--5-|
E|--0--0--3--3-|" instrument=distortion-guitar tempo=132

Switch How time advances to only note columns when a tab's dash spacing is decorative rather than rhythmic: the onsets are then spaced evenly instead of following the layout.

Limits and edge cases

Text tablature carries pitch and order, not real rhythm — nothing in --3---5-- says how long a note is held. This converter therefore treats the grid as evenly spaced columns, which is faithful for most tabs and approximate for anything with a swing feel, triplets or mixed note values. Techniques are recognised as characters and skipped, not performed: a hammer-on, pull-off, slide, bend or vibrato mark does not bend pitch or add a note, so a bent note sounds at its written fret. x/X mutes are silent by default and become short muted notes on the open string when you enable that option.

Every stave in one conversion must use the same number of string lines, and the tuning must have that many strings — a 6-string preset against a 4-line bass tab is rejected with a message instead of a wrong file. Frets are capped at 36, resulting pitches must land inside MIDI 0–127 (a large negative transpose is what usually pushes them out), input is limited to 1 MiB and 20,000 notes, and tempo, capo, transpose and velocity are range-checked. Errors name the offending line and column. The output is a single-track format-0 file at 480 ticks per quarter note with one tempo event, one program change and one channel — drum tabs, per-note velocities, lyrics and multi-instrument arrangements are out of scope.

FAQ