Customer Reviews

eMedia GuitarPro 5.1 Win/Mac

5 star:		(16)
4 star:		(11)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(8)

 

 

This review is written from the prospect of using Guitar Pro for Classical Guitar purposes. I have tried many notation programs for classical guitar. None are perfect. I've concluded that you need a high end music notation program for professional looking scores and another program for doing transcriptions for personal use or sharing.

On the high end, the choices are Finale, Sibelius, or Lilypond. I chose Finale for this purpose. You can do anything with it, but there is a steep price to pay. It is not intuitive at all, and it's expensive. The interface is a cluster of years of buildup. One wouldn't design a user interface like this from scratch. If I didn't already own Finale, I'd might go with Lilypond, or look more carefully into Musecore.

But I decided that I needed a notation program for simple transcriptions. Here are the ones that I tried in increasing order of my preference:
1) TablEdit - seen some decent scores for this one on the web. Deal breaker the UI is confusing. I'd just as well use Finale for everything.
2) Power Tab - interface OK, free, lots of features. Deal breaker most of the focus is on the tab representation, very little on standard notation.
3) Tux Guitar - nice interface, very similar to Guitar Pro, free. Deal breaker can't add fingerings. This program may eventually catch Guitar Pro.
4) Guitar Pro - nice interface, will do just about everything necessary easily. Can display/print standard notation only, tab notation, or both. Output is very good. ASCII import. Drawbacks for standard notation are that fingering are unconventional in location and labeling, bar can only be specified though text input, crescendo specified through volume control which is tied to a track(s).

In the end, the decision was an easy one. It just took a while to download all of the programs and try them out. Hopefully, I just saved you a little time.

Update 11-04-2010:
Since I wrote this review, I've switched from Finale to Lilypond. Even though I am a programmer, I was intimidated by Lilypond until I discovered using Frescobaldi (available on Linux only) as a front end. This system is just a pleasure to use and way easier than Finale. Lilypond doesn't do tab very well at the moment, so I'll likely continue using Guitar Pro when I need tab.

For over 10 years now I have tabbed songs by ear, and frequently used many of the millions of tabs you can find online, however I would be doing them in whats called an ASCII (Ask ee) method, and i've been fine with that up until I recently discovered this AWESOME program.

ASCII for me now is a thing of the past now that I have discovered this program.

It's quick and easy to install. It works for both Windows and Mac systems.

So you open the program up, and you get a blank music sheet. Then all you simply have to do is click where you want to insert your note, and type it in, and use the arrows, and also use the many tools that come with it to create your songs.

It shows it in both tabliture, and music notation form whenever you insert your note into either of the two bars. So that is a great feature for those who read both tab and proper notation sheet music.

Once you have done your tab, and sorted out the tools for the notes. You can press a play button and it will play what you have tabbed out. So you can actually listen to it! A feature that will help improve so many players out there, and also help musicians to compose music.

And tho I sound like an infomercial, thats not all, you can also have multiple tracks. You can have as many guitar tracks as you want, bass tracks, percussion, even banjos, harmonicas, bagpipes... the (drum tab being tabbed out is not that of drum tabs tho)

All those tracks (separate paged tabs)will all play together at the same time when you hit play, or you can chose options to play them solo, or which one's you want to hear and don't with a simple S for solo, or M for mute option. Or neither to have them just play.

Also each track (tab page) is easily tunable. by default it is EADGBE but you can select from a heap of pre-set tunings, or just type in your own tuning. You can also have 4 to 7 strings for the tab notation, not just the standard 6.

There is also an extension for this program called Real Sound Engine (RSE) the G-pro is about 11 megs, but the RSE 300 or more meg add on is an option you might like. What it does is allows you to select what you wan't your instrument to sound like. So rather then it sound like a MIDI file during playback, you can have realistic guitars and effect sounds, bass, drums, etc... it does add so much life to your music. You can even then export your tab into wav form or midi, as well as some other audio forms.

The program even has great import options. You can import your old ASCII tabs straight into this program with the click of a button. It ignores all the |----| and just imports the numbers to the corresponding string.
You may just have to change the .txt extension to .tab if it fails for you. But I think it works both ways. If not, just open up word pad and save it as whatever.tab. And GP5 will open it no problems.

Not only that, it even allows you to import "Power Tabs" and various other forms of music.

I can't think of anything this program can not do already that I would wish for it to do. If someone had have said to me to give thoughts about what you would like to see in a tab editor, believe me, I could not have come up with an idea half as good as this program.

If you have not got this program, you don't know what you are missing out on.

Authors note: review applies to Guitar Pro version: 5.2

this program is great and easy to use and good for either composing or for learning songs. almost any song you want is available tabbed out and free for download online. the CD i got didnt install right and threw errors, but you can download it using the product key that comes with the CD.

Got to say something about Guitar Pro 6. First, I have used GP5 for a long time and love it. When I saw that GP6 was out, I was hot to get it. $30 for the upgrade sounds like a great deal.

But,I downloaded the new version and registered. They sent me new ID and Key numbers, but they did not work. I told them about it and they said it was a server problem and to try again. So I did, about 100 times and it still did not work. I have given up on getting GP6, and from what I've read about it, I haven't lost much.

The last part of this story is that they will not give me my money back. Now, they simply will not respond to my requests. They just ignore me. OK, there are times I may deserve being ignored, but not here. I never have been nasty, and all I asked is that they either help me get it running or give my money back. They have done neither.

So, Since the new version is not all that much an improvement over GP5, I'd say don't take the chance unless you want a boat load of agravation and have more money than you need. This won't be everyone's story, but it is mine

I love it. When you get the right Tab arrangement for a tune you are working on, it's just great.

This is super cool for learning guitar tabs.... there are web sites that have a lot of songs and you can see and hear the tab as well as different instruments in the tab..... really nice and fun to use.

I started playing guitar November of 2008. I have never took lessons I use mainly youtube and guitar tabs found online. using the tabs found online was fine for a while, but the only way I could hear the song is on I-tunes and I couldn't slow it down.
This program works great for what I need. I can go to the same site I normaly get tabs and get a .gp5 file and open it in guitar pro. I can then switch between different tracks whether its guitar 1 or 2 or drums. and even turn some of them off. you can slow the tempo down and really get the hang of tough tricky parts rather than listening to a full speed song on I-tunes with all the other stuff mixed in.
However I would like to know why the RSE Real Sound Engine dosent seem to work on my Mac Book Pro.
one other thing, It dosent come with an instruction book so its learn as you go method, (which im doing with the guitar right now, funny how that works out)

other than that, I like the program sofar. Maybe now I can learn a full song instead of just intro's and short riffs.

i have been teaching music for 15 years, and this product is the best teaching tool for all music.it can't get any better. thanks for this great
product.

I have had both the Windows version and the Mac version of this program and have found a few bugs in both: the Windows version has a more logical user interface but crashed OFTEN (1/4 of the time) ; the Mac version seems to be more stable (probably more a testament to the OS than anything) but has its bugs too - e.g., digital tuner is flaky (can only get the 'needle' to show up 1/2 the time).

I sent an email to eMedia support 3 weeks ago about the bug, still no word.

The realistic sound engine is great. Its main screen is very easy to navigate. It has a wide array of goodies such as: Scales, tuner, and many more. This is a product that works for all skill levels.
The pros:
Many cool features, great sound engine, easy to compose in tab or standard notation (good for the classical player)
The cons:
At or around $60.00, it may turn away the musicians on a tight budget.
Overall conclusion:
A great product, maybe a "little" expensive, but overall the features do make the product worth buying.