About SimpleNotation

A free, browser-based notation and guitar tab editor, built because the simple tool we were looking for did not exist.

Our story

We could already play the piano when we decided to learn the guitar. Like most people today we started with YouTube lessons, especially Lauren Bateman's, and they were great. The problem came right after each video: we wanted to write down the notes and frets the lesson used, print them, or put them on an iPad to practise from, and we could not find an easy way to do it.

The software that could do it, Guitar Pro and the big notation suites, was built for professional engraving and full band scores. For writing down a lesson it was oversized, and it was too expensive for what we needed. We liked guitarnotation.com a lot, but we wanted something that lived online: open a browser, type the notes, hear them, print them, done. In the end we built it ourselves.

What it does today

SimpleNotation writes standard notation and guitar tab side by side. You type pitches with the letters A to G or fret numbers straight onto the tab, play the result back with synthesized instruments, see every note on a fretboard or piano, transpose with correct spelling, and export a PDF to print or to keep on a tablet. It opens Guitar Pro, MusicXML and MIDI files, and exports Guitar Pro, plain-text tab, MusicXML and MIDI for other programs, PNG images to share, and MP3 or WAV audio to practise along with. It is free, it needs no download, and you can start without an account.

• Open the demo score
• See all features
• Read the FAQ

How it is built

The editor is written in TypeScript and runs entirely in your browser: the score is engraved on an HTML canvas with the Bravura music font, playback uses the Web Audio API with instruments synthesized on the fly, and Guitar Pro files are read with the open-source alphaTab library. Saved scores live on a small server with version history, so you can share a link or go back to an earlier take.

Who

SimpleNotation is made by C. Kerger in San Francisco, California. It is an independent project with no outside funding and no ads. If you find a bug, miss a feature, or just want to say hello, send a message.