Turn your guitar riff into a tab before you forget it

What you'll get back

Here's a riff run through BeatMap, as it came out. The tempo and key are at the top, which is useful when you come back to an idea months later.

Bars 1–2
e|------------------------------------------------|-------------------0-----------------0-----3----|
B|-------------------------0----------------------|-------------1-----------1----------------------|
G|-------------------0-----------0----------------|-------0-----------------------0----------------|
D|-------------2-----------------------2----------|------------------------------------------------|
A|-------2-----------------------------------2----|-------3----------------------------------------|
E|-0----------------------------------------------|------------------------------------------------|

Bars 3–4
e|-------------------------5-----------2----------|------------------------------------------------|
B|-------------------7-----------------------3----|-------------------------------------0----------|
G|-------------7----------------------------------|-------------------------0-----2----------------|
D|-0-----7----------------------------------------|------------------------------------------------|
A|------------------------------------------------|-2----------------------------------------------|
E|------------------------------------------------|-0----------------------------------------------|

How to record it so it comes out clean

• Get close. Hold the phone a foot or so from the guitar, in a quiet room.
• Play it plain, once or twice. Save the slides and bends for the real take. They're not written in the tab anyway.
• Stay clean. Use an unplugged or clean electric tone just for this. Distortion and heavy reverb make notes harder to hear.
• Don't count in out loud. Talking and tapping can turn into extra notes.
• One guitar at a time. Record the riff and the rhythm part as separate clips, and make a tab for each.
• Set your tuning first. Standard, Drop D and half-step down are supported.

What it doesn't do

• It doesn't write bends, slides, hammer-ons or palm mutes.
• It has no editor, so a wrong note stays wrong in BeatMap. Pro and Master export MIDI, which you can fix in Guitar Pro or your recording software.
• It doesn't write chord names or lyrics.
• It may choose a different fret position from yours, because the same note lives in several places on the neck.

If you need to write riffs by hand as you go, a manual tab editor such as Guitar Tab Maker may fit better. If you want in-app editing and Guitar Pro files from a recording, compare Klangio.

A simple way to keep your ideas

1. Name the recording before you forget what it was.
2. Make the tab, and rename it if you need to.
3. On Pro or Master, your tabs stay saved for good. On Starter, they stay for 30 days, so download the PDF of anything you want to keep.

Teaching what you write? See the workflow for guitar teachers. For more detail, see how the converter works.