Show the tab on your video

When the guitar plays a riff or a solo, the tab can scroll across your video above the chord band, its numbers passing a fixed playhead in time with the music — or, if you prefer, standing still a page of bars at a time while the playhead runs across them. When the notes stop, the tab fades away and the chords carry on alone — unless the video ends soon after: then the tab stays whole to the end. It comes on just before its first notes, never earlier, and you can cut where it shows on the timeline. You choose how it looks in the Tabs mode of the editor.

Before you start

• You need a project with a tab (see Guitar tabs: how they’re made).
• The look belongs to the cut you’re working on, and to its shape: a vertical and a horizontal frame each keep their own. The three colours are the cut’s whatever the shape. See Cuts.
• If the cut has markers, the switch reads In this marker and the changes go to the stretch under the playhead.

Steps

1. In the editor, open Tabs on the settings card’s rail.
2. Make sure In this cut is on. It’s on for every new cut.
3. Press the style’s picture and choose a style. Each tile is drawn the way the video will draw it.
4. Set the size of the numbers with Text size, how much of the song the staff holds with Notes in view, what moves with Movement, how the note being played is marked with Playhead, and how the notes are spaced with Spacing.
5. Turn the staff’s marks on or off, and choose what happens to Played notes (see Options below).
6. Play the video to check. While the tab is showing, you can drag it to another place on the video and drag its corner dots to resize it. Reset position and size puts it back above the chords.

Options

Styles

Style	Looks like
Clear	Light numbers straight on the footage, with a soft shadow. Its slurs carry no h or p: the slur alone says legato. The default, beside the Transparent chords a new project starts with.
Paper	A printed tab on a cream card.
Glass	A smoked glass panel over the footage.
Sheet	A white sheet laid over the picture.
Neon	Glowing amber on black.
Chalk	A blackboard, written by hand.
Polaroid	A taped photo print, like the Polaroid chord style, with a margin under the staff. In the top half of the video, the tape moves to its bottom edge.
Torn Paper	A strip of paper torn out on every side, like the Torn Paper chord style.
Sketch	White lines drawn by hand straight on the footage, like the Sketch chord style.
Marker	A card of grained paper written in marker, every column of frets on a highlighter’s stroke and the one being played on a deeper one, like the Marker chord style.
Tiles	A dark panel with every fret on a white tile. Notes light up once played, and the playhead is a glowing bar.
Rings	Frets in rings coloured by the finger that plays them (worked out from the notes around), each trailing a line along its string for as long as it rings.

Settings

Setting	What it does
Text size	Makes the numbers and names bigger or smaller.
Font	The typeface of the numbers and words: the style’s own, or one of the faces listed, each shown in itself — JetBrains Mono among them, a monospaced face whose every digit is the same width, so a 12 lines up with a 5. One choice for the whole cut.
Notes in view	How many seconds of notes fit across the staff: fewer means more room between them.
Movement	Notes move: the notes scroll past a playhead that stands still. Playhead moves: the notes stay put and the playhead runs across them, like reading a printed tab. The default. Each page holds whole bars — about Notes in view long — and turns when the playhead reaches its end. When a page’s bars hold more notes than fit across the frame, it turns sooner, partway through a bar, so no two numbers ever overlap.
Playhead	Line: a line marks where the music is (on Tiles, a glowing bar). The default. Circle: no line at all — the note being played is circled in the colour of Note playing, and the circle stays on it until the next note is played. With Playhead moves it reads like a lesson video: the page stands still and the circle walks from note to note.
Spacing	By time: every second takes the same room, so the tab moves at one steady speed — except that two notes are never drawn so close that their numbers touch: a quick hammer-on still reads 3h5, not 35, and a vibrato’s wave or a bend’s arrow never runs into the next note. By notes: the notes are spaced like a printed tab — a fast run gets room to be read, a long rest gets less. The tab speeds up and slows down between notes so each one reaches the playhead exactly as it’s played, and the playhead seems to walk from note to note with the music. The default. Works with either Movement.
Edge to edge	Runs the tab from one side of the video to the other, with square corners, like the chords’ option of the same name. Resizing it on the video then changes only its height. Off at first. The notes, their timing and their strings stay exactly as they are.
Side margin	How far the staff and the neck stay from the sides of the video, up to 15% of its width; the card still runs where it runs. A vertical video starts at 6%, clear of what Instagram cuts on a phone (about 5% a side). While you drag the slider, the video shows the strips a phone may cut: darker for Instagram, lighter for the tallest phones on TikTok and Shorts (up to 10%). The row warns you when the notes stand in them.
Left sign	What stands at the left of the staff: TAB, the Strings (each string’s letter) or Nothing (the default).
Bar lines	Draws a line at the start of every bar.
Time signature	Writes the time signature (like 4/4) at the start of the staff.
Tempo	Writes the tempo over the staff.
Rhythm	Draws the rhythm under the lines — stems, flags and beams, as a printed tab does. Off at first.
Chord names	Writes the chord names over the staff, the one sounding lit up.
With the chords	Show both: the tab above the chords while it shows. The default. Tab only: the chords give way while the tab shows and come back when it goes — no marker needed. A vertical and a horizontal frame each keep their own.
Show	What the tab shows: Tab (the staff, the default), Fretboard (a guitar neck alone) or Both (the neck over the staff). The neck is a wood fingerboard with its frets, inlays and metal strings, the high e on top. Only the note being played is on the neck: its dot lights up on its fret as it’s played (at once for a hammer-on or a pull-off), with its fret number lit under the board, and dims away when the next note comes, so nothing else crowds the board. The neck stays still while the notes fit on it and moves only when the playing goes past it. A slide glides along the string into its fret, a slide out glides off its fret as the note fades, a bend pushes the string up and a release lets it back, a vibrato shakes it, a dead string is a cross, a harmonic a diamond, and an open string lights its name at the left. The neck is drawn in the style you chose. With the neck over the staff, the tab’s box grows taller.
Neck apart	With Both picked, the neck becomes its own piece on the video: drag it anywhere and drag its corners to size it, apart from the staff. Off (the default), the neck stays over the staff in one box. Reset position and size puts it back just above the staff.
Played notes	Slide away: notes slide past the playhead and fade. Burst: each note bursts into small sparks as it’s played. With Playhead moves, the first choice reads Stay: played notes stay on the page.
Note playing	The colour of the note being played.
Numbers	The colour of the numbers, lines and names.
Background	What the staff sits on. Transparent takes the card away and leaves the tab on the footage.
Transparency	How much of the video shows through the background, from solid to nearly clear. It starts at the style’s own: solid for the light styles, a little see-through for Glass and the dark ones. One setting for the whole cut.

Each colour starts as the style’s own, except the note being played: in a new project it starts as your palette’s highlight when you chose a main colour or a highlight in your brand. The numbers and the background also offer a few swatches, the eyedropper beside each row takes any colour off the video, and the # button beside it takes a HEX code or one of your brand’s colours.

Tips

• Teaching a riff? Pick Both under Show: the neck shows where the fingers go while the staff says when, and the slides and bends move the way a hand moves them.
• The tab sits above the chords while it shows. To show the tab without the chords, choose Tab only under With the chords: the chords give way wherever the tab shows, with no marker to add.
• To choose where the tab shows, cut it on the timeline like a clip. Each stretch where it shows is framed on the tab’s lane, and outside the frames the lane is left empty, only its bar lines showing, where the video shows the chords alone. Click the top edge of a frame to pick it, like a chord: its grips appear, and dragging the top edge moves the whole stretch. Drag a grip to make the stretch start or end elsewhere, as you crop a video: while you drag, the notes step aside and only the frame moves (hold Shift to land on a bar or beat). Press ⇧ X to split the stretch under the playhead in two, then pick a part and press Delete to take it away. Point at an empty gap and a plus appears: click to show the tab there again. Until you change them, the frames are grey and follow the notes; ⌘ Z undoes any change.
• To keep a passage’s tab off the video, hide its notes with H (see Fix notes in the guitar tab). Where every nearby note is hidden, the tab isn’t drawn.
• Want a different look for the solo? Add a marker where the guitar comes in — the timeline offers one there — and set the solo’s own style.
• Fast passages crowded together? Keep By notes under Spacing before reaching for a longer Notes in view: the quick notes open up and the gaps close in.
• The lyrics keep clear of the tab for the whole cut, so nothing jumps when a solo starts.
• The tab on the export is drawn exactly as on the stage.

Common problems

The tab doesn’t appear. Check In this cut for this cut and this shape, that the playhead is near notes and not on an empty stretch of the tab’s lane, and that those notes aren’t hidden.

No time signature, tempo or rhythm is drawn. They start off: turn them on under the staff’s settings. They follow the beats FlowChord heard in the song. Where it couldn’t tell the beats, it leaves them out rather than guess. If the beats are off, see Fix chord timing.

I can’t grab the tab on the video. It can be moved only while it’s showing. Play or move the playhead to a passage with notes first.

My change didn’t apply to the other cut. Each cut keeps its own look. Switch to the other cut and set it there.