Bring a tab file as a reference

If you already have a tab of the song, you can give it to FlowChord when you create the project. FlowChord listens to your recording and finds where it matches the file. Wherever they match, the file’s notes become your tab: the notes the file prints, on its strings and frets, at the moment you played them. A passage you play again, even more lightly, follows the file too. Where your recording goes beyond the file, the tab is made from the recording.

Before you start

• The file can only be added when you create the project. It can’t be added to a project that already exists.
• FlowChord reads Guitar Pro files (.gp, .gp3, .gp4, .gp5, .gpx), MusicXML (.musicxml, .mxl, .xml) and plain-text tabs (.txt).
• It can also be a picture of a tab: a screenshot of a lesson video or a photo of a page (PNG, JPG or WebP), with the tab’s lines in it. FlowChord copies it once the project is created.
• A tab that a lesson shows a few bars at a time can be several pictures: up to 8 screenshots of it, taken as the tab moves on. FlowChord reads them one after the other, in the order you took them, and bars two pictures both show only once.
• A lesson that shows one riff per picture works too: a picture that doesn’t continue the one before it is read as a riff of its own, and FlowChord finds it wherever you play it — as many times as you play it, in any order. A riff played very slowly, with talking between its notes, may not be found.
• The file should be the same song, in the same key, as your recording. It doesn’t need to match your tempo or cover the whole song.

Steps

1. Start a new project and add your recording (see Create a project).
2. Drop your tab file on the dialog with the recording, or press Choose files and pick it. Its card says Tablature, with the tracks and bars FlowChord found in it — for a picture, Tab picture and the tab staves it found.
3. To change your mind, press the × on its card, or press its badge and pick Not used.
4. Create the project. FlowChord matches the file to the recording and writes the tab while the card shows Making the guitar tab.
5. In the editor, pick a note: notes that come from the file are marked From the file when you double-click them.

Options

What FlowChord does with the file, case by case:

When…	FlowChord…
A passage of your recording matches the file	Writes the file’s notes there, on its strings and frets, with its techniques (hammer-on, slide, bend…), its ghost notes in parentheses, its dead notes as an X and its slurs over a phrase, timed to your playing.
FlowChord heard notes there that the file doesn’t print	Leaves them out: in that passage the file is the tab.
The file prints a note there that FlowChord didn’t hear	Writes it anyway, where it falls in your playing.
A note you played there is a half step away from the file’s	Writes the file’s note.
Your recording goes on before or after the file, or a passage doesn’t match it	Writes what it hears there, so a hand can play it: one note per string at a time, and no chord wider than one hand reaches.
You played part of the song, repeated a section, or played slower or faster	Finds the matching part of the file for each passage.
Each picture is a different riff, and you play them in another order or more than once	Finds each riff wherever you play it, as many times as you play it.
Only part of a passage matches — less than half of the notes the file prints there were heard	Keeps what you played there, and uses the file only to choose strings and frets.
The file was written from this recording (a Songscription export, or a tab you wrote over the video)	Follows it beat by beat: each note of the file is matched to the moment it was played, even where a later passage looks alike.
The file is in another key	Doesn’t use it. Your tab is made from the recording alone.

Tips

• Capo: a file written for a capo is fine — FlowChord reads its frets from the capo and keeps everything right. In a text tab, a line such as “capo 2” anywhere in the file tells FlowChord where the capo is. A project you bring a tab to never has its capo guessed from the chords: the tab says how the song is played. See Capo and tuning.
• Tuning: a file written for another tuning (drop D, for example) sets the tab’s tuning. A text tab that prints its string names gives its tuning that way. The Tuning row in the Tabs mode shows what the tab was read for.
• Guitar Pro files with several instruments: FlowChord reads the first guitar track. Its repeats are followed in order.
• Text tabs carry no rhythm, so their timing always comes from your recording — which is how every tab is timed anyway.
• Pictures: FlowChord copies the tab staff — the lines with the numbers — and reads the rhythm from the notation above it or the stems below it, when the picture shows them. Crop the picture to the tab, sharp and straight: what can’t be read clearly isn’t used. A picture covers only the bars it shows — add the next pictures for the bars after them — which is fine: the rest of the tab comes from the recording.
• In the fingering cards, As the file puts a phrase back the way the file prints it. See Choose how a phrase is fingered.
• Techniques such as hammer-ons and slides come from the file, and so do ghost notes, dead notes and slurs. In a text tab, an x is a dead note, a fret in parentheses, such as (9), a ghost note, and a slash after a fret with no fret after it, such as 5\, a slide out. Without one, add them yourself: double-click the note (see how).

Common problems

The file’s card says Can't read this yet. The file isn’t one of the formats above, or FlowChord couldn’t read it. Export it from your tab program as Guitar Pro or MusicXML, or save it as a .txt.

The file’s card says Too large. Use a smaller file — for example, a score with only the guitar part.

No note says From the file. The file couldn’t be used: it couldn’t be read, it had no guitar track, it was in another key, or the recording didn’t match it. Your tab is still made from the recording; you can fix it by hand.

A note says Check the pitch and names another note. That passage only partly matched the file, so FlowChord kept what it heard — and it’s a half step from the file. Listen and keep whichever is right.

A picture of a tab was not used. A picture is copied only for a paid video, not for your free video, and only where its numbers can be read. Your tab is still made from the recording.

A picture’s card says Chord sheet or Sheet music. FlowChord didn’t find a tab’s lines in it. Press its badge and pick Tablature: it’s copied as a tab all the same, with the other pictures of the tab.