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Tabber

What is Tabber?

Tabber is an audio-to-tab tool by ElastikMind. Drop in any audio file — a full song, a stem, a riff recording — and Tabber separates it into instrument stems, transcribes the notes, and generates playable guitar or bass tabs in seconds. All processing runs locally on your machine; no audio is sent to the cloud.

How It Works

Tabber runs a five-stage pipeline automatically:

  1. Separation — splits your audio into vocals, drums, bass, and other (guitar/keys) using the Demucs deep-learning model.
  2. Transcription — converts each stem to MIDI using Basic Pitch, a neural transcription model built by Spotify.
  3. Interpretation — maps MIDI pitches to real fretboard positions, applies playability constraints, and generates voicings shaped by genre rules (punk, metalcore, math-rock, and more).
  4. Tab generation — produces multiple tab variants so you can pick the one that fits your skill level: Beginner (open strings, low frets), Realistic (movement-minimised fingering), and Alt Tuning (drop D, open E, and others).
  5. Export — saves Guitar Pro–compatible files and ASCII tab, with chord names shown above each line.

Key Features

  • Drag-and-drop web interface — no command line required for everyday use.
  • Three tab difficulty variants generated simultaneously per song.
  • Chord names detected and labelled above every tab line.
  • Playback-to-tab sync — the active line highlights as your audio plays.
  • Riff extraction — repeated motifs are automatically detected and ranked so you can loop and study them.
  • Guitar Pro export (.gp5 compatible) for use in Guitar Pro, TuxGuitar, and similar tools.
  • Song library — previously processed songs are saved and instantly reloadable.
  • Fallback mode — fully functional without the heavy ML models for quick demos or low-spec machines.
  • Apple Silicon aware — MPS-accelerated processing on M1/M2/M3 Macs.
  • NVIDIA GPU support — CUDA acceleration for 5–20× faster stem separation.

Minimum System Requirements

All Platforms

  • Python 3.10, 3.11, 3.12, or 3.13
  • FFmpeg 7.x or 8.x installed and available on your system PATH

Windows

  • Windows 10 64-bit or later
  • 4-core x86-64 CPU
  • 8 GB RAM (16 GB recommended for real-model processing)
  • 3 GB free disk space (5 GB when the full ML stack is installed)

macOS

  • macOS 12 Monterey or later
  • Intel or Apple Silicon (M1/M2/M3)
  • 8 GB RAM (16 GB recommended)
  • 5 GB free disk space

Linux

  • Any modern x86-64 distribution
  • 8 GB RAM (16 GB recommended)
  • 5 GB free disk space

Optional: GPU Acceleration

  • NVIDIA GPU with 6 GB or more VRAM
  • CUDA 12 drivers
  • Reduces stem separation time from 30–90 seconds (CPU) to 10–30 seconds per track

Processing Speed

Approximate processing time for a 3–4 minute song:

  • Fallback mode (no ML models): under 5 seconds
  • CPU, 8-core (htdemucs): 30–90 seconds
  • CPU, 8-core (htdemucs_ft, highest quality): 1–3 minutes
  • NVIDIA GPU: 10–30 seconds

Installation

Windows

  1. Install Python 3.10+ — check “Add Python to PATH” during setup.
  2. Install FFmpeg: open a terminal and run winget install Gyan.FFmpeg
  3. Download and extract Tabber-Setup-Windows.zip.
  4. Double-click Install.bat. The installer creates a private environment, downloads the ML stack (~2 GB on first run), and places a Tabber shortcut on your Desktop.
  5. Double-click the Desktop shortcut. The app opens in your browser at http://127.0.0.1:8000.

macOS

  1. Install Python 3.10+ or run brew install python@3.13.
  2. Install FFmpeg: brew install ffmpeg
  3. Download and extract Tabber-Setup-Mac.zip.
  4. Open Terminal, navigate to the extracted folder, and run: bash install-mac.sh
  5. When complete, double-click Tabber.command on your Desktop. The app opens at http://127.0.0.1:8000.

To skip the ~2 GB ML download and run in demo mode only, add the --skip-models flag: bash install-mac.sh --skip-models

Uninstall

Windows: Delete the Desktop shortcut and the folder %LOCALAPPDATA%\Tabber.

macOS: Delete ~/Library/Application Support/Tabber, /usr/local/bin/tabber, and ~/Desktop/Tabber.command.

$10.00