Where to get guitar tab files for iphone app?

November 9, 2009 7:12 PM

Where can I find .gp4, .gp5, or .ptb tab files (preferably free) ... because they work with this awesome guitar iphone app thing I just impulse-bought! Although, if there is an amazing outlet, I'd pay a membership. Don't want to buy them piecemeal though.

So, there's this iphone app that downloads ".gp4, .gp5, or .ptb tab files" (which I'd never heard of before today) and then runs them through this awesome little visual and audio synth player so you can watch (and hear!) the fingering fly by.

The app comes with a few default songs/tab files but also hints that you can find these files somewhere online and provides an interface for downloading them from Google. Unfortunately, my Google-fu fails at finding any new files and the support chap at the app's maker said he was ethically bound against pointing me in any one direction or something -- though he did learn me the names of the filetypes, above. If you've ever looked for lyrics and guitar tabs online, you know it's one of the spammiest hell holes next to the second-hand beanie baby market / pr0n portals.

I'm really just looking for some Kinks, Bowie for now ... if they happen to have Duane Denison's secrets out there, Skip James, bring it! I'd love to see this thing crank through some Robert Johnson or John Fahey or something.

posted by metajc to computers & internet (10 comments total)

911tabs.com is a really easy and efficient way to find them.
posted by battlebison at 7:24 PM on November 9

Really? I'm not finding the .gp4, .gp5 or .ptb files at 911tabs very easily. How is it supposed to work?
posted by metajc at 7:47 PM on November 9

.gp4 and .gp5 are Guitar Pro Tab files so try searching for that.
posted by Memo at 7:55 PM on November 9

Ultimate-Guitar has a bunch of them too. Memo is correct, they are Guitar Pro tab files.
posted by DMan at 8:09 PM on November 9

ultimate-guitar.com has tons with reviews, and i can attest that some of them are very high quality. you want 'guitar pro' or 'power tab' tabs.
posted by Mach5 at 8:11 PM on November 9

also, what iphone app is this?
posted by Mach5 at 8:13 PM on November 9

Sorry, I should have clarified. Do a search for whatever artist you want (e.g. Skip James). Then, it will list all of their songs that are available online. Look to the right to see the GuitarPro column and click on the "n tabs" link there (e.g. Hard Time Killing Floor Blues - 15 Tabs). This is will list an index of different websites where you can download this tab. Ultimate-Guitar.com, already mentioned, is indexed on there. So if I were to click on that link, it would take you to here. In this way, you can look through many tab sites in one fell swoop.
posted by battlebison at 8:17 PM on November 9

This is for the TabToolkit app by Agile Partners

Unfortunately, the app doesn't seem to auto-recognize files at Ultimate-Guitar.com the way it does on this Wikipedia entry:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tablature

Maybe some of these other sites will have the files linked the way it wants them but I've had no luck so far.
posted by metajc at 8:29 PM on November 9

I've got a 130mb zip file that has 1000s of Guitar Pro files. It's available as a torrent in the usual places..
posted by the cuban at 1:55 AM on November 10

There used to be a page that pretty much served as a central depository for Guitar Pro files called mysongbook.com. It was taken down quite a while ago, but their entire database has been circulating online ever since. It's 1.3 gb of tabs and covers practically every song you've ever heard on the radio. On the down side, the database is absolutely filled with crap as well.
posted by Zero Gravitas at 7:41 AM on November 11