Writing tabs

[cannibal corpse]

I've been interested in writing tabs for a while now, as I feel it would help train my musical ear as well as possibly helping other people who aren't that great at learning by ear and want to learn songs by relatively obscure bands. I've made a few tabs and I like to think I'm alright at it, but I can never figure out how to determine what the BPM is, what time signature is being played in currently or what tuning the band is playing in. Assuming there are no other tabs for the band so I can't check what tuning the band is playing in I have no idea how to find out, and I'd think it's nearly impossible. So I was wondering if there's some way I can get some help on those issues, as I can't find anything on the internet. Thanks in advance, I guess.

 

[Lateralus14]

Well for tuning, most bands don't play with alternate tunings, just variations on drop D or standard (alternate tunings are typically only used by acoustic artists though there are obvious exceptions). So, start by just looking for the lowest bass note. Sometimes you'll have to listen to the whole song but most of the time you can just find the lowest chord in some sludgy part with doom bands or find the alternate picked note in the chug-a-chug-chug part with death/thrash bands. So say its a C, then the chances are its C standard or drop C. Determining which of those two its in would then be the hardest part. Some things you could look at are clean sections as these will often utilize open chords, or how the power chords are played (you can get much more creative with power chords in a dropped tuning, some tool/pt riffs would actually be a tad challenging if they weren't dropped). If none of those things work just start tabbing out the song and make it whichever tuning plays less awkwardly. I'm really terrible at figuring out time signatures and tempos though so I can't help much there. I typically just take rough guesses on guitar pro/power tab until the midi sounds good lol.

 

[BlackMetalWhiteGuy]

Just download the trial version of this software.

http://www.tabit.net/

This is by far the best tablature program available. I have Guitar Pro and Power Tab also, but this program is by far the most intuitive and best organized.

As for help with tempo and meter, you can figure this out pretty easily in TabIt. Open a tab, go to Song | Tempo and then click the "Tap" button. Using this, you can just tap any key while listening to an mp3 and it will figure out the tempo for you. As for meter, most songs are either in 3/4 or 4/4, or a multiple such as 6/8 or 8/8. The difference between a multiple of 3 and 4 will be pretty easy to figure out and whether they're playing quarters or eighths doesn't really matter that much because you can just double or halve the tempo accordingly.

Occasionally (or fairly often in technical or progressive metal and jazz) you will find riffs in other meters like 5/4, 7/8, but you'll learn them with experience.

 

[cannibal corpse]

I listen to a lot of stuff that's played in A-D so it's important to know how I can figure out what tuning it is in, since I barely listen to anything in standard tuning. I'll check that program out though, thanks... Maybe it can be of some help. I plan on tabbing out a lot of technical death metal though so the time signatures are generally really awkward and the tempo changes frequent, which is why I want to be prepared for them, I'm obviously going to start with easier stuff though, but I don't really want to have to use a BPM analyzer to tab, if there's any way I could roughly guess the BPM through training or something. Well, I'll try TabIt though, thanks.