is
Computer Software which serves the purpose of making it simpler for musicians to compose music, editing directly into a
Tablature and/or
Musical Partiture , and study music by offering advanced playback capabilities. It can also be used as a MIDI sequencer.
There were three popular public major releases of the software: versions 3, 4 and 5. A few minor releases, with bug fixes and minor features added, were also made available. The license included free upgrades to all minor releases. Upon release of a major version owners of previous releases were allowed a 50% discount to upgrade their software.
Guitar Pro was initially designed as a tablature editor, but has since evolved into a full fledged score writer.
Up to version 4 the software was only available for
Microsoft Windows . Guitar Pro 5, released on November 2005, undertook a year long porting effort and Guitar Pro 5 for the
Mac OS X was released on July 2006.
The software makes use of multiple instrument tracks which follow standard
Staff Notation , but also shows the
Notes on tablature notation. It gives the musician visual access to keys (for
Keyboard Instrument s) and strings (for
Guitar s,
Bass es,
Banjo s, etc.) for the song to be composed, and allows live previews of the notes to be played at a specified
Tempo . It allows for certain tracks to be muted and provides dynamic control over the volume, phasing and other aspects of each track. Included in version 4 onwards is a keyboard that allows pianists to add their part to a composition.
Guitar Pro outputs sound by means of a
MIDI library and/or, as of version 5, the "Realistic Sound Engine" (RSE), which uses high quality recorded samples for a more realistic playback. By using its live preview feature musicians may play along with the song, following the tablature played in real time.
Files composed using Guitar Pro are recorded in the GP5, GP4 and GP3 format. Such files are available for free on several websites, including songs of both underground and popular bands. However, copyright issues raised by the
Music Publishers' Association (MPA) pressured some of these sites to close.
Guitar Pro is a software meant to help musicians and aspiring musicians to compose, transcribe, edit and study music. It also helps the sharing of compositions among groups of people and other musicians.
Guitar Pro 5 is also well suited for
Classical Music study and composing. Up to version 4 it wasn't possible to remove the tablature from the screen or printout making it a little confusing for classical trained musicians to edit standard notation scores and impossible to achieve print-outs without the tablature notation. This limitation has been lifted as of version 5 and many improvements to standard notation and printout quality introduced.
Recently a few
Open Source scorewriters started to work or import and play Guitar Pro files albeit with limited functionality when compared to the original (most notably worse playback, synchronization, display layout, printout quality and lack of RSE playback).
