Tuxguitar, an Open Source and Free Alternative to Guitar Pro

In the future, I'll probably be posting quite a few tabs. Rather than use the standard (read: ugly) ASCII tablature,  I'd like to post it in .gpx (Guitar Pro) files.  I understand that many of us don't own Guitar Pro and would rather not (or can't) pay for the $60 license, so I wouldn't post tabs like this unless we all had a way to look at them.  The solution? Tuxguitar, a free alternative to Guitar Pro.

Back in my windows days, I was very fond of Guitar Pro--it offered me an easy way to write down and keep track of my ideas, as well as learn songs that I was too lazy to learn by ear (which was pretty much all the time). Whenever I switched over to Ubuntu Linux, I couldn't run Guitar Pro, so I was forced to find an alternative.

Before long, I found the little jewel of a program called Tuxguitar.  It's an open source project designed for reading, writing, and playing tablature, much like Guitar Pro.  You can have multiple tracks, different instruments (including percussion), add effects, and do pretty much whatever else you could with Guitar Pro (including opening Guitar Pro files). If you're interested, you can download it here.

After installing, you'll probably want to make it sound better (by default, the guitar sounds like a piano).  Tuxguitar uses "soundfonts" to produce sound.  They have the file extension .sf2 .   If you want a good one, download the SGM soundfont here.  After the download finishes, you'll have to point Tuxguitar to the file.  Click the "Tools" menu, then "Plugins." In the dialog box that appears, go down to "Java Sound Api Plugin," make sure its highlighted, and click "Configure." Mark "Use custom soundbank" and use the little folder button to point it to the file.  Restart Tuxguitar for the change to take effect.  If that doesn't work, go back into "Tools" but this time click "Settings".  Under "Sound," make sure the midi port is on "Gervill."

If you're used to Guitar Pro, the interface should look pretty familiar.  Enjoy!