build 485 1 Load→ 2 Trim→ 3 Isolate→ 4 Song key / position→ 5 Grab Tabs

Nine times out of ten the recording is not isolated enough. TAB-GRABBER tracks ONE wind-type instrument — if a band is playing behind it, hit ✂ Isolate instrument first. Amplified, distorted or roomy recordings are always harder than clean ones.

It sends your selection to our top tier separator, pulls the wind instrument (harmonica, sax, trumpet) out of the band, and loads the isolated track straight back in — nothing to download or re-load yourself. Selecting just the solo first makes it faster and cheaper.

A reminder, nothing more. It appears when your tabs have gone stale after a settings change (Regrab your tabs). Hit it and the bar leaves.

Yes — automatically, after every grab. It takes a second look through the gaps between notes for quieter ones the first pass walked past, and adds what it finds (they show in parentheses). It respects your Overblows setting, so it never inserts notes you’ve said your player wouldn’t use.

A setting that changes what the scanner hears (the selection, Recording pitch, or Capture) has changed since the last grab — the current tabs are stale. Hit the glowing button to rescan. The button in the bar at the top is the same button, always in reach.

Use the OCTAVES row above the tabs: “Tabs” shifts the written tabs (harmonica recordings often read an octave high — try −1). Automatic octave fitting runs on every grab, so this is usually handled for you already.

Those are ghost harmonics. Tab-Grabber screens for them on every grab, so most never reach the tabs. If one survives, right-click the note and shift it an octave — or pull Capture down one step and Regrab, which makes the detector harder to convince.

Fast passages are already scanned twice over and judged on their own local character, so short notes get accepted rather than swallowed. If a run still comes up short, try the other Detection Mode — Harmonica Focused reads everything it hears rather than following one lead line, which is usually what a fast run needs.

That’s working as intended. The Song key is the fixed anchor — it’s the key of the record you loaded, and it doesn’t move. When you choose a Position, Tab-Grabber works out which harp plays that song in that position and fills in the Harp key for you, then re-maps the tabs. The green banner over the tabs tells you which harp to reach for — e.g. “Play these 3rd-position tabs on an Ab harp.” Set the song key first (or press Guess), then flip between positions to see the same solo written for different harps.

Run both. They are two ways of listening to the same recording, and the obvious choice is not always the winner — on some harmonica players the All-Wind reading is the better harmonica reading. It takes seconds: grab, switch, grab again, keep the tabs you prefer.

Harmonica Focused is built around harp physics — bends, breath and your calibrations — and reads every sound it hears, which is what catches fast runs, bends and fine detail. All-Wind Instruments sets those harp rules aside and follows one lead line at a time, so the tabs come out cleaner and steadier, and a line played below the harp is lifted into playable range. If a take is coming out with notes that are not there, try the other one; likewise if it is losing quick runs.

Turn up Capture and Regrab. It sits at More by default; Most lowers the detector’s bar further still — quieter, shorter and less certain notes get through, along with more of what is not there. Standard goes the other way: fewer, surer notes. Trying the other Detection Mode is worth as much again. If low notes still don’t appear, they may be falling below the harp’s lowest hole — switch the Detection Mode to All-Wind Instruments, which lifts an out-of-range line up into playable range.

That is correct, and it is meant to. Recording pitch is the reference the system reads the recording against to work out which notes were played — it changes the tabs, not the sound. Playback is deliberately left alone: the MIDI tone always sounds at concert pitch, so it stays a fixed reference you can trust, and the recording always plays exactly as it was recorded. Tab-Grabber measures the recording pitch for you after every grab, so you rarely need to touch it.

After a grab it re-measures every note against the actual audio using harp physics — for example a natural note can never read sharp, so a “sharp 4+” is really a flat 4′ bend. It fixes bends that landed on the wrong note.

They are harmonica-specific: My Cal verifies pitches against real harp tunings, Bend Physics applies harp bend rules. A sax playing slightly sharp is legitimate — these rules would fight it, so the Horns preset turns them off.

When a file loads, the system measures the whole recording. If it runs 8 cents or more off standard pitch (older records often do), the Recording pitch is adjusted automatically and a note tells you so — “Tuning adjusted… for best accuracy.” There is nothing to confirm. If you want a different reference, type it into the Recording pitch box and it stays where you put it.

mp3, wav, m4a, ogg, flac — plus mp4, mov and webm video (the audio is pulled out automatically).

Hit “⬆ Export to Fab Tabs” in the Export Your Tabs menu above the song title, then import that file in Fab Tabs. Colours, bends and held notes carry over.

Isolation credits are attached to your Fab Tabs licence key. Enter the key and the app shows your credit balance; each successful isolation uses credits based on the length you send.

The OCTAVES row has two controls: “Tabs” changes what is written, “Playback tone” changes only the sound. They move separately by default — tick “linked” to move them together.

That is the separated track that came back from the isolation step — it replaced the full-band version in the app. The original file on your computer is untouched.

Yes. Right-click the tab. You can swap it for a nearby tab, type the exact tab you want, shift that one note an octave, or delete it. Fixes survive setting changes and go into every save; a fresh Regrab starts clean.

A plain number is a blow and a minus sign is a draw (in the default format: 4 blow, -4 draw). Apostrophes mark bends — the more apostrophes, the deeper the bend (-3', -3'', -3''') — and they show in blue. Brackets mark an overblow or overdraw, e.g. (6), in pink. Faint repeats of a tab (-5 -5 -5) mean hold that note, one repeat per half-beat — they are not extra notes to play. Switch that off with Long notes → Single tab in Fine-tune.

Yes — the Tab format control in the sidebar has the same four formats as Fab Tabs: Conventional (6 / -6), Minimal (6+ / 6), Letters (6b / 6d) and +/- Symbols (+6 / -6). It changes the display and the saved files, and the app remembers your choice.

Show Bars Mode lays your tabs into musical bars, spaced on the beat, so you can see the timing at a glance. Click any bar to play from there; drag across bars to loop them; double-click a bar to loop just that one; click anywhere off the bars to end the loop. Immersive View opens the same thing full-width in its own window — big tabs, a sweeping playhead, and a whole-song strip you can click to jump anywhere. The space bar pauses and resumes in both. The clock beside the transport always shows where you are in the song.

No. A purchased copy comes with your licence already inside it, and a key you type is remembered by your browser — once is enough.

Only for isolation: up to 30 MB and 5 minutes of audio per run, and up to 40 isolations a day per licence. Grabbing, playback and saving have no limits — they run entirely on your own computer.

Files go to the server only for isolation. They are processed and deleted within 24 hours, and nothing else ever leaves your computer. You are responsible for having the right to use the recordings you upload.

Only for the Isolate step. Everything else — grabbing tabs, playback, fine-tuning, saving — works offline.

Tab-Grabber and Fab Tabs are separate programs. Tab-Grabber turns recordings into tabs and saves them as text or an audio player; if you also own Fab Tabs, the “Export to Fab Tabs” button carries your tabs across.