Guitar Pro 8: Your Drum Notation App to Compose Like a Pro
Guitar Pro 8 isn’t just for guitarists! It’s also an excellent toolkit for drummers who want to create and edit their sheet music.
Create Your Drum Sheet Music Simply in Standard Notation or Tablature Using an Intuitive Assistant
Despite the name, Guitar Pro offers all the essential features drummers need: Agostini notation or tablature, dynamic control, and more! It’s a complete, professional-grade music editor.
Use the Audio Track to Import a Song and Add Your Drum Sheet Transcription on Top
You can import an audio file containing a drum track or other instruments to support your writing process. This is ideal if you’re working with a band, want to transcribe music, or create drum exercises more quickly.
Use the Numerous Export Features to Continue Your Work Outside the Software
Guitar Pro’s export features are designed with drummers in mind. You can easily export audio including your metronome to create a drum track, or export your sheet music as MIDI to import into your favorite DAW and make your drum patterns and breaks sound great.
A Complete and Easy-to-Use Drum Notation Editor
Guitar Pro 8 offers all the essential tools to let you write, play, and export your drum rhythms.
You can create a drum track via the sheet music editor, select a drum kit sound from several styles (Rock, Metal, Jazz, Reggae), or even go with a signature sound inspired by the great drummers in music history.
Once your track is created, launch the virtual assistant to locate and edit the different drum kit elements on your sheet music. You’ll find 27 drum sounds that respect traditional Agostini notation: toms, crashes, splashes, snare drums, kick drums, and many others.
Our drum tab editor allows you to manage your note values while respecting music theory rules. All note values are available along with the main features drummers need: rests, dotted notes, triplets and n-tuplets, accents, crescendos, repeat bars, tempo adjustment, etc.
Note: it’s always possible to display tablature notation for your drum tracks if you prefer to use this method with MIDI values.
The Audio Track for Editing Your Drum Rhythms Faster
The audio track feature allows you to import an audio file into your Guitar Pro 8 sheet music.
The possibilities are endless. You can:
- Import a recorded drum track from a song and use it to write your drum sheet music more quickly. Then during playback, simply mute the sheet music to enjoy the drum notation accompanied by realistic sound.
- Upload a pre-production from your band or a riff idea from your guitarist and build a drum pattern on top.
- Import a drum track from another artist to more easily pick up their break ideas and create a resource file in Guitar Pro with lots of breaks at your disposal.
- And much more!
Continue Your Composition Work Elsewhere with Various Import and Export Tools
Guitar Pro has developed numerous file import and export options over the years that are very useful for drummers and musicians.
Among the import options, you’ll find the following formats: .gtp, .gp3, .gp4, .gp5, .gpx, .gp, PowerTab, MIDI, ASCII, TablEdit, MusicXML, and audio (.mp3, .wav). MIDI and audio formats are particularly useful for drummers working on DAWs such as Cubase, Live, or others.
For export formats, you’ll find: .gp5, .gp, .gpx, PowerTab, MIDI, ASCII, TablEdit, .mp3, .wav, FLAC, OGG, AIFF, and .pdf. Again, MIDI and audio formats are very relevant for working on a DAW or creating a drum track with a click track included.
Find Many Additional Options for Drummers:
- Drum Mix: A tool allowing you to adjust the drum sounds of your kit individually.
- Sound Presets: Find numerous signature sounds in Guitar Pro 8 from great hits in music history: AC/DC, Nirvana, The Beatles, Led Zeppelin, Deep Purple, and many others.
- Playback Features: You can enjoy all playback features to listen to your compositions, including tempo adjustment, loop playback, and the metronome.
- And much more!
We chose Guitar Pro as it is a very straightforward and intuitive software, that enables you to get instant results. Which is exactly what a busy band needs. A band like TesseracT employs a lot of articulation and affectations in its playing, and Guitar Pro has all those covered in its sound banks. It’s actually a really cool educational tool that I wish I had access to when I was learning all those many years ago when the dinosaurs still roamed the earth. Technology wins!
– Amos Williams (TesseracT)
Your Questions About Drum Tablature Editing in Guitar Pro 8
Yes, absolutely! Guitar Pro integrates all the essential features for editing drum sheet music. And as a drummer, one of the biggest advantages is working with industry-standard software that adapts to all the musicians you collaborate with: guitarist, bassist, pianist, etc.
No, this feature is not available at the moment.
Your license allows you to install Guitar Pro on 5 different computers.
Guitar Pro 8 offers you numerous tablature and sheet music editing features for drums. Note that our editor also offers a sheet music reader, a transcription tool, and learning software for drummers.