Okay, so I’ve been meaning to make some custom guitar tab sheets for a while. I play both regular 6-string guitar and this funky 4-string shovel guitar I built, and I wanted some tab paper that would work for both. It’s surprisingly hard to find exactly what you want, so, DIY time it is!
Getting Started
First, I just grabbed a piece of paper and a pen. I needed to figure out the basic layout. I knew I wanted a bunch of lines for the strings, obviously, and some space at the top for, like, song title, artist, that kinda stuff.
Drawing It Out
I started by drawing a big rectangle – that’s gonna be the main tab area. Then, I drew six horizontal lines across it. Those are for the standard guitar strings. I made sure to leave a little extra space between the lines, you know, so my fat fingers can write the numbers in clearly.
Next, I drew a similar rectangle underneath, but this time with only four lines. That’s for my shovel guitar. Gotta represent! I made the lines a bit thicker on this one, just visually, since the strings on that thing are super thick.
Spacing Things Out
The trickiest part was figuring out the spacing. I wanted enough room to write in a decent number of measures on one sheet, but not so many that it got all cramped. After a couple of tries (and some erasing), I found a good balance. I think I fit about, like, 8 measures per section? Something like that. I eyeballed the lines, which may not perfect, but it’s good enough!
Adding the Details
- I added a little box at the top left for the song title.
- Another box next to it for the artist’s name.
- And one more for any notes or whatever, like “Capo on 2nd fret” or something.
Making it Digital
Okay, so I had my hand-drawn template. Now, I wanted to make a nice, clean version I could print out whenever I needed. I will use an app on my ipad, the size of the paper will be set to A4. And set every line, every text. Then I can print them out, I can get all these sheets for free!
It took a little while, tweaking things here and there. I copied and pasted the 6-string and 4-string sections a few times, so I’d have multiple sets on one page. Saved me some paper!
The Final Product
And… that’s it! I printed out a test sheet, and it looks pretty good! The lines are nice and clear, there’s plenty of room to write, and I’ve got sections for both my guitars. It’s not fancy, but it’s exactly what I needed. Now I can finally get to tabbing out some of those riffs that have been stuck in my head!
