Note Editing

Editing notes, durations, techniques, and score structure.

Entering edit mode

Click the ♪ button in the toolbar or press N to toggle note-edit mode. The cursor highlights the current beat position in the score.

Click any note in the score to move the cursor to it. The note editor strip appears at the bottom of the screen showing the selected note's properties.

Editing fret numbers

With a note selected, type a number to set the fret (0–24). Two-digit frets accumulate over 700ms - type 1 then 2 quickly for fret 12. Press Enter or wait for the timer to commit.

• Alt+↑ / Alt+↓ - nudge fret up/down by 1
• ↑ / ↓ - move cursor to adjacent string
• ← / → - move cursor to previous/next beat (crosses bar lines)

Note duration

Change the duration of the selected beat using the duration buttons in the note editor strip, or with keyboard shortcuts:

Adding & deleting notes

• Insert or the ＋ button - add a new note at the cursor position
• Del or Backspace - delete the selected note
• Shift+Insert - insert a blank bar at the cursor position
• The −Bar button - delete the current bar across all tracks

Bar copy & paste

With the cursor in a bar:

• Ctrl+C - copy the current bar's beats
• Ctrl+V - paste into the current bar (enters preview mode)
• Ctrl+Shift+D - duplicate the A–B selection range (inserts a copy after bar B)

Techniques

With a note selected, the technique row in the note editor strip shows toggle buttons:

• PM - palm mute
• LR - let ring
• H/P - hammer-on / pull-off origin
• Ghost - ghost note
• Vib - vibrato (cycles: none → slight → wide)
• Slide - slide out (cycles: none → shift slide → legato slide)
• Slide in - slide in from below/above

Techniques are saved to the .gp7 file on export.

Bends

Right-click a fretted note (or use the note editor's bend control) to add a bend and set how far it pitches up. Bend points are stored per-note and render as a bend curve in the tab staff.

Tuplets

Left-click the Trip button in the note editor to put the current beat and the following notes into a triplet (3 in the space of 2). Right-click (or long-press on touch) for other ratios - 5:4, 6:4, 7:4. Click the same ratio again on an already-tupleted group to remove it.

Importing audio & MIDI

Two ways to turn something that isn't a Guitar Pro file into an editable tab:

• Audio to Tab (drop screen, or the Stem toolbar button) - drop a WAV/MP3/AIFF (up to 90 seconds) and Riffwork pitch-detects it into notes. Choose mono/YIN (fast, single-note lines) or multi-pitch (chords, slower). Pick instrument, tuning, BPM, and quantize grid, then load it as a new score or add it as a track to the song you have open.
• Import MIDI (drop screen, or the MIDI In toolbar button) - drop a .mid/.midi file, e.g. exported from a DAW's audio-to-MIDI conversion (Ableton's "stems to MIDI" and similar). MIDI notes come with exact timing already, so there's no pitch-detection step - pick which track/channel to import if the file has more than one part, then an instrument/tuning/quantize grid same as Audio to Tab.

Both land you in the same place: a new score, or a new track added to the song already open, ready to clean up in edit mode like any other imported tab.

Annotations

Press Aa in the toolbar to open the Annotate panel for the current bar/beat:

• Section - adds a section marker (e.g. "Verse 1", "Chorus") visible in the chord chart and section navigation
• Beat text - text label on a specific beat
• Lyric - lyric syllable attached to the beat (shown in the Lyrics panel)
• Subtitle - score-level subtitle
• Time signature - change the time sig for the current bar
• Repeat - toggle repeat start marker and set repeat count

Editing title & artist

Click the ✎ button in the toolbar to edit the score title, artist, and subtitle inline. Changes are saved to the .gp7 file on export.

Undo / redo

Ctrl+Z undoes the last edit. Ctrl+Y (or Ctrl+Shift+Z) redoes. The undo stack covers fret edits, duration changes, deletions, annotation changes, and structural edits. Consecutive fret nudges on the same note are coalesced into one undo step.

Version Timeline (diff two versions)

Most players version songs by filename: MySong_v1.gp, MySong_v2.gp, and so on. The Timeline button opens two versions side by side and shows you exactly which bars changed between them.

Load Version A and Version B by dropping a .gp file into each slot (or click a slot to browse). For Version A you can also click Use current song to compare against whatever is open in the editor. Riffwork lines up the two versions bar by bar and paints a map:

• Same (grey) - the bar is identical in both versions.
• Changed (amber) - the bar exists in both but the notes, timing, or techniques differ.
• Added (green) - the bar is only in Version B (new since A).
• Removed (red) - the bar was in Version A but is gone from B.

The diff is smart about inserts: add a bar in the middle and only that bar lights up green, not every bar after it. It compares one track at a time; pick the track per side with the dropdowns (Riffwork matches B's track to A's by position or name automatically).

Click any changed bar to see Version A and Version B of that bar rendered as notation, side by side. Use Open A or Open B to load that version into the editor so you can hear it - if a changed bar is selected, Riffwork jumps you straight to it. Press Esc to close.

What v1 does not do: it compares exactly two versions and is read-only. There's no merging, no copying a bar from one version into the other, and no whole-library history graph yet.

Saving

Riffwork autosaves your edits to local storage (1.5s after each change). To download a .gp7 file, click Save in the toolbar. The file reflects all current edits including highlighted notes stripped out so the format stays clean.

Use Save§ to export only the current A–B selection as a separate .gp7 file.

Other export formats: MIDI, TeX (AlphaTex text), Chord Sheet (printable HTML), Lead Sheet (opens in GP Tools lead sheet editor).