The World's First (?) Tablature Composer Software - written in 1986 on an Amstrad CPC 464

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5-3-2026

I have restored many of the old songs I made with Tab Composer CPC in ~1986 from 40 year old cassette tapes! Check out the YouTube video for the details.

There is now a DSK image for CPC emulators with the restored songs and special version of Tab Composer CPC that can play back these older songs. Note that the songs were originally created with an ealier version of Tab Composer CPC, before I owned a DD1 disk drive, and there are using a different data format, and this version is also on the disk: tabcomp1.bas. However, this version has the drawback that it does allow load and playback, but not edit / visualization of the loaded data, unlike the latest "official" version of tabcomp.bas Hence, I have extended tabcomp.bas so that it can load the old song data. I have hence added a data conversion routine to the loader - this version is on the song disk under the name tabcompx.bas (x for conversion). So please use this version to load the songs. You will then also be able to edit and see the tablature data, not only play it back (as in tabcomp1.bas).

To use tabcompx.bas for loading a song and to play it back, use the l key to load a song. Just enter the filename without extension. You can see all the songs on the disk via the cataloge function: c. To play back a song, use p and answer the questions ("Geschwindigkeit" = "Speed", use 50, 100, ..., depending on the song; the other input prompts should be understandable for English speakers). You can always get the help page with the h key.

Note that loading one of the restored casette songs with tabcompx.bas takes much longer than with the "official" Tablature Composer on the tabcomp.dsk image, due to the required data conversion.

Moreover, I also retrieved the very first Version 0 of Tab Composer CPC from tape! It is very primitive, so don't use it for anything - it is archived here for the sake of completeness and "just for fun".

Background & Purpose

Having a keen interest in the history of computer music and music composition software, I am researching what officially counts as the world's first tablature composer software.

Currently, the Wikipedia page https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tablature_editor still lists "Tab Composer CPC" as the first such program (created in 1986), but the purpose of this Github repo and Wikipedia page entry is to have a correct historical account - so if you should know of any earlier Tablature programs that fit the bill, please let me know, so that the Wikipedia page can be corrected!

This GitHub repo exists to provide evidence for the claims on the Wikipedia page.

Tab Composer CPC ("Tabulations Composer")

So here is my contender for "The World's First" such program - "Tabulations Composer", written in 1986 on my Amstrad CPC 464 in Locomotive BASIC 1.0 I mainly wrote it to help me practice for my guitar lessons.

The YT video demonstrates how to enter a piece of music in Tablature notation using the WYSIWYG graphical editor, and also music playback. Playback uses the CPC's 3-voice polyphonic GI AY-3-8912 sound chip, which was ubiquitous and quite capable for the time.

Here you can find the Locomotive BASIC program sources, as well as a DSK image that you can run in a CPC Emulator.

I used this program myself to create the music for my BASIC games back in the day, e.g., the 6 highly polyphonic songs in "MANIC".

Development & Historical Context

I started the project in spring 1986 and didn't own a disc drive yet, so first versions of this rather large BASIC program were developed on a purley cassette-based CPC system. This definitely...