Songsterr uses AI to create fairly accurate guitar tabs from your own recordings

“What do you actually need me for?” says music teacher and YouTuber Mike Geronsin in one of his latest clips. The accomplished guitarist, who has been playing live and teaching students for 30 years, has just transformed some of his recordings of classic rock and metal songs into near-perfect sheet music using Songsterr's artificial intelligence. In the pre-AI world, this was a job for professionals who could not only play at least one instrument, but also had trained ears and an understanding of sheet music.

What Songsterr does even from sloppily played song fragments – heise online has tried it out for itself – or from the complete recordings of a professional like Geronsin is simply astounding. Electric guitar in particular has a multitude of phrasings, i.e., exactly how to play a note. Also, on which string, and therefore in which position on the neck, can make a big difference to playability and sound. Songsterr recognizes all of this, only the muting of the strings with the picking hand near the bridge (palm muting) is often ignored. The AI also doesn't always recognize sliding across the neck for quick changes of position when the note is stationary. However, if you then play what the bot says, the error is easily noticed when learning a song.

Poor recordings also work

However, if, for example, a note is played with a slight vibrato, in this case by the gripping hand, or a harmonics note is produced by simply placing the finger on it, the AI recognizes this. And it also transforms the playing into both the classical piano notes and the coveted tabs, using an unprofessional recording from a better dictation machine in front of the guitar box. These tablatures are easier to read and therefore make it easier to learn the instrument. The high notes of a modern electric guitar with a range of three to four octaves, depending on the model and tuning, can be played in tabs without using guidelines. In addition, good tabs show where a note should be played on the guitar (position), and not just the note value itself, as well as details on phrasing and intonation.

Songsterr can also do the notation for recordings of a complete band if required and then outputs individual notations for guitar, bass, drums, and vocals. However, when differentiating between several guitar tracks, the AI does not always make the correct distinction. Here it is advisable to compare the self-created tabs with existing notations. In comparison with other AIs that can create notations, Songsterr is clearly superior. ChatGPT and Grok, for example, fantasize similar-sounding but far off notes from well-researched songs such as “Smells like Teen Spirit” by Nirvana. Geronsin shows this in his video on the “Art of Guitar” channel.

Invented notes still fit

Songsterr is also quite accurate with more difficult material, such as 'Blackened', one of Metallica's fastest songs with choppy riffing. Heise online tried it out for itself with the simpler riffs from “Enter Sandman” and “Sad but true” by the same band and “Sweet Child of Mine” by Guns'n'Roses. The results are the same as the tablature used in professional magazines for musicians. However, in our case, as with Geronsin, the positions were not always correct. Every now and then there is a wrong note, but not an inappropriate one – the AI acts as if it were actually musical. Playing around with the bot becomes downright funny when you try to reproduce one of Slayer's chaos solos – which are often largely improvised live – from the album version. It may sound like Slayer, but compared to the notation, it is very different.

With the powerful AI function of Songsterr – which has been established for decades for tabs even without AI – you have another tool at your disposal for learning and also for dealing creatively with music. However, as with the long-popular YouTube channels about guitar, this cannot really replace a good music teacher. This is because the AI can't see – yet? — exactly how to finger or strum strings and can't give any tips on the right instrument or the right sound. Our short tests also showed that it makes no difference whether you play a song undistorted or in a booming high-gain thunderstorm, notes, and position are recognized in the same way. However, an account with Songsterr and YouTube is always required, as the system can currently only convert music from videos uploaded there into tabs. Without a premium account for 10 US dollars a month, the length is limited to 20 seconds.

However, as always with music, you shouldn't just stick to sheet music and technique. Even experienced guitarists often play their pieces a little differently live for various reasons, such as convenience or because they are playing a different instrument to the one used for the album recording. Music only comes alive when it is presented live.

(nie)