standard in pdf to tab

[MandoNicity]

Anyone know of a program that converts standard notation in pdf format into tab?

thanks

jr

[Brent Hutto]

I always hesitate to say something does not exist but I'm not aware of any standalone and/or inexpensive program for doing that. Some of the complete music notation softwares have either built-in or optional functions for scanning sheet music on a document scanner and converting it to notation. Once they've converted it, those programs will generate tablature (generally including mandolin tab). Not sure if they can start with a PDF or if you'd have to scan it in.

But those are high-$$$ professional packages. Maybe there's something more targeted at the lower end of the market that's too recent for to be aware of it. But I did not see it last time I was looking for such things several years ago.

[Bill Snyder]

I don't believe it does the tab part but THIS can use pdf files and convert them to other output.
I have used the free version of PDF to Music player to play pdf files. It amazes me but it works pretty good.

[Bernie Daniel]

I hate to admit having such a bad memory but yes there exist such programs -- and I even had one. It did work although it was not 100% reliable. It was named something obvious like PDF2TAb or the like.

Enter that in Google and you get some hits -- most I saw at first glance convert to guitar tab.

I can't remember which computer I had that program on -- if I get upstairs to my old office sometime today -- not too likely cause I'm running this afternoon -- I'll turn a couple of those computers on and do search for the program.

But I recall that I did successfully convert a few very old Scottish fiddle tunes to tab with it and got enough to get started anyway.