Staventabs Pro: Music Notation 4+

Absolute Garbage

The fact that it’s described as easy to use would be funny if I hadn’t already spent money on this garbage. When it takes 5 minutes, a degree in quantum physics and a sacrifice to a Mesopotamian deity just to change the length of a note, something has gone wrong. To change key signatures, you have to edit the signature bar by bar. Also, changing the tempo was a true exercise in patience. Not even close to user friendly. For the love of god, don’t use Stave’n’Tabs.

Not perfect but does the job

I started using the free version as I only needed PDF files. Fairly easy to get the hang of but if you really want to get the most out of it, read the online support! I upgraded the app and lost functionality down to a quirk in my OS. Ivan and his team must have been in touch with me 20 times in a day, fantastic support. Yes, it took a day before they responded but people have lives. Because of this I paid for the pro version and simply so I could use this one app, I upgraded my Mac to Catalina. That is very high praise indeed. In the meantime, I tried the iOS version on the iPad and found that some things were even better on that! Yes, there are some things that still need improvement, Lyrics being one, but Ivan is updating this all the time and it just gets better and better. Very professional looking scores. Well done.

Developer Response ,

Hi, John! Thank you a lot for your kind review! We're glad the problem is finally solved and our support was really helpful. We are doing our best to provide you with the professional level software for score editing and hope the future updates of the Stave'n'Tabs will not disappoint you and you'll enjoy them! Great thanks!

It’s getting better but...

I needed an app to generate music with tabs for a variety of instruments including guitars, ukuleles and mandolins and there is indeed a quite useful online tool which unfortunately requires a monthly subscription. Since I cannot justify that cost I found Stave ’n’ Tabs instead. SnT does almost everything I need including being able to import and export music in a format that can be used by other apps and for the money it is quite a powerful tool.
It’s great that recent versions have added useful features such as varying tempo.
I have found a few things that could be improved as follows:
- Entering lyrics is a little tricky and a bit limiting. It would be nice to just type each word, press cursor-right and have it skip to the next note but if you do that the word moves too. You have to press enter before pressing cursor-right which slows things down a bit. Also it’s not that easy to enter different verses where you have repeated sections.
- Ability to add DS and Al Segno notations.

The ‘but’ is because the app is no longer starting on an old MacMini that does not support Mojave. Is this because the app is now only supported on the latest MacOS?

Happy to help test any future versions.

Developer Response ,

Hi! Thanks a lot for your reviews and great suggestions! Please, contact us via email support@staventabs.com so we could resolve the issue with starting on older MacOS versions. As we had promised the tempo feature supporting custom tempo markings was updated in the version 4.4. If you have any more suggestions on improving it, we'll be happy to read them here or in email. Thank you!