so i've been playing around with various free software to see what works well for composing some original songs. a few of the tools i've used include:

• Guitar Pro: the gold standard for writing, editing, and playing tablature geared towards guitar and bass guitar. guitar pro does not offer a linux version, so i haven't used the product in many years.

• TuxGuitar: tux is a free opensource version of Guitar Pro. it has most of the features of the commercial product. it has a nice chord library that you can use to insert and annotate chords in a song. it has all of the most frequently used notation markups, like vibrato, dynamics, etc. the interface is not the best for composing large or complex songs due to a lack of shortcut keys, odd editing behavior, and a few cut-and-paste bugs. the tux piano roll is practically useless as it only covers a single measure at a time.

• Ardour: the MIDI editor (aka piano roll) is great way to compose a melody without worrying about music notation. there are no chord libraries, but the piano roll can show notes in a given scale to help quickly build chords. this is great free tool for those who like to compose on a piano roll style matrix. this feature is just a small part of ardour, which is a full blown audio production suite including DAW. the user interface in ardour can be overwhelming for most.

• HookPad: one of many online composing tools. HookPad has a great user interface with easy to use tools, especially for those with little to no music theory experience... you can drag and drop chords into a progression, change rhythms in the progression, and add melodies using a piano roll above each measure. notes and chords are color coded. the service is subscription based, or you can buy a lifetime subscription for $200. there are add-ons for AI generated content and other services.

yesterday i stumbled upon my favorite composing tool thus far...

MuseScore...

this is a full blown what-you-see-is-what-you-get editor. it has every possible tablature notation you can think of, and many you've probably never heard of. it can open, play, and edit guitar pro and tux guitar files. tabs are displayed like real sheet music. the instruments sound better than either tux guitar or guitar pro. the tool is opensource and free, and there are builds you can download for any major os. the score editing is much more efficient and natural then other tablature editors. there are a ton of nice features, like being able to insert a page or line break in a composition, being able to hide/show any instrument track, being able to link tracks (like guitar standard notation to tab notation) and even split different voices in a single track to separate views for each instrument.

you can purchase plugins to add additional instrument sounds or improved functionality. there are also free plugins for things like color coded notes.

all in all, MuseScore is my goto app for writing my own compositions.