When blank tab paper still beats software
Tab editors are great for finished work. They’re bad for the messy, iterative process of figuring out a riff. The reason: typing into a tab editor forces you to commit to a fret before you really know it’s right. With a pencil and a sheet of blank tab, you sketch a number, erase, sketch again, draw an arrow up to a different string — you’re moving at the speed of your ear, not at the speed of clicking through menus.
The other place blank tab paper shines is the teaching room. Hand-writing a riff in front of a student is a high-bandwidth way to teach — they see the geometry of the line emerge as you go, and they have a physical artefact to take home. Six staves on a page is enough for a riff, a phrase, a turnaround. The student goes home with their lesson literally in their hand.
Tab convention, briefly
Six horizontal lines = six strings. Top line is the high E (1st string), bottom line is the low E (6th string). Numbers on a line = fret to play on that string. Numbers stacked vertically = chord. Letters between numbers = articulation (h = hammer-on, p = pull-off, b = bend, ~ = vibrato, / = slide up, \ = slide down).
Rhythm is not encoded in tab by default. The most pragmatic move is to write count marks (1 e + a, 2 e + a) under the stave, or rely on a known reference recording. For pieces where rhythmic precision matters, you’re probably better off in Guitar Pro — and you can convert it to PDF with the browser tool.
Print, fold, keep
Most working tutors keep a small stash of these printed and folded inside their student folder. When a student says “can you write that out for me?”, you reach for one, sketch the line in thirty seconds, hand it over. The whole transaction takes less time than opening a tab editor.