Part of our guide to music notation terms.
Someone sends you a file that ends in .gp or .gpx, or you find a tab online in that format and your computer has no idea what to do with it. A Guitar Pro file is not a PDF and not an audio file. It is a song document made by the Guitar Pro notation software, and it holds a lot more than a printout of tab. This guide explains exactly what is inside one, why guitarists reach for this format instead of a flat PDF, what the different extensions (.gp, .gpx, .gp5, and friends) actually mean, how to open one even if you do not own Guitar Pro, and how to get a Guitar Pro file of your own from a recording.
What a Guitar Pro file holds
The key thing to understand is that a Guitar Pro file stores the music two ways at once. It carries the song as tablature, the fret-number system most guitarists read, and as standard notation, the staff with notes and rhythms, and the two views stay synchronized: the same note shows up in both. If you want a refresher on the tab half of that, see what tablature is and how to read it. On top of the notation, the file is organized into per-track instruments. A single Guitar Pro file can hold a rhythm guitar track, a lead guitar track, a bass track, drums, and even vocals, each on its own staff with its own tuning, capo, and instrument sound.
The file also stores tempo and playback data, which is the part a PDF can never do. Open a Guitar Pro file in the right app and you can press play and actually hear the song, with each track sounding through a virtual instrument, follow a cursor across the tab as it plays, slow the whole thing down to practice a fast passage, and loop a tricky bar until it sticks. That is why guitarists prefer a Guitar Pro file to a flat PDF of the same song: a PDF is a fixed picture you can only read, while a Guitar Pro file is editable (you can fix a wrong note, change the tuning, or add a track) and it plays back so you can learn by ear and eye together.
The file extensions explained
Guitar Pro files come with a handful of different extensions, and they are simply different generations of the same format. .gp is the current one, used by Guitar Pro 7 and Guitar Pro 8. .gpx is older: it was the format introduced with Guitar Pro 6. Before that, files used .gp5 (from Guitar Pro 5), and going further back, .gp4 and .gp3. They all store the same kind of content, tablature plus standard notation plus playback, so the extension is mostly telling you which version of the app created the file. The practical rule is that a newer app opens the older files (Guitar Pro 8 happily opens a .gp3), while a very old app may refuse a file from a newer version. So if a friend sends you a .gpx and your tab app chokes, the fix is usually a newer reader, not a different file.
How to open a Guitar Pro file
You have a few options, and you do not necessarily have to pay. The official choice is Guitar Pro 8, the paid desktop app from Arobas Music for Mac and Windows. It opens every format (.gp, .gpx, .gp5 to .gp3), edits everything, and has the fullest playback. If you would rather not buy it, TuxGuitar is a free, open-source editor that opens most Guitar Pro formats and plays them back, which makes it the standard free reader. On a phone or tablet there is a mobile Guitar Pro app for viewing and playing files on the go, and there are also some web-based viewers that render a tab file right in the browser without installing anything. Pick based on what you need: TuxGuitar to just open and play a file someone sent you, Guitar Pro 8 if you want to seriously edit and arrange.
Get a Guitar Pro file from a recording
Opening a Guitar Pro file is only half the question. Often you have a recording of a song but no Guitar Pro file for it yet, or the tab you find online is wrong. In that case you can transcribe the audio you have. Songscription listens to a recording and writes out the notes, then exports a Guitar Pro file plus a tab PDF for fretted instruments, alongside PDF, MIDI, and MusicXML, so you get a real .gp file you can open in Guitar Pro or TuxGuitar and edit or play. This is the same workflow as turning audio into guitar tabs, and the full walkthrough lives in the guitar transcription guide. For more on which formats Songscription produces and how they differ, see the rundown of music export formats and the specifics of Songscription export formats. If you are weighing tools, the comparison of the best AI guitar tab generators covers the landscape.
Turn a recording into a Guitar Pro file
Upload a recording and Songscription transcribes it into a Guitar Pro file and tab PDF for fretted instruments, plus PDF, MIDI, and MusicXML. Open the result in Guitar Pro or TuxGuitar to edit and play it. The free tier is enough to try it on one song.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is a Guitar Pro file?
A Guitar Pro file is a song document created in the Guitar Pro notation software. It holds the music as synchronized tablature and standard notation at the same time, broken out into per-track instruments (guitar, bass, drums, vocals, and more), along with tempo and playback information so the app can play the song back and let you slow it down or loop a section. That is the difference from a flat PDF: a Guitar Pro file is editable and it plays, so you can hear what the tab is supposed to sound like instead of just reading it.
How do I open a .gp or .gpx file?
The official way is Guitar Pro 8, the paid desktop app from Arobas Music, which opens every Guitar Pro format including .gp, .gpx, and the older .gp5 to .gp3 files. If you do not want to pay, TuxGuitar is a free, open-source editor that opens most Guitar Pro formats and plays them back. There is also a mobile Guitar Pro app for phones and tablets, and some web-based viewers that render a tab file in the browser. For a recording you want to turn into a Guitar Pro file in the first place, you transcribe it.
What is the difference between .gp and .gpx?
They are different generations of the same Guitar Pro format. .gp is the current extension used by Guitar Pro 7 and Guitar Pro 8. .gpx was the format introduced with Guitar Pro 6. Older versions used .gp5 (Guitar Pro 5), .gp4, and .gp3. They all store the same kind of thing, tablature plus notation plus playback, but a newer app opens the older files while an old app may not open a newer one, so when someone sends you a tab the extension tells you which app generation made it.
Can I get a Guitar Pro file from a song recording?
Yes. If you have an audio recording of the song, Songscription transcribes it and exports a Guitar Pro file for fretted instruments, along with a tab PDF, so you can open the result in Guitar Pro or TuxGuitar and edit or play it. The same transcription also exports PDF, MIDI, and MusicXML, so you are not locked into one app. That is the practical route when you have a recording but no tab file for it yet: start from the audio you have.
The fastest way to understand the format is to make one yourself. Upload a recording with Songscription and get a Guitar Pro file you can open, edit, and play.
