TablEdit does the chord grids and anything else you need. Here's some cool info about generating free and nice looking PDF tabs using TablEdit's free viewer:
I mainly use, create, and read tabs to figure out and get better at Chet and Jerry tunes. I have so many Chet books filled with tab that I hardly can't remember. Let's see, I have 7 books in front of me now, all Chet and all done by way of tab. These are the books:
Mel Bay Presents: Chet Atkins Plays Back Home Hymns (every tune tabbed from Chet's record)
Mel Bay's Complete Chet Atkins Guitar Method (comes with CD)
The Chet Atkins Collection by Craig Dobbins (one of the many Chet publications by Craig)
Chet Atkins C.G.P. - Almost Alone (all tunes tabbed from 'Alone')
Chet Atkins - Vintage Fingerstyle by Hal Leonard
The Best of Chet Atkins by Chad Johnson
Chet Atkins Contemporary Styles (transcribed by John Knowles & Dave Whitehill)
All of these are tabbed books that also have notation above the tab.
I have more Chet books than these in boxes somewhere around my place, I've been meaning to dig them all up soon. And then there's all the different Chet tabs on the web that can be downloaded.
I like the tab software called TablEdit the best, the demo version can be downloaded from there site over at:
http://www.tabledit.comI would say that among our 'Chet crowd', TablEdit is the most used tab software - at least that's my guess from years of searching Chet tabs online. Of course the pros who tab out Chet tunes like the ones who wrote the tab in the above mentioned books use much higher end software like Finale - it cost $600. For now I'm just talking about TablEdit because it is only 60 something bucks. In fact, you can actually get away with using the free demo version along with the free viewer. That Tabledit viewer is something to take note of if you want to use tabs but have decided NOT to spend any money.
Here's a cool tab fact about Tabledit that many people don't realize: TablEdit's demo has restrictions like: can't save files, only loads up 16 measures, will print tab but it has water-marks in the back ground. BUT here's the cool part - the absolutely free
TablEdit Viewer found on their site here:
http://www.tabledit.com/tefview/index.shtml is a must have tool. It'll not only load up the whole tune (more than 16 measures) and will play it anyway you like, but it can save the tab as a pdf file formatted anyway you like. And when you print it out there are no water marks. You can't get no better than to have a nicely tabbed out Chet tune as a PDF file (for your own personal use).
Last note: The last thing about many Chetpickers is that reading, editing, playing to, and printing tabs on the computer can be time consuming, tedious, and have a learning curve to overcome. BUT once you get used to it you have one of the best inexpensive tools there is to learn Chet tunes with.
There's much more to be said about tab softwares like TablEdit, Finale, Logic for the mac computer user, etc. but for now I mainly wanted ya'll to realize that 'save-as a pdf' capability of TablEdit's free viewer.
Thanks...al