Guitar tabs suck

[BlancoNino]

They're never right. They're written by tone-deaf idiots and all they have to do is submit them to a website and they'll get posted. I'm half tempted to just start buying expensive sheet music for my favorite songs just so I can get it right.

/rant

 

[silverpig]

Tabs are written by people who can't figure out a song for people who can't figure out a song.


But yeah, mostly they're completely wrong.

 

[StevenYoo]

i agree.

it's hard to find good/accurate tabs out there

 

[agnitrate]

Powertab is a piece of software that will actually play the tab so you can make sure it sounds right. Of course the music industry has been cracking down on these because they're horrible people and I'm not sure if the Power Tab Archive is up any more. Have a look around for it.

 

[Ika]

I think people who write tabs don't actually check them.

 

[Alienwho]

Which song are you looking at? Generally I'll look at 3 or 4 different tabs, all of which are completely different. Just by looking at all of them and playing through each one a bit I'll combine the good, toss out the trash, and improvise the rest.

I should also mention, instead of looking for tabs I find it's a lot more efficient to look up the song on youtube. Generally somebody else has posted a video of themselves playing the song and I can easily watch them play it and figure it out that way.

 

[BlancoNino]

Originally posted by: Alienwho
Which song are you looking at? Generally I'll look at 3 or 4 different tabs, all of which are completely different. Just by looking at all of them and playing through each one a bit I'll combine the good, toss out the trash, and improvise the rest.

That's usually how I get it done too.

 

[duragezic]

Yeah for what I listen to theres usually a handful of tabs so at least I can get a general idea of how to play it. I'm not a very good guitar player and I dont need to play things perfectly, so for me tabs are fine. Though I certainly get annoyed by retarded ones.


It REALLY blows that Mxtabs is gone. Now I use Ultimate Guitar Tabs Archive, which is pretty good but not as good as Mxtabs was. Punkhardcore use to be the BEST for punk tabs (I play this mostly) but years ago they took them down due to 'server issues' and since then they never have added them all back so it offers very little if anything over UGTA. I also got a good NOFX tabs site that has pretty much every Nofx song and they seem very accurate. Other than that, I have NO tab sites!! Anyone know of anymore?

 

[SupaDupaCheez]

Guitar Pro is pretty good too (especially if you can get the 30k archive floating around)

 

[rbV5]

Guitar tabulature definately doesn't suck, they are the most accurate way of writing down guitar parts and include methods of notating virtually every nuance, far better than sheet music.

Guitar tabulature freely available on the internet runs the entire gamut, from being precisely accurate to horribly innacurate. Some sites like Ultimate guitar use a rating system to rank the tabs by users which helps weed out some of the crap.

Tabulature has been a handy tool for me for years and I keep a copy of the OLGA archive and updates on my PC. You could, of course, give back to the guitar community by upping your own accurate tabs to one off the many tab forums

 

[SludgeFactory]

Once a bad tab gets submitted and distributed around to a few sites, the POS becomes a permanent fixture on the internet. And it's never a good sign when they say "so this is my first attempt at tabbing a song" or "here's the intro, the rest is easy, you can figure it out."

Sometimes fan sites of specific bands will have better tabs than the huge dump-your-crap-here tab sites, it's might be worth combing through a few of them to see.

 

[Lithium381]

Tabs are a good way to get started on a song, since they give you the general idea, but yea some are just pathetic. I posted a guitar tab(more of a chord sheet) for a song, and realized later it was wrong(the 2nd go through a chord is minor instaed of major...oops) but if a tab isnt more or less perfect i wont' post it. I don't have a good ear so sometimes it takes me a while. my friend has a really really good ear and throws down like crazy....then again he's been playing three times as long as i ahve.

 

[potato28]

Originally posted by: duragezic
Yeah for what I listen to theres usually a handful of tabs so at least I can get a general idea of how to play it. I'm not a very good guitar player and I dont need to play things perfectly, so for me tabs are fine. Though I certainly get annoyed by retarded ones.


It REALLY blows that Mxtabs is gone. Now I use Ultimate Guitar Tabs Archive, which is pretty good but not as good as Mxtabs was. Punkhardcore use to be the BEST for punk tabs (I play this mostly) but years ago they took them down due to 'server issues' and since then they never have added them all back so it offers very little if anything over UGTA. I also got a good NOFX tabs site that has pretty much every Nofx song and they seem very accurate. Other than that, I have NO tab sites!! Anyone know of anymore?

911 tab is really good, but u need to sort through the tabs sometimes.

 

[Platypus]

You just gotta know where to look.

In general you should check like 3 or 4 different versions and pick what works out of them. I usually end up just re-writing them and resubmitting them.

 

[StevenYoo]

Ultimate Guitar is great, but there are SOO MANY pop-ups!

 

[Crescent13]

I usually find the highest rated tab (4-5 stars), then play that, then fix the problems to make it sound like the real song.

 

[StevenYoo]

Originally posted by: Crescent13
I usually find the highest rated tab (4-5 stars), then play that, then fix the problems to make it sound like the real song.

yeah, same thing I do

 

[ZOOYUKA]

Originally posted by: StevenYoo
Ultimate Guitar is great, but there are SOO MANY pop-ups!

qft

 

[Fritzo]

Get a Lin6 Guitar Port. It has a $7.99 subscription to their online service, but it includes tabs, backing tracks, and automatic guitar toning- plus the tabs are professionally verified to be accurate

It's so cool- for instance, if I call up "The Thrill is Gone" by BB King, it gives me a song history, tabs, it plays the song along with the tabs (which you can slow down and loop if you wish), and with one click it simulates any amps/effects used in the song. WAY cool.

Fritzo recommended!

 

[Alienwho]

While we're on the subject of tabs, what is everybody's favorite acoustic songs to play? My all time favorite has to be wish you were here by pink floyd, it's the first song I ever learned and that's what got me hooked. Other favorites are "Smiling" by Jimmies chicken shack, "the leaving song" by AFI, "Hurt" johnny cash version, and more recently "Cannonball" by Damien rice and "Through Glass" by Stone Sour. I also love playing a bunch of Brazilian songs that nobody here has ever heard of.

 

[Linux23]

God I wish I knew how to play the guitar

/looks at $1000 guitar sitting in the corner of my room

 

[glassflower]

Originally posted by: SupaDupaCheez
Guitar Pro is pretty good too (especially if you can get the 30k archive floating around)

i can never perfectly figure out strumming patterns,

but GP has all the notes and rythmns on top of the tabs all ready for me.

so i'll say guitar pro ftw!

 

[CalvinHobbes]

I just started learning to play and I use Guitar Pro plus tabs from the internet. The ones I've used sound correct to me but I may not know any better.

 

[mrrman]

Originally posted by: CalvinHobbes
I just started learning to play and I use Guitar Pro plus tabs from the internet. The ones I've used sound correct to me but I may not know any better.

I am also using this...so far I like it

 

[Fritzo]

Originally posted by: Alienwho
While we're on the subject of tabs, what is everybody's favorite acoustic songs to play? My all time favorite has to be wish you were here by pink floyd, it's the first song I ever learned and that's what got me hooked. Other favorites are "Smiling" by Jimmies chicken shack, "the leaving song" by AFI, "Hurt" johnny cash version, and more recently "Cannonball" by Damien rice and "Through Glass" by Stone Sour. I also love playing a bunch of Brazilian songs that nobody here has ever heard of.

I'm a big fan of Bert Jansch, who was copied by about every supergroup in the 60's and 70's.

My all time favorite acoustic song would have to be Bron-Yr-Aur Stomp by Zeppelin. Wheneven I play it, no matter who's in the room, they start clapping along and stomping their feet It's one of those songs where you can feel the beat while you're playing it.

I play in in a G tuning, which matches a banjo. You can really improvise when using this tuning as almost any note will work in G (as long as you're consistant).