First some background:
I'm a total noob. After 30+ years of wishing I could play some instrument I finally decided that it was time... so I started taking guitar lessons in Jan of this year. I become totally enamored with it and after 6 months spend at least 30 and often a couple hours practicing every day (baseball games make great background to practicing chords over and over)...
I've learned 1/2 dozen opening riffs of songs, but finally decided (after the wife threatened divorce if I didn't learn more than just the first few bars of songs) that I needed to buckle down and learn a complete song. My teacher is very flexible and has let me flit across the landscape teaching me as we go. It's been a great ride and I'm learning a lot...
Because I want to learn entire songs, I have recently been focusing on chords and chord transitions. Frustrating to say the least - but it's true - practice works! Now, I want to use some of the chord progressions (A, Em, D, G, Am, C) I have learned in songs... But tab seems to be very limited - doesn't have the rhythm and so even if I hit the chords in the right order, it never seems to sound like the song. My teacher has recorded a few simple chord based songs (Margaritaville for example) and taught me a couple strumming patterns. I slow down the recording and try to strum along, but this is not sustainable over time - not sure my teacher is going to want to record a version of every song I want to learn.
So, recently, I picked up Pro-Guitar. I figured that it could help me start to associate notes that I was playing with the formal sheet music. I transposed some of the simple method music my daughter has and have been very impressed with how I can use that to start correlating what my teacher has been teaching me and the written music. All in an effort to pick up full songs.
So here is where I stumbled. I searched through the many, many (jumbled up) tab repositories for GPx files. I either found "blah blah blah removed due to copyright blah blah" or the GPx file had so many tracks that unless you played them all in a band, the song sounds nothing like the song!
I'm frustrated to say the least. I really want to get some simple songs in GPx format that I can work with that help me 1) get my rhythm in shape and 2) work on chord progressions over and over again (love the loop training function coupled with the metronome). I'm willing to buy the sheet music if i can find them in this format and are simple one or 2 track songs. But I don't know where to find them (googling is no help at all). Any thoughts on how to get this? Should I buy physical sheet music and transpose it into pro-guitar?
Sorry for the rambling and thanks in advance for any advice you can give.
-Steve
I would expect a teacher to help a beginning student by transcribing a song at the student's level, then working thru it .
Here's the level my son got to using that method in his first year of guitar (after 3 years of keyboard)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BV05vIfsmOk
I wrapped a newspaper ’round my head
So I looked like I was deep
Steve, do you mean Guitar Pro, as in this software? http://www.guitar-pro.com/en/index.php If so, click on "Support" on the top menu row and look at the bottom of the center section of the page where it says "Resources". To the right are listed about 8-10 links of sites that supposedly have them. The second one listed, GProTab at http://www.gprotab.net/ still has some.
None of the sites appear to be laden with tons of recent activity, at least the last time I looked, but lots of older tunes on it. I just made sure a download of a Rolling Stones tab worked.
Remember these points as you start to explore TAB and TAB / sheet music.
One final thing to consider. Almost any song can be made into a single guitar arrangement. It's a tough concept for a noob to understand and it certainly took me a while. A guitar part in a song often does not sound like the song in it's entirety. The riffs are often ours, but the bulk of the song comes from the bass, drums, keys and singer. When I play in a single guitar style arrangement, I play and sing. The guitar backs up the singing. If I cover a Stones' song, it's still me and my guitar trying to capture the feel of the song. Same as if i decided to cover an Elton John song or anyone else with my guitar.
Roy
"I wonder if a composer ever intentionally composed a piece that was physically impossible to play and stuck it away to be found years later after his death, knowing it would forever drive perfectionist musicians crazy." - George Carlin
