tabs

i'm not aware of any, although most of the published books you find at music stores do a pretty good job, as are about 2/3rds of the tabs you find online. the thing is, though, you should only use tabs as a guide. you'll want to learn to figure out as much music as you can by ear, because if the tabs say one thing, and your ears say another, it's the tabs that are wrong. and since learning by ear is a skill you'll be using for the rest of your life, the sooner you start learning it, the better.

I have found Tabs to be consistently unreliable. to be completely cynical I think the people that post tabs don't know how to play chords and have never taken a lesson. that's pretty cynical hey :P

I have a library of Classic Rock tabs gleened from years of subscriptions to Guitar World. Several songs are included in each issue. These seem to be spot on. A lot of the tabs people create as Power Tab files seem to be exact copies. Hmmmmm Not gonna say any more. Otherwise I agree with Dogbite. People post things and you wonder what their skill level is. My son and I work as a team to learn songs by ear. We will listen and tell each other, "That aint right"! :lol: Then we work it out so it is right.

Oh, to answer the question, guitar mags seem pretty good. The name of the transcriptionist is usually on them. You can check that against books in the music store. I'm sure you will find a lot of the same names. I know one guys name that transcribes for Guitar World is Andy Aledort. He also has books of transcriptions by Cherry Lane Music. As a plus these tabs will also have standard notation. A good learning experience as discussed in another thread here.

I'd second what TR says, especially about standard notation. Even if you can't read standard notation, it really, really helps with timing if you're wondering about it somewhere.

thx guys

Tabs are OK for a reference point, a starting point if you like - if it's a simple 3 or 4 chord song and you just want the rhythm chords, then most of them aren't too far out. Where it gets complicated is if there's a fingerpicking section or a tricky intro - tabs only give notes, for the most part, not timing. Strumming patterns? Forget it!

Couple of years or so back, I decided I wanted to learn "Dirty World" by the Traveling Wilburys. I looked for a tab, found about 7-8 different sites that had the same (totally WRONG!) chords, and started from scratch - put the CD on, listened carefully, and played along. Couldn't understand how someone could show the chords for the verse as being the same chords used in the intro, when it was quite obvious to my ear they were two completely different riffs....and every tab showed major chords for the verses, when it was quite obvious there's a minor chord in there!

Like the man said above...Jason Brann, that is....listen carefully, learn to trust your ears.

:D :D :D

Vic