Online tabs and books

I've never understood the notion that tabs are free. Toner is expensive and paper's not cheap either.

Print out 30 complete songs and actually calculate what that cost you compared to a book of songs.

It's free when you print it at work!!

I have a binder full of online tabs that I've learned the first three lines of each. The online method is great for dabbling, but for really LEARNING (at my stage, anyway) I think you need to get a book - or better yet, real lessons.

The Internet is fun for grabbing songs like "We're Not Gonna Take It" to learn the basics.

I also have a few of the 100+ Songs Fake Books which are ok, but I'm usually only interested in learning 25% of the songs.

I purchase. I have a pretty good collection of music books and I also visit on-line shops like musicnotes.com.

Why? It's not as much a shot in the dark as online free sources. I think the books tend to be reasonably reliable and are probably vetted by some sort of review or editorial process. They make a good guide.

And I don't mind some of my money supporting the songwriters. I think that's only fair, even if they do only see a miniscule percentage.

What I really like are the transcribed scores -- I like having all the parts there. Unfortunately, there aren't as many of those.

I've never understood the notion that tabs are free. Toner is expensive and paper's not cheap either.

Print out 30 complete songs and actually calculate what that cost you compared to a book of songs.

It's free when you print it at work!!

:roll: I have no interest in losing my job in order to have a free tab :roll:

I primarily purchase books. I'll use online tab to get an idea or to look at something quickly. If I want to try to learn the tune, I prefer to use "legit" stuff.

I probably have almost 200 songs in various books. Now if I could only play them ... :)

Jason

I use online tabs to get the basic progression. It is just a timesaver. I trust my ears more than tabs.

Books can be overkill. They give you every little nuance. I have a Jimi Hendrix Experience songbook with exact tabs. Man, they give you every little pick scratch. And as David has said in his articles, strumming can look really complicated. When you try to strum perfectly what the artist was strumming freestyle it can get impossible. So, I just need to see what chord the artist is using, I will use my ear to figure out the strum.

To be quite frank, I'm not good enough at guitar yet to be able to play songs the way they are written in the book. But with online tabs, if it is an interpretation, then it's usually been simplified enough so that I can get at least an idea of why and how the song sounds the way it does, and also actually be able to play it. Plus there's so many different tabs online, you can see all the varying ways a bunch of people try to make the same noise, and that's always a good education experience.

I've been revisiting "Johnny B. Goode" the last couple of days - the original Chuck Berry version. When I bought GuitarPro, I got the Mysongbook library as well, so I got 3 versions of the song. I also have a version from Powertabs and one from somewhere else. For the intro alone, there are 4 different interpretations.
I think that I, possibly, have another version, but I know that this one (from the German "Guitar" magazine) is not intended to be an exact replica of the original.
So I either go out and buy a book, or I spend some time analysing the record (which is what I'm going to do).

I do both, I buy the books when they seem to have a varied sample and enough songs that I like. However, as time passes I come to realize that most of these songs are just translated into the key of C or G to basically simplify the song. Not a bad thing when you're starting out, but sooner or later you'll want to play the song as close to the original.

So therefore I go looking for tabs online. It can be very frustrating to find songs at the best of time, as most tabs are incomplete in some way or another. So usually I have to find several tabs and sort of piece them together.

As for buying sheet music online, I'm still pretty wary of placing my credit card online for anything. And sheet music at my two local stores are usually listed with the top ten most popular songs (not really want I'm looking for).

Also I tried looking at samples on Sheet Music Online for John Mellencamps Authority Song. One is in Dropped D tuning and another is in Standard tuning, but neither seems quite right. Since he's come out with a greatest hits, maybe Hal Leonard will come out with a book hopefully.

Cheers

I agree with wes. I like to see the chord progression and I can figure out the rythym and all that. It's ok having every little pick scratch on paper because it is nice to see exactly what they are doing, as long as the chords are listed. Online is ok but unreliable. I have an ok sized music book collection and billions of Guitar magazines going back to the early 80's.

I prefer buying books with CDs or DVDs/Videos accompanying them- I like the ones that discuss the style of the musos they are covering, give you hints how to pick up some of the nuances etc. If I was in a band downloading cheat sheets would be useful as a basic outline for everyone to work around and add their input, :)

i like books but it's hard to find ones that i think are good. you wind up buying books that seem good in the store but once you get it home it's a different story. one book that i bought lately that i like a lot is called "Beginning Fingerstyle Blues Guitar" bu Arine Berle and Mark Galbo. It comes with a Cd. It starts off pretty easy but moves into more complicated things that you can still get with a little practice.

I've been revisiting "Johnny B. Goode" the last couple of days - the original Chuck Berry version. When I bought GuitarPro, I got the Mysongbook library as well, so I got 3 versions of the song. I also have a version from Powertabs and one from somewhere else. For the intro alone, there are 4 different interpretations.
I think that I, possibly, have another version, but I know that this one (from the German "Guitar" magazine) is not intended to be an exact replica of the original.
So I either go out and buy a book, or I spend some time analysing the record (which is what I'm going to do).

Have you managed to sort out a decent version of this yet?

My $.02 as a newbie (4 months with a guitar in my hands)
I do like the immediacy and cheapnis of on-line tabs, but there I do have a few books in my accumulation of guitar stuff as well.

This is from the "Frank Zappa guitar book", all transcriptions by Steve Vai (and he should know!)

You just aren't going to get that kind of detail from a tab :lol:

My $.02 as a newbie (4 months with a guitar in my hands)
I do like the immediacy and cheapnis of on-line tabs, but there I do have a few books in my accumulation of guitar stuff as well.

This is from the "Frank Zappa guitar book", all transcriptions by Steve Vai (and he should know!)

You just aren't going to get that kind of detail from a tab :lol:

but as has been stated above, a lot of this info is not needed to make a decent attempt a a song and can actually be counter productive if you get hung up on too much detail, esp after only 4 months I would think?

but as has been stated above, a lot of this info is not needed to make a decent attempt a a song and can actually be counter productive if you get hung up on too much detail, esp after only 4 months I would think?

There's no way that I actually plan to play anything that Zappa wrote at this stage. Or probably for the next several years.

But when I am ready, It'll be nice to have access to all the nuances that the original player used (like items 7 & 13 in the notation ledgend above)

And in other places in the book there are insights into the writing and performing of the included songs.

Back to my point (I did have one, honest) at this point, tabs are my main resource, but I'm accumulating books of my favourite music for the day that I am able to play what's in them.