Learning the Guitar - Website for good tabs

winter_combat_knight

So basically, im learning the guitar atm. Im lazy and cant be bothered learning to read notes, so atm ive been using tabs. Ive downloaded some and theyve been a really good start. But ive found that most tabs are, to put it bluntly, are sh*t. Can anyone recommend me any good guitar tab websites? in regards to real songs. Also, maybe some other advice from expierience. Cheers guys.

Chanus

To put it bluntly, most tabs are shit.

www.ultimate-guitar.com/tabs generally has everything that's commonly available (their selection is ginormous)

If you find something that's crap, just Google "<Band> tab" and see if an alternate version comes up... usually most sites simply use the same one or two version that have been posted, though... so it takes a bit of recognizing that the tab isn't quality. At the same time, though, that's a good learning exercise.

Chanus

Crap, can't edit... no need for "/tabs" on that link... though it will redirect you to the main site if you click on it

flatlinegraphics

most tabs are shit. any good ones have had DCMA takedowns. the OLGA database was the only really good one and it got taken out in like 2006.

have you tried youtube? there are tons of lessons up there.

t_catt11

As someone who has done a lot of "man, I can't be bothered with notes", I tell you BEWARE. Tabs are a quick way to play something that kinda sounds pretty much like the song you are looking for, but in the long run, they can hurt your progression as a guitar player.

Unless you have a natural knack for just "picking it up", I'd advise going another route.

Chanus

It's definitely a good idea to learn some fundamental music theory. You don't need to get too involved, but things like learning what a minor third sounds like will greatly improve your ability to play by ear.

devCharles

I agree with ultimate-guitar being as good a site as any for it. The community there is pretty active, so even if there are mistakes, you can see comments correcting some of the problems. Of course, when it comes to tabs, the most popular songs tend to be the most accurately tabbed. It's kind of sadly ironic considering most popular rock songs are the simplest to figure out by ear.

RainOPain

Here is a site consisting mostly of tabs for Power Tab (which is a pretty good free program that you should check out)

clearsimpleplain

Download torrents of tab books.

acidlacedpenguin

unfortunately, downloading torrents of *published* tab books is unfair to those who took the time and money to publish said tab books.

I'd recommend you purchase Guitar Pro. The fee is only like $60, but it is really great.

you can find GP tabs at ultimate guitar.

Nappuccino

I agree with the one who suggested "learn fundamentals." That, and trying to pick songs up by ear will help you alot more than tabs will. That said, some chords will out right stump you and its never a bad thing to double check what you hear with what some other bloke does.

Really though, tabs are a crutch that is too easy to lean on. While it might be comfortable and easy, you'll never know when your leg has healed enough to start running if you never get off the crutch.

Aurin

acidlacedpenguin wrote: »

unfortunately, downloading torrents of *published* tab books is unfair to those who took the time and money to publish said tab books.

I'd recommend you purchase Guitar Pro. The fee is only like $60, but it is really great.

you can find GP tabs at ultimate guitar.

http://www.tuxguitar.com.ar/

Open source, free program that plays Guitar Pro and Power Tab files. :P

winter_combat_knight

Cheers for the links people. Really appreciate it. im hoping tabs will kinda help to get used to moving my hand/fingers around the neck. Mostly atm ive been trying to play songs by ear, but the problem with that (other than the out of tune guitar:)) is that im probably playing it the most awkward/wrong way, using the wrong strings.

t_catt11 / Chanus - yeah it might be a good idea to read up and do some fundamentals. I guess its like drawing. Cant illustrate full colour paintings without knowing the theory of colour.

Cheers again folks!

Pheezer

Learn your bar chords as fast as you can. Learn as many scales as you can, and learn to transpose between open position, 5th and 12th fret positions as good as you can. Like, in standard tuning open 5th string is fret 5 on the 6th, and that means the 8th fret on the 6th is the 3rd on the 5th and so forth. And get a tuner, practicing on an out of tune guitar is almost a complete waste of time.

Finally, as soon as you can play basic chords and you know a few songs, make friends with other people who have instruments and jam as often as you can. Start a shitty band. It'll motivate you to get better, and get you to the part of playing that's actually fun faster.

echolocation

I've been teaching myself how to play the guitar over the past few years, and here are a few things that I've found really help:

First, it doesn't really matter what type of guitar you're playing currently, whether it's electric or acoustic, what you need to do is learn the basics, so it will be a bit more acoustically oriented.

You're going to need to learn chords, not hard to do, but generally not a lot of fun to just go to a site, and read "This is the G chord, played by putting finger here here here" What's easier is to find a tab or video that teaches you a song and integrates these types of things. For this I found that lazyfret on youtube, http://www.youtube.com/user/lazyfret?blend=1&ob=4 is excellent. He teaches simplified versions of a few popular, well known songs and teahces you exactly how to do the chords neccesary and the strumming arrangement for it.

I suggest that you learn from a few of his videos, and when you're a bit better than it's time to move on to teaching yourself. First you need to learn to read a tab if you haven't already, http://www.howtotuneaguitar.org/lessons/the-basics/how-to-read-guitar-tab/ (Love this site, has all the common abbreviations in tabbing). After you've learned this, you need to find tabs, a good site is, as previously mentioned, www.ultimate-guitar.com . You'll notice a lot of the time they have tabs listed as "Guitar Pro Tab" or "Power Tab" this is a program that plays MIDI files, or RSE files as according to the tab entered. you can find the program Guitar Pro at http://www.guitar-pro.com/en/index.php Or I'm sure you can find an illegal version of it somewhere (Which I Don't endorse) Guitar Pro has a power tab converter, so it's an all around great program.

Listen to the radio, find some nice songs, or even songs that you like, look for the tab, and try to learn it. Start off with simple songs like "Smells Like teen Spirit" "Sweet home alabama", and etc. then, try to learn songs that focus on fingering techniques, such as "Minuet - From First to Last" which is great because it utilizes a lot of the fretboard.

Now basically at this point you should be able to do chords and singular frets pretty well, if you can't keep practicing, it starts off hard, and you're not going to be amazingly awesome in 48 hours or even a week, it takes practice, and you will get better.

If you have an electric guitar, you can now get more diversified, first off you need to learn the amp. If I had time I'd give you detail as to what each control on an amp does, but unfortunately, I don't. However, you can do a quick Google search and find many great sites that will teach you exactly how to get the sound you want out of an amp.

At this time, a great thing to do is go to Justin's youtube site: http://www.youtube.com/user/JustinSandercoe He is an amazing teacher for all sorts of things on the electric guitar and I have learned an unbelievable amount of techniques from his video, basically no matter what you want to get into, Rock, metal, blues, his techniques will help you out.

If I can think of any more I'll update, but good luck on playing the guitar, remember, you'll get good, but it takes practice, so don't give up and keep playing!

Cheers.