Where Did The Guitar Tabs Go?

[TRGuitar]

Unbelievable, but why on earth did you cave so readily, you can always save a copy of the site and host it somewhere else. What good is this site now? All your years of hard work and dedication have gone up in smoke and for what? You should be putting up more of a fight than this. Without tabs you won't have any visitors anyway. Lawyers are all about scare tactics and you bought it, if some random dude sent you a letter would you act upon it, no, of course not. Put the tabs back and fight this.

Excuse me if I'm out of line but ... what a load of crap! I think you are doing the right thing and I may be lame but I don't come here for the tabs. I come here for the people. Socialization with fellow guitarist around the world. I come here to share thoughts and ideas with people I would otherwise never meet. GuitarNoise will be just fine, tabs or not.

[rparker]

Unbelievable, but why on earth did you cave so readily, you can always save a copy of the site and host it somewhere else. What good is this site now? All your years of hard work and dedication have gone up in smoke and for what? You should be putting up more of a fight than this. Without tabs you won't have any visitors anyway. Lawyers are all about scare tactics and you bought it, if some random dude sent you a letter would you act upon it, no, of course not. Put the tabs back and fight this.

Excuse me if I'm out of line but ... what a load of crap! I think you are doing the right thing and I may be lame but I don't come here for the tabs. I come here for the people. Socialization with fellow guitarist around the world. I come here to share thoughts and ideas with people I would otherwise never meet. GuitarNoise will be just fine, tabs or not.

+1

[Vic Lewis VL]

Guitar Noise isn't really a guitar tab site. I think a lot of visitors are here for what we have other than tab. But I guess we'll see.

Thanks for the comments.

Have to admit, I originally found the site when looking for tabs - then I found the lessons, then the forums. Found I could ask a lot of questions without being laughed at and/or flamed - liked the atmosphere and the general friendliness and willingness to help. I've been here about six years now.....

There's a HECK of a lot more to GN than tabs!



Vic

[Staffan]

Man, what a bummer - it´s so sad to see the LAW crack down on enthusiasts like the GN-team, who actually promotes different artists, by teaching their songs!

I really hope everything works out, so that GN can come back in full strength - soon! I´ve learned so much great stuff from your lessons and I´m actually very upset to see some of it gone (although hopefully just temporarily).

Best of luck to you, David (my GURU) and to the rest of the GN-team - I hope that those "organizations" open their eyes and realize that they are way, way off, attacking GN in this manner.

Guitar Noise promotes the art of music, and any artist or organization that tries to supress that should be charged themselves, ha!

MAN, this world is weird sometimes - one of the best sites on the internet and they try to shut it down - not cool MPA/NMPA!

[bangthatdrum]

Well I'm a beginner and I come for the lessons. How can you learn the songs without tabs? Socializing may be great when your an expert but when your just starting out you need this. Also calling my comments crap does not convince me this is a great place to hang out.

[Alan Green]

Well I'm a beginner and I come for the lessons. How can you learn the songs without tabs? Socializing may be great when your an expert but when your just starting out you need this. Also calling my comments crap does not convince me this is a great place to hang out.

You're probably likely to learn as much from the teachers, authors, music school owners and professional musicians on the forum pages as you are from the lessons, to be honest.

How can you learn songs without Tabs? Well, most of us try and work out a song from the record at some stage. Beginners struggle trying to do the same, we appreciate that and we're around to help. Others buy the book from the shop and come and ask us when there's something they don't understand. Others get together with other musicians in a socialising situation like this site, or get some lessons from a teacher. There is, of course, a guaranteed free way of learning all great songs without Tabs - it's called hard work.

And, finally, you have two posts on this site, the first of which was a crass comment about how the site owner should ignore the threat of very expensive legal action. That doesn't tell us anything about you; certainly not that you're a beginner coming here for lessons; it took a response to your post for us to find that out.


Alan

[greybeard]

Well I'm a beginner and I come for the lessons. How can you learn the songs without tabs? Socializing may be great when your an expert but when your just starting out you need this. Also calling my comments crap does not convince me this is a great place to hang out.

You've got 2 posts, I have over 7500 - I think that tells you what I think about "hanging out" here.

We get many beginners, who come to ask questions of people that have already confronted the beginner's problem. No matter what your question, you'll get an answer - and no flames, no derision. That's socialising and it's for beginners, intermediates and those that actually know a couple of songs all the way through. How do you think you learn? By being around those who know more than you, currently, do. What do you do with that knowledge? Here, you pass it on to those who know less than you do.

As an aside, I think that had your first post not been so abrasive, you would not have got a such an abrasive answer back.

[jrevillini]

I think we should all concentrate on the real issue: the NMPA and the MPA have gone too far. It makes no sense to argue over whether this particular site owner should have or shouldn't have complied, or what the site is good for. It is what it is.

I liked the recommendation to view the old pages using way back machine. I also found a way to create my own personal copy of the archived pages. I found a script and fixed up my own copy that sucks the whole site out of the google cache. Granted, it doesn't grab the images, so I don't know if it's going to work forever.

It's definitely not as easy as just going to the webarchive.org, or whatever it is, but there you go. It's pretty much plug and play for a linux system (although google may temporarily flag you as a rogue spider).

[rparker]

Tact, is why your comments were called a load of crap. Jumping in and in your first post, calling the owners and creaters out just because they were legally responsible and telling us/them that this place is useless (from your phrases "What good is this site now? All your years of hard work and dedication have gone up in smoke and for what? ") on your very first visit is inflamatory in the very least. If greybeard said what you said and the way you said it, he'd simply have inspired a debate. But being a new person to us, it looks very much like you simply joined up to throw some dung arround, and then re-attack and critizise the first person who defended the site by turning it back around on him (the "Also calling my comments crap does not convince me this is a great place to hang out."). It all says to us, "this person is just coming on here to stir up some trouble".

TR or I have nothing to do with GN powers that be other that we use this free site the best we can and even though some important detail has bloodied it's nose, it's still a fine place and still loaded with information. I hope that you take a step back, introduce yourself in the new members place and jump right into so conversations. Remember though, that tact and respect wins the day. Be courteous to others, please.

[TRGuitar]

Sorry Bangthatdrum, I didn't mean your comments were crap. What I meant was crap, was bashing the person responsable for this site on your first post. Not nice. The people that run this place really care about it and the people that visit here. So let me rephrase. I took offense to your behavior, not your words. Sorry for the misunderstanding. I should have been more tactful myself but some of us spend alot of time here so we tend to take critism of the site personally. I was just sticking up for the guy that runs the site and my buddy Roy had my back. Give us a chance, we aren't bad people and there are alot of folks here that can help you learn.

[Minotaur]

I'm rethinking my earlier statement and feeling about it being unconscionable. Now I guess I'm one of those people who caved in to the NMPA & MPA by buying a copy of Guitar Tab Whte Pages Vols. 1, 2, & 3; Bass Guitar White Pages; ULTIMATE ROCK GUITAR FAKE BOOK; and The Ultimate Fake Book: with Over 1,200 Songs, C Edition, plus a few sheets from sheetmusicdirect.com.

Why did I do this? Because I got sick and tired of wasting hours of otherwise good practice time scouring the internet for crappy tabs and chord sheets that I had to doctor-up, pretty-up, tinker with, and triangulate from two or three to get a workable sheet. Not to say the offerings on this site in the ESD are not good, but let's face it, the space and bandwidth is limited.

So I spent maybe $100-$150 on these books. Why do I trust them, well... 1. you pays your money and you takes your chances; 2. I think published sheet music has a better chance of being accurate than an offering from a 17 year old who is too lazy to put anything more than the basic chords and a comment like "I didn't feel like doing the rest. haha".

How much did the artists make on each song? Probably not much. Given that there were a (rough calculation) total of less than 75 books available for purchase from Barnes & Noble (I work for the distribution center and have access to the inventory system for the entire USA; I don't know how many are in the publishers' warehouses); ~1800 songs among all the books; a total average retail $ amount of ~$39.95.

I don't think anyone is getting rich off of it. I don't think it's the money, I think it's the principle, going back to the bastardized internet tabs and chord sheets that make an otherwise great song, perhaps a grammy winner look like a piece of crap. Especially when it is completely wrong and the author of the tab posts "This is absolutely how you play it... I saw XXX play it in concert" and 14 comments call it garbage.

So this is my opinion, good, bad or indifferent. Az I sez : "You payz yur money and you takes yur chansez".

[Staffan]

Az I sez : "You payz yur money and you takes yur chansez".

Yeah, I think I´m one of those guys too, as I buy a lot of tab books and pretty much for the same reasons Minotaur expresses (plus some music is really hard to find - any - tabs for).

Just wanted to thank you, Minotau, for the book-tip "Tab White Pages..." - didn´t even know they existed! I checked them out real quickly on Amazon and first looks are promising - quite a nice blend of different songs/styles. I think I´m gonna spend the dough and take on chance on these

Still - the lessons are what I´ll miss mostly about GN and especially the fact that David explains everything so nicely, and many times also shows alternative ways to play certain stuff. That has been very valuable to me, and I can truly say that I´ve evolved quite a bit through the help from the lessons at GN.

This really sucks - I gotta tell you - I just can´t accept it!

I say go with housing the site abroad, that´s the only reasonable thing to do in my opinion (but I´m not very familiar with this whole rights-circus).

Anyways; best of luck to the GN-team - I would gladly help in any way possible, I feel I owe it to you guys for all the free help!

[aragorn]

@ Staffan - I agree. David's lessons are a major loss here. It's not just how to play a song but how to arrange a song for guitar where he really teaches you how to be a better musician. How this defies copyrights defies logic.

Take for example the recent Harry Potter dictionary suit. It's perfectly okay to write and publish a book going on at great length about Hogwarts, Dumbledore, etc. giving your opinion and interpretations, what is not okay (and the reason the suit was successful) is to simply regurgitate the information in a different form without adding anything.

Take David Hodge's lessons in this context. He's not saying here's the notes to a song I've written down. He's saying here's how you arrange a tune for a solo guitar, and using the lesson to teach basic guitar concepts. In fact, one of the things I've learned from him is that it's not about learning to play a record verbatim, but to learn to use my ears and play what sounds good to me.

[Minotaur]

Still - the lessons are what I´ll miss mostly about GN and especially the fact that David explains everything so nicely, and many times also shows alternative ways to play certain stuff. That has been very valuable to me, and I can truly say that I´ve evolved quite a bit through the help from the lessons at GN.

No doubt. The lessons are the thing I don't get. I stand by my thoughts about splattering the internet with crapped up tabs and chord sheets and incorrect lyrics, passing them off as genuine. And for that reason I'll continue to use genuine published material.

But I don't see how a lesson site is any different than someone going about and learning the song themselves, if the organizations are worried about the performer making money from the song. It's the responsibility of the venue to account for it. What's to stop the MPA and NMPA and whoever from shutting down lessons studios? Will they barge into each studio and demand to know what the teacher is tabbing out for the student? It's a slippery slope, and a stupid one.

[slejhamer]

I am putting together a bass lesson for the site, and I have to say this tabs restriction has made it a challenge to structure.

It's not only tabs that have gone away. Standard notation, lyrics, chord charts ... verboden.

Imagine if all those Hal Leonard and Mel Bay books had only paragraphs of text, no notation whatsoever. Effective teaching tools, still? Of course, those are the guys represented by MPA and NMPA (not the artists), so that won't happen, but hopefully you see my point.

Still, there are more than a few ways to skin this cat.