Guitar tabs

Guitar tabs are a form of musical notation, where the music is not represented by notes but by a guitar neck and the positions where you should put your fingers on.

Guitar tabs are very popular among young guitar players, because they offer a free way of studying melodies without putting too much effort on really studying. Plus that for this you don’t need to have a great ear, while when trying to figure out a song by ear, you really need a good sense of music.

Guitar tabs became very popular in the last years, there are a lot of websites around publishing for free large collection of free guitar tabs and this made the music industry angry.

In the last period of time, 2 of the largest musical businesses team together to close the sites distributing free guitar tabs. Some of the big sites were already closed others are threatened by the music industry. However, I don’t think that electric guitar tabs or acoustic tabs will disappear from the internet, I just think there will be some fight over them and it will settle somehow. For the moment, the fight still goes on since a few years since there are money involved, at least from the point of view of the music industry, and honestly, because the traffic it generates, the sites are not doing bad either.

When reading this musical notation, it does not matter if you play the electric guitar or the acoustic guitar, it is the same, it depends on the melody you play. This is also true for classical notation. Until they will shut down the sites I am speaking about or they will let them free, enjoy as much music you can and learn it in a classical way. You would be surprised how many electric guitar players have classical studies in their “job paper”. Do you think that they are just cool guys playing the guitar? Well, most of them are people that studied a lot.

How guitar tabs make money?

Guitar tabs make money for the music industry by publishing books about them and selling them, while free sites don’t make money out of them, at least not the same way. Free guitar tabs cut down the revenue of offline music publisher a lot, that is why they try to cut them down.

Can I write my own guitar tabs?

Of course you can write your own guitar tabs, just look on how you play a song on your guitar and put down on paper the positions where you put your fingers on and this is it! You have your own tablature!

Is there a proper way of writing guitar tabs?

Well, I don’t think there is such thing as proper way of writing guitar tabs. They are like the mp3 format: open way of publishing music on paper, in an easy way. Just put the dots on the guitar neck and there you have it!

Who invented guitar tabs?

I guess that fellow guitar players in need of a fast way of writing music on paper. I think that some smart beginner guitar player that didn’t have too much classical school so he didn’t quite know how to write music. I presume this because usually, guitar players with high education on this matter laugh at them.

There are soft packages that help you write them, there are soft packages that help you interpret them by entering such a musical notation in their own format and getting the song. However, I just advice you to take it step by step and try it for yourself, the music is beautiful and you can learn it by playing and singing!

By the way, don’t get too much stressed about it, just play along! Also learn theory, it will help you big time. And if you learn theory you won’t be needing too many shortcuts in order to make beautiful music. Learn it and play it. That is the way to go!

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