yes, but this is very hard to do when you first start, which is where tabs came in for me, now i'm starting pick up on scales and what notes work well with each other without ever formally learning them.

by the way anyone have a good way to learn about keys? this always gets me.

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i'm a poor college kid, scholarships in the form of guitar gear are greatly appreciated

SO you have perfect pitch then?? I wish i had perfect pitch. It would help so much. I hear that you can learn it though... I should read up on that.

Have someone teach you. It'll be ten times harder to learn on your own and will get boring. It's a good thing to know though.

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Matthew17

He didn't pay for the rights, they changed a couple of the notes so it was different enough so that copyright didn't apply, but close enough so that people could still recognise it.

Sorry to be the voice of opposition here, but many posters are advocating the breach of some fundamental rules of property rights.

A piece of music is a copyrighted work, as are books, articles, professional photographs, and other creative products. The way that these artists earn their living - get paid! - is by our legal system protecting their right of ownership of the product of their creativity. Just like you and I get paid for the work we do at our jobs.

It's easy to say "oh, the greedy record companies suck" - and by the way, they DO suck, but for very different reasons (lack of creativity, inability to nurture new artists, short term outlook, just plain bad taste in music, way too expensive CD prices, etc.). PS - it's not the record companies that are shutting down tab sites, it's the music publishing companies who directly represent the songwriters and performers.

A very small fraction of performers are multi-gazillionaire rock stars. The vast majority are folks who are lucky to pay the bills and get three square meals a day. Only superstars make significant money from CDs and recordings - all the rest are in debt up to their ears to the record company and studios. But it's only through touring and royalties earned through music publishing that helps these artists stay in the music business doing what they love.

Any Geek on this board would be pissed is someone took an original song they created and put it in a commercial or movie and made money without giving them a dime. Really no different with sheet music and other published works of art. I used the tab sites as much as anyone to help sort out a tough riff or song, but the reality is that much as with illegal music download sites, they were living on borrowed time...

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"It's never too late to be who you might have been."

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True, but if I learn a song on guitar, I'm not stealing money from them. I'm not making money from learning it. I just want to learn it for bedroom practice. Tab books are rediculusly overpriced over here (like more than the cd!) and I dont see why just guitarists and people who like to sing along to songs should be punished.

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Call me Will

My Rig Thread

Mods:
DS-1 Mods // SD-1 Mods // Guitar LED mod // Storm trooper amp // Crybaby Mods



Sorry guys, mod help is on hiatus

If you wrote a book, and someone re-wrote it and put it on the internet, would you be pissed off?

Yes. It's no different with music, at all.

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I hope thats sarcasm...

Book..yeah, because no one would buy my book.

Tabs? Id be honoured that some fans would wanted to learn my music. Especially being a guitarist, one of the most important things that I want to acomplish as a musician is influencing the new generation of guitarists.

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Call me Will

My Rig Thread

Mods:
DS-1 Mods // SD-1 Mods // Guitar LED mod // Storm trooper amp // Crybaby Mods



Sorry guys, mod help is on hiatus

It's obvious that the artists dont care because if you've bought a guitar mag in the last year or so you would have noticed that the artists are showing fist hand how to play their songs on those CD's. All the pressure to shut down the sites is coming from higher up the food chain!!!

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before i start my ranting..i just want to thank everyone who have taken their time to fully review this issue and take the course of action that you were satisfied with

I do admit that i was blaming the wrong ppl (record company), i didn't have the full info of this issues but as i found out more info. i just have to say one thing.

Being a Musicians is a job but i think it'd be unfair to compare it w/ a regular day job. IMO musician is about sharing your talent and gift w/ the world and impact ppl in a tremendous way. Ask any artists today they have some influence of some artist in the past that effected the way they view music and the style they play. and IMO guitar tab and lyrics is a form of way to share that idea. I mean think about it..if Slash wasnt able to listen to the music that Joe Perry played Slash would be non- existent nor would Joe Perry if he wasn't able to listen to ppl that influenced him. so i am a/g the idea of the ppl trying to shut down tab sites because they are robbing musicians all around the world of that privillage. or even worse trying to make profits out of it by claiming a copyright.

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My Stuff for Sale!!

That would apply to the original songs being on the internet, but I don't think that analogy works with tabs.

I could take a book, re-write it word-for-word and put it on the internet and you could get the same experience from it as though you bought the original. So now you have a "pirated" version of the book.

I could have the tabs for the guitar part of a song, but that doesn't mean I have what the artist created. Even if the tabs are EXACTLY the way the song is played, I STILL don't have the SONG in my possession.

The book is about the words in it. If you copy the words, you're stealing the book. Music is about the SOUND. There's no sound coming out of the numbers on the tabs, so sharing tabs is not the same as making a copy of CD. If tabs are illegal, then just showing someone how to play someone else's song should be illegal...it's the same thing.

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I don't know if I'd go that far, I've just been figuring songs out by ear for a long time. I've read that Steve Vai can hear any piece of music and just write it out on paper without even picking up a guitar for reference. I'm nowhere near that level but I think that most people can train their ears to a certain extent. It just happens naturally over time if you put in enough hours figuring out songs. I learned how to do it by playing in a cover band years ago. Back in the late 80's you just couldn't get tabs for newly released songs much, so learning by ear was the only way to do it. It's come in handy over the years but the downside is that I don't know the proper terminology for a lot of the things I've learned. Luckily for me, all the guys in my band learned the same way, so we can show each other parts pretty quickly without going "OK, here's where you play a diminished augmented triad". Uh, if there is such a thing.

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Are the tab sites making money off the tabs? Then there's a problem. If it's a free service, then no theft has been committed.
Violating copyright implies that you're making money from copying the work. If the sites aren't making money, then the publishers don't have much of a leg to stand on. I think they're hoping that no-one will take them to court over this.

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This reminds me of rush 2112 again...

A lot of kids learn to play from internet tab, when they first start out. Not everyone can afford £15 for a tab book. (which incidently is not always entirely correct). Especially if you are 14 and learning to play a guitar which cost you your life-savings.

I learned by a combination of trial and error, listening to records and watching other guitarists play as I had no internet to help me out.
What I learned by myself in my first few years, could have been learned in less than six months with a decent tab site.

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Call me Tommy

Missing the point. You have obtained someone's copyrighted music without paying for it. Just because the tab sites aren't profiting from posting the tabs doesn't mean they aren't violating copyright law.

You have the alternative of purchasing legal and licensed sheet music and tab books that are authorized by the music publishing firms and that pay royalties to the artist. That is what the publishing firms are trying to accomplish - to get you to buy the tab/sheet music legit.

It's fascinating when people say "I love this artist" or "they are my hero and inspiration" and then turn around and rip those same artists off by downloading free music and free tab. If the artist authorizes that, that's great, but if not, you're stealing. And when these artists demonstrate music in guitar mags, it's done by permission and is copyrighted - look at the fine print a the bottom of those articles.

What we should be petitioning for is for music publishing firms to recognize that they are in the 21st century and authorize inexpensive and accurate tabs to popular songs that can be easily downloaded from the Internet. An equivalent to iTunes for sheet music, that is simple and low cost.

Of course, the record companies are trying to force Apple to jack up the cost of songs on iTunes, but that's only because they really are greedy scum-sucking sub-humans too stupid to embrace the medium that will save their sorry a**es. But I digress...

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"It's never too late to be who you might have been."

George Eliot

English novelist (1819 - 1880)

that's all well and good, but i've bought/been given "official" tab books that were wrong. At that point, I'm paying for information that's no better than what's freely available on the net.

I think the argument is not that someone else (a tab site) is making money off the tabs. The argument is "Is the artist missing out on some profit because of it?" I don't buy tab books because I don't trust them any more than the tabs on the internet. To a certain extent, yes, maybe they are missing out on some profits, but how much does that really amount to? If your official tab sucks, why would you expect people to pay for it? If you really want to learn a song, you should have the original recording whether or not you're using the tabs. So if you want to learn a song, you'll probably gonna have to buy the song somehow. That's where the copyright paranoia comes in - the recordings...not at the tab sites that don't claim to be accurate nor do they have musical notation like magazines/books do. I hardly see copyright infringement happening in a tab site.

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