Guitar Tablature being blocked??

Norman86 · 2011-06-11T17:02:22+00:00

So this is new... Going through my guitar techniques mag, i see on their subscriptions page, i missed the magazine with the Layla transcription :'( Now, i...

Guitar Tablature being blocked??

Bob-Dubery

Norman86 wrote: uhm, but then surely, if tab becomes "illegal", then music notation should be too...
just as you can buy tab, you can buy notation...

whats the difference???

Well you can buy CDs, that doesn't make a copy legal. If somebody holds the copyright on that notation or a hard copy tab book then they hold the copyright and have the right to expect that it not be distributed other than by them. They don't have to assert that right, but it's their prerogative to do so.

Richard Thompson put out a 3 volume song book a couple of years ago. He hired a professional transcriber and, he says, proof-read the whole thing to make sure that it was accurate. If that were me and THOSE tabs (not somebody else's personal attempt) popped up on the interwebs I might feel a bit miffed (Thompson holds the copyright on most of his songs, doesn't go after tab sites but does say that most of what he's seen is so bad it's not much help to anybody anyway)

bah humbug... will carry on buying guitar techniques and total guitar...
they'll always have notation and tab ?

Maybe they were the "third party"? If somebody "shared" a complete tab from Guitar Techniques maybe the publishers insisted it be taken down.

Highway-Chile

The reason is simple.....that sheet music is somebody else's property and only that person(s) has the right to decide how it gets used.

You can slice this and dice this nine ways to Sunday, it does not matter one damned bit in a court of law. We can say it is for educational purposes only, it's P2P, no money was involved, it's just a reasonable approximation of the real deal....... the judge won't care and award to the plaintiff.

Typically for quite some time in a record deal, the label will negotiate for ALL your publishing. If you are a new artist....if you do not give this up, you likely will not get the deal. Established artists and writers negotiate better deals and often have their own publishing companies. But somebody is getting all the publishing....be it the label that has it's own publishing company or is partnered with one....... or the publishing company who got you the deal or successfully pitched your song to some other recording artist.

A big part of that is sheet music and they will almost always own that. They get the music transcribed and deal with the printing of it or see to the chart(s) being available for paid download at online sheet music retailers.

To them, if somebody is putting up the dots or TAB for songs by their artists, this means fewer people will seek to pay for the printed or official online version........ so this is a threat to their income.

I happen to agree with this 100%. I do not like the illegal downloading of anything, burning CD's etc etc. I am not a hypocrite......I know I have done this myself many times....back in the cassette days and up until not too long ago CD's and DVD's, software etc.

But when I realized the staggering extent of the hard line losses to all the people involved, I had a change of heart about it.

I mean really......I don't know how rich you guys are but I sense we are all mostly battling. If you or I came up with a fairly cool piece of software that many people liked....not everyone in the world, a certain group of people........enough that we could make a tidy sum off it.....not enough to never work again.....but enough to not be tied to our current dead end job 5 days a week. The financial freedom now gives us the ability to pick and choose our next gig and/or work on our next invention.

Imagine now some nard takes our idea, copies it and starts giving it away on the internet or selling it dirt cheap. There is not a one of us that would not be on the phone to a law firm within seconds.

Well it is the same for the publishers and sheetmusic and TAB. I have seen this argument on music forums so many times in the last 5-8 years or more. Usually the people bitching the most are people with a distorted sense of entitlement and the worst arguments I have ever heard go something like...... they are a huge corporation, they've been screwing the consumer for years, they make so much fucking money they should give stuff away for free, it's time for them to give something back to the people that have supported them over the years, they won't be affected one tiny bit by me cracking this......... it is so lame.

That said, I love free TAB just as much as anybody else. If it is there, I might go take a look to see if I can figure out if I am doing something right etc But if the chart get's pulled.....hey tough luck. We shouldn't complain....somebody is just trying to protect his investment.

Squonk

Hey Norman

Why don't you contact GT and order this back issue.
I'm sure won't cost that much

Norman86

well, if i dont come right, and a couple of people have offered help, then i will do so!!

evolucian

Norman86 wrote: well, if i dont come right, and a couple of people have offered help, then i will do so!!

Go buy the instructional for that song from lick library. It is accurate.. and they usually mention what happens live and in studio. Its really not expensive...

http://www.licklibrary.com/artists/eric-clapton

Svengali

Highway Chile wrote:
Imagine now some nard takes our idea, copies it and starts giving it away on the internet or selling it dirt cheap. There is not a one of us that would not be on the phone to a law firm within seconds.

I happen to be co-owner of a sheet music publishing company. We had a stall some years back at KKNK. Along came these two 'ladies'. They picked up two different volumes, paging through them. "I'll buy this one and you buy that, then we can make copies from each so we have both", the one woman says perfectly out loud with me standing right across the display from her. I just stood there agape.
I have the ability to transcibe music from CD's (TAB, notation, guitar symphonic, whatever, for wich we obtain the legal rights and pay our dues) and have honed my skill over decades through great effort and at considerable cost and these persons (music teachers probably) - who were most likely not even able to read the music in front of then and form an auditory impression of what they saw - was scheming how to cheat me out of 10 bucks (which is what I put in my pocket out of a single sale of a book containing around sixty pages of music over which I slaved for weeks, months even, while I was standing right there!
What did we do?
Nothing. I know it happens. Especially in schools and at churches...
These things can't be policed, so kudos to folks like Highway Chile, who wisened up to the effect pirating has on the small man trying to get by out there...

Norman86

evolucian wrote:
Norman86 wrote: well, if i dont come right, and a couple of people have offered help, then i will do so!!
Go buy the instructional for that song from lick library. It is accurate.. and they usually mention what happens live and in studio. Its really not expensive...

http://www.licklibrary.com/artists/eric-clapton

Thanks Evo...
I will keep that in mind too ?
But also, it would be nice to have the GT mag, as im trying to start a collection/library of them ?
would love to subscribe too!

You know, after seeing the video, its ironic that Clapton's nickname is Slowhand... coz you need to be damn fast to keep up!!!

As for Highway Chile, Svengali...
I really do get it!!!! i wasnt trying to learn the song from tab though ?
i was trying to transcribe the intro by ear, but what i played didnt sound right!
its the only time i look for tab!
other times, i will search for the actual chords to play along to, as i cant always hear the chords!!
sometimes, but not always!

for instance... Steve Trovato demo's the Boss Fender Legends Series FRV-1 63 Spring Reverb pedal, and on that is a surf guitar piece that i tried to learn...
around 2:33 he starts playing chords... but you cant see what he's fretting... dammit...
first ones easy though... E minor...
second one too... A minor...
third one... not too sure... but a B7 sounds right... i think :-[
the rest you can see what he does, and im working on it... but that third chord is still a thorn :-[

http://www.roland.com/video/page.cfm?vid=19200628
or search for it on youtube if you wanna see it!

guitarboy2828

Svengali wrote:
Highway Chile wrote:
Imagine now some nard takes our idea, copies it and starts giving it away on the internet or selling it dirt cheap. There is not a one of us that would not be on the phone to a law firm within seconds.

I happen to be co-owner of a sheet music publishing company. We had a stall some years back at KKNK. Along came these two 'ladies'. They picked up two different volumes, paging through them. "I'll buy this one and you buy that, then we can make copies from each so we have both", the one woman says perfectly out loud with me standing right across the display from her. I just stood there agape.
I have the ability to transcibe music from CD's (TAB, notation, guitar symphonic, whatever, for wich we obtain the legal rights and pay our dues) and have honed my skill over decades through great effort and at considerable cost and these persons (music teachers probably) - who were most likely not even able to read the music in front of then and form an auditory impression of what they saw - was scheming how to cheat me out of 10 bucks (which is what I put in my pocket out of a single sale of a book containing around sixty pages of music over which I slaved for weeks, months even, while I was standing right there!
What did we do?
Nothing. I know it happens. Especially in schools and at churches...
These things can't be policed, so kudos to folks like Highway Chile, who wisened up to the effect pirating has on the small man trying to get by out there...

Just a note on this, churches pay a lot of money for the permission to make copies of sheet music. So, it's not illegal by any means.. Unless they aren't paying their CCLI licenses...

Svengali

Paul E wrote: Just a note on this, churches pay a lot of money for the permission to make copies of sheet music. So, it's not illegal by any means.. Unless they aren't paying their CCLI licenses...

Sorry' I'm not aiming a shot at them, I only meant that these are the places which ussually make use of large quantities of copied material and often - very conveniently - has a copier on site. We have produced a couple of volumes containing Christian music and we don't receive any blanket cover from any orginization which - from my point of view - should allow anybody to copy our stuff...

@Paul; BTW, how's the TOnebone?

singemonkey

Norman86, a simple factor here is just that tab on the interwebz is usually of very low quality compared to the stuff that you buy. As Bob said, I think most artists aren't too fussed when the guy who's been playing for a year and a half and doesn't know how to slide a note puts up their transcription of whole lotta love. What bothers them is when they put up the pro tab that someone paid a lot of money to have transcribed.

I wanted to point out that in this day and age there's an arguably better way of learning songs. And it falls into an interesting area in this debate. What I'm referring to is going to a youtube vid and learning by looking and listening. This is clearly how most human music was passed on before notation was devised so that you could learn a piece without ever meeting someone who knew how to play it. So the debate here is weird:

Is it ok for some dude you meet to teach you a song without paying the writer? If not, is that any different from showing it to anyone on youtube who wants to learn it?

For me, at any rate, this is a much easier way of learning songs quickly. It's a very natural human method ("here. Play what I'm playing."). For certain things, a fanatically accurate tab is still great if you really want to figure out exactly why the artist's recording sounds exactly the way it did.

So Norman86, have a look around on youtube for people demoing how to play that song. If your playing doesn't sound like theirs, the reasons will be much more obvious than when you're working from tab.

@Highway Chile. I'm also having a bit of a road to Damascus moment. Watched this doccie about The Pixies, and I was like, "How on earth can a band that huge, who everyone knows... how can some of them be struggling financially?" I guess I always just assumed it was the difference between being rich and being mega-rich. Who cares, right? But in fact, drops in album sales mean some people are literally struggling to send their kids to college, despite everything they've contributed musically.

Norman86

Im not going to quote again, but thanks singe... i do that too ?
i learn best from watching!!!
probably why im not a keen tablature follower, unless its in case of emergency!!

Keira-WitherKay

? it's time to go back to "working it out by ear" ....learn to play what you hear .it's pretty hard for the 1st few songs..... but if you understand music theory it's easy since composers write in a key ....... and once you find the key if you know the music theory you will be able to automatically narrow down the options and with practise you will soon actually hear the next change before it happens and as for solo and melody notes they too are all in the chord tones and their related harmonies....... so yes again theory is there for a reason .......... ?

anyway think of it this way ..... never see music as difficult there are only 12 notes i n western music (in various octaves of course) so if you stuck use a process of elimination ........it has to be one of them or a combination ther of if it's a double stop ect .... ........ ?

i was taught way back in the days when dinasours roamed the planet and tab and you tube was in the distant future that if you learn to sing the parts ( not the vocals but the guitar solo part) they become easier ...to work out ..... i was always told "if you can sing it you own it"

if anything being forced to work out music by ear will make you a better all round musician ........in the long run .,but yes i know it's frustrating initially just hang in there

singemonkey

It's true but, as I was saying, learning by looking and hearing is actually way older than learning by ear. It's the ultimate traditional way of passing on music. Playing by ear is a result of recorded music - only a little over a century old. And that was from people going back some way to that older approach - instead of using the new-fangled written music ?

So youtube is not so much a new thing. It's a way of doing the very oldest style of passing on music, but without the need for extreme physical proximity to the one passing on the music. Notation (and tab which is a kind of notation) and playing by ear were all ways of compensating for not having someone show you exactly how to play a piece (even back in 1211). And those new ways all retain useful elements and will not become obsolete. But I think it's tough to beat someone sitting with you showing you how to play something in terms of how quickly you can pick it up. With youtube, there's pretty much always someone to virtually "sit with" to show you whichever piece you want to learn.

Challenges often bring benefits. But we shouldn't write off new tech just because we had to "walk 15 miles to school through the snow and it built character." ? ?

Squonk

singemonkey wrote: But we shouldn't write off new tech just because we had to "walk 15 miles to school through the snow and it built character." ? ?

"luxury there was 27 of us in a hole in the road"(with best yorkshire accent)

+1 SM

I tried this on Peter Framptons Lines on my Face. I sat down and listened and quickly found the chords etc. Some of them didn't quite sound right, it was the right chord, but the way he played it gave it a different feel.

Downloaded a whole bunch of live performances, and then found one where the camera never left the guitar neck, one of the best lessons I had!

A very rewarding experience