Once you start playing the guitar, you need a constant source of reference. A sort of guide which you can go back and forth to, for reading tabs of various songs. If not tabs, then maybe standard musical notations. There are ample sites available online that offer service of providing Guitar Tabs. These sites can be a constant source of reference. The database that is available on these websites can serve as a guide in your journey and take your playability from beginner to intermediate and so on. In this article, I have covered three of the top choice of engines when it comes to recommendations for Guitar Tabs websites.
Learning guitar is a fun experience. But it could be daunting too. You cannot just take the instrument out of the bag and start playing as if it was that easy. With years of practice and learning, players start understanding the way different strings work in coordination. But not all players have the benefit of getting a professional course for the same. One utilizes their interest and works around the stuff and content available online to play their first songs.
For those, guitar tabs could be a huge help. Definitely, they would need to learn that too. You can find how to read guitar tabs and get the basic knowledge of the same. But for now, let’s find out the best guitar tabs site that you must not miss.
List of Best Guitar Tabs Websites
If you search on Google, you would find a lot of recommendations for guitar tabs websites. However, finding a trustworthy option for free guitar tabs isn’t easy. You may have to look further and select the ones that offer correct notations. There are certain guidelines related to the legalities of these free guitar tabs (detailed later in the article).
But if you want to cut down that process of browsing through different options and find out the best ones, here is what you can do. Just check the list and select any of the ones listed.
ultimate-guitar.com:
I am showing this on my number one list because it appears on my number one list when I searched for Guitar Tabs.
After making an account on Ultimate-Guitar, I was able to get the picture that depicted quite exactly, how it looks when you search Fly Me to The Moon on this website. Not to be exact, in terms of the options that it gave me in selecting the version that I wish to see. There are three columns, there is the first column which has the song name and then (ver5), (ver2) to differentiate between the versions which look very poor at first sight. The second column gives a rating to the version, which I don’t think any of the first-timers would be interested in! Coming to the third column, it’s titled “Types.” However, it’s very confusing to tell, what typography do you land into while seeing it because it has a type that’s official, it also has a type that’s Chords, Tab, Guitar Pro, Video, Bass, Ukulele, etc.
Making it difficult for this type to classify into any of the types. For example, it can be types of musical notations, types of musical instruments, and types that are unclassified, like a video about which I still have a question mark!
songsterr.com:
My wondering list expanded when I came across the name of this website.
Songsterr does not start by saying there is an X amount of discount on its annual membership. Instead, you get to know by some judge that some songs are meant for you and some are not. The list seen here is in three parts i.e. Beginner, intermediate and advanced increases the chances of associating yourself with the website and its collection. For example, I know the song highway to hell and have heard it many times.
Seeing that it is featured on the beginner side of the website gives me some sort of confidence. Whilst on the same hand, seeing Mary had a little lamb on the advanced side, takes away all the confidence out of me. But this depends from person to person and his/her knowledge in the field of the guitar. Unlike Ultimate Guitar Tab Pro, you need not make an account to view basic tabs if you are on Songsterr. So, you finally want to know, how?
However, you have a much different and sorted out way to view tab charts of different versions. Notice “Overdriven Guitar..” written on a tab, that tab allows you to access the drop-down menu which enables you to visit different tabs with a click. Another point to notice here that, tabs are strictly tabs and you do not get confused with chords by classifying them into some sort of types as in the previous website.
guitartabs.cc
Guitartabs.cc enables you to search guitar tabs for any song, using the artist name or the song name. There is also a display of top 25 tabs that features tabs of popular artists that are currently trending and the list keeps on changing. And the other list, as shown in the picture is about the recent updates, that keep you up to the mark with the modifications on the website.
Click here to check out how the tabs look like when you visit this website for Tabs of the song ‘Fly Me to The Moon’.
There is also the video of the same song which is available on youtube that can be accessed from the right bottom of the tab page on this website. This all is available for free, you need no membership, nothing to access this information. The other interesting feature is tempo control and change of instrument. Even if you have other information than a guitar and you wish to play this song on that instrument you have an option to change the instrument.
Apart from this, by the option of tempo control, you can arrange the rhythm accordingly. If you are a beginner or an intermediate player, it is obvious that you would need a slower tempo than the original to play the song. In such a case, this function is very helpful. There is also tuning information that is available on the website for every song. All you need to have is a Guitar Tuner app for free. You can tune your instrument accordingly and start playing.
URL: https://www.guitartabs.cc/
sheetmusicplus.com:
This website can be accessed in multiple ways. You can search by it by selecting the instrument that you use, you can search on it by selecting the genre of the music that you wish to know the tabs off. It has a separate tab for Piano, for band and orchestra.
SheetMusicPlus is one of the leading websites for buying books related to written music. As you already know that tablature is a form of written music for guitar. You can get books related to guitar tablature on this website. John Prine’s guitar songbook, Irish songs for ukulele, first 50 bluegrass solos that one should play, toss a coin to your witcher, and lots more.
It is noteworthy how this website has a collection of books that you do not get to see anywhere else. There is also an option to search for tablature related books artist-wise which is at the bottom of the home page. The website claims to hold a database of 1,000,000 songbooks that have scores, tabs, written music, and a lot more. If that is true, one does not need to roam anywhere else than this website to get his/her book from which he/she can learn.
Learning from books differs from learning from the Internet in terms that, learning from books is more long term. It enables you to note special things for yourself and then use it whenever needed. Whilst learning from the Internet is temporary, for a video or two. However, there are always exceptions. To check out more about this website, click here.
guitarprotabs.org:
This is a website which enables you to search for songs from the alphabet that it starts, from the album that it belongs to, you can even search it by the name of the artist who has made it and maybe there are even more ways to search. When you go into the about us section of Guitar Pro you learn that it is a tablature editor software for guitar, bass, and other fretted instruments. This software is equipped with a powerful audio engine that makes writing music easier as never before. That’s right you can write music using your device! This software constitutes an essential tool for guitarists. It can be used in so many different ways:
- Whether it’s for learning new songs.
- Writing on your own.
- Getting guitar lessons for learning tablatures.
Guitar Pro also features something that is called tablature editor for PC & Mac. This version comes with MIDI & ASCII import/export Audio playback with adjustable speed Chord diagrams on Guitar fretboard. This enables one to get a complete display of how musical notes and chords look like on one’s guitar and how they should be played. In addition, this software shows you how to play Scales tools, Digital tuner, Metronome Speed trainer, Audio playback, and lots more. If you would like to know more about this essential piece of software, I recommend you to please go to the Guitar Pro homepage.
Here you can read more about the program, its reviews, take a video tour of the same, read its specs and also download the demo version of the software! This is one piece of software that you will never regret trying as it has so many uses for guitarists of all beginner, intermediate as well as advanced.
Before concluding this article we would also like the readers to know an important point about the legality of tabs that one gets online.
Youtube:
This is the site that I know for sure, all of you guys reading this are pretty familiar about. But it might have happened that you wouldn’t have been able to guess that you would find tabs in it. Not only can you find tabs of various songs on Youtube, but also, there are teachers who would teach you how to play the lead part of a specific song. Having said that about specific songs, this website is also very abled in finding you some of the most reverend teachers from the music industry that can teach you how to read guitars tabs as well as standard musical notations. You can also learn how to write tablature using this website and, it goes without saying that the videos that you do not like are skippable unlike the literature part, you don’t need to go through parts that you don’t like.
Videos are always the most interactive way to learn and Youtube excels in that. So for all those guitarists and future-to-be-guitarists, I recommend Youtube as a source to learn tablature if learning is boring for you when you read books or even read posts online. You can learn on Youtube through video, practice with people whom you adore, and admire a lot. Also to mention, rarely but you do get to see the artist that has performed in the original song coming to teach how he/she has played that song. If not that you have expert guitarists teaching the same. So, yeah, like every other thing, Youtube is a source of information in this genre too wherein you can find tablature and how to play that song combined in a video.
Before concluding this article we would also like the readers to know an important point about the legality of tabs that one gets online.
Question Regarding the Legality of Guitar Tabs Websites
On the Wikipedia page of Tablature, you find an interesting para under the title,” rise of legal tablature sites.” The three websites that have been listed in that section are: 1) Mxtabs.net. 2) Guitar Tab Universe and OLGA.net.
These three websites are listed online to cite an example of how they had to suffer for posting tabs online. The thing is when music is created and written down to communicate, it’s written in a specific pattern and it takes years to learn. Now when someone posts a video of playing the same song online, he/she may not have learned the notations completely.
However, he/she has had some access to the information that tells him/her to play that song, exactly how it’s been played in the originals. So you see the difference? First, it was only song-makers and people involved in that song-making process that had rights to the notations of that music. But with online tabs, everyone who has a website has access to playing that song. The downside to this is, as argued in the cases of these three websites that are listed above; the Intellectual Property Rights.
The Conclusion
There are lots of websites that are also specifically for languages, for example, you have a website that specifically gives you the tabs of English songs only. Tabs are still something that is growing and it will take time to grow as much as standard music notations have grown. Youtube is one the most searched place for tabs of various songs and the added benefit over here is you get to learn via a video tutorial instead of just a page.
One of the most confusing things about beginner players is to differentiate tabs from chords. But one needs to be clear that tabs are the way of writing music that’s played on guitar, while chords are something that is played on the guitar. They are as separate as poems and Literature. This confusion is created by websites that offer tabs and chords. However, these are still the topmost recommendations of Google when it comes to going after tabs specifically.
So, why not just shorten your search and select one of the guitar tabs websites listed in the article. Not only these are trustworthy, but contains reliable content.
