Guitar Players: Tabulatures of Choice?

[resilient]

Hey DJs,

I'm learning the electric guitar. I've been to two lessons in person and may continue going on a weekly basis to work out mechanics. Do any of you long-term players have a website or an app of choice that you use to learn tabulatures of songs you want to play?

I downloaded Tab Pro which has access to some 200,000 songs. So far it's pretty good. Although, I was bummed that some record labels purposely request some songs/bands to be removed =/.

I'm a beginner, so I'm focused on learning my chords, and pentatonic scales. I'm not worried about speed or timing. I'm just focusing on progression, muscle memory, and switching between chords without glancing at the guitar strings / frets.

I've seen Yousician advertised on YouTube a lot. It uses your phone/ipad's microphone to give you feedback on your timing, tuning, and such.

Malcolm Gladwell says it takes about 10,000 hours to become a master...

I don't want to be a guitar god, but my long term life goal is to play something like these guys:

 

[Sho-No-Luv]

Hmm, when I first started learning guitar, 37 years ago when I was twelve i used metal method:

http://metalmethod.com

There's alot of information out there especially on youtube. With that being said, I learned the hard way that after a while it gets irritating having to rely on tabs, videos and others interpretation of tunes. Because some of these tabs have wrong notes and chords.

At some point you have to develop your ears to a high enough level to be able to hear the changes yourself. So you don't become a clone of someone else. So you can start out with a little theory like the seven modes:

1. Ionion
2. Dorian
3. Phyrgian
4. Lydian
5. Mixolydian
6. Aeolin
7. Locrian

So in the key of C major for example that translates into :

C Major = C D E F G A B
D Dorian = D E F G A B C D
E Phrygian = E F G A B C D E
F Lydian = F G A B C D E F
G Mixolydian = G A B C D E F G
A Aeolian = A B C D E F G A
B Locrian = B C D E F G A B

Please, please, please do yourself a favor and learn these modes along with whatever song your working on at the moment, you can buy a transcriber to slow the music down to hear it better or use the free feature built into youtube, also VLC player will let you slow things down so you can hear chords, licks, riffs and runs better. You will need to work on your ears, repertoire and technique all together as you progress you will natually build muscle memory.

Any questions?

Edit: Ahh, don't look now, but these guys are virtuoso musicians with at least 10 or more years of DAILY practice (most likely at least five hours a day), also the first one is playing 8 string guitar(I thought it was eight string bass at first) with heavier strings on the bottom (in a jazz funk fusion style) that allows for more melodic bass playing on the lower strings, I finally listened to the other guys, these are some top notch musicians. I could listen to you play and probably be able to tell you how long(and how much practice) it would take to get there..

I play guitar and bass too along with piano, all keyboards, drums, organ and vocals. I write, compose, arrange, transcribe and record audio, midi, instrumental, vocals and mastering (for a fee).

By the way, these are specialites, most people play six string guitar or four/five/six string bass. Just something to keep in mind, because the intonation(note placement and layout) is going to change over the course of the fret board. I DO NOT reccomend this for beginners.

 

[Sho-No-Luv]

Also, a lot of teacher's would start you out with your blues scales, however I learned my modes first starting with ionion as its really just the major scale and every other scale comes from that. Well not really, but close enough. So what is the blues scale?

(1-b3-4-b5-5-b7)

Again in the key of C major, the notes would be(from root to root): C, Eb, F, F#, G, Bb, C. Like I said there are plenty youtube videos to help, when i was coming up it was pretty much transcribe off of records, trade licks from friends who coukd already play, take lessons or be lucky enough to be blessed with perfect pitch (1 in 10,000). I spent years transcribing stuff off of records and wore out plenty of needles in the process, lol. But after a while your ears will open up. At this point i can pretty much recognize notes and chords just by ear alone.

Check this out nothing like french gypsy Jazz:

And blues:

In my opinion better than even George Benson!

 

[resilient]

Wow. Good stuff, @Sho-No-Luv. Thanks for the breakdown too.

I just started learning this month and have more lessons to go. I got the E,A, and C major chords down so far without looking in switching. I practice a pentatonic scale the most starting from the sixth string, third fret, open, second fret, fifth string, down to first and back up to the top. I also been practicing power chords too, but I knew how to play those mostly when I played as a teen.

Your estimate of those virtuoso players seems spot on. Those guitarists are gifted and you can tell they probably do practice for hours a day for years to get as good as they are now. I can even spot Polyphia's progression from album (or EP) to album (or EP). Amazing stuff. I hear you about developing the ear too. I can see that once frets and strings become muscle memory in chord switching, etc. it's like the ear can sense the melody in harmonics in where to go next. I wish I had the luxury of practicing five hours a day .

I wouldn't want to show you a video of me playing to guess how long it would take me to get gud until I know a few more chords. I do also practice some fun techniques that aren't ready to be developed but will be fun when I get there, i.e. hammer ons, bends, pull offs... some tapping.

I'll check out that site metalmethod.com. Cheers!

 

[CuddleJunkie]

Hey resilient. I've been learning to play guitar for some time now. This is what I've done and what I've found helpful. Take some months to just learn the chords and learn some songs, this will give you something pleasurable to do with the guitar and keep you motivated.
When the real fun begins tho, is when you start learning musical theory. Just a little bit will go a long way and you will find yourself improvising every kind of thing. There's this website, that offers basical musical theory for free in video format and the guys is great at explaining: http://www.daveconservatoire.org/
Have fun!

 

[Atom Smasher]

Remember that you don't have the chord down unless and until every note sounds perfectly clean. I'll add to that, knowing what strings not to play for certain chords. For example, the low E on a D chord (of course there can be exceptions) or the low E on an A chord. Banging away on those is bad form and it muddies up the chord. After a while you will avoid certain strings automatically.

You probably know all this... I'm adding it in for anyone who might be just starting.

 

[resilient]

Thanks @CuddleJunkie and @Atom Smasher for the comments. I stumbled upon Nirvana - About a Girl just by playing Em and G, lol. So I agree learning a song helps with motivations to practice the chords.

I downloaded Yousician over the weekend on my phone and I'm having fun with that one. It's almost reminds me of guitar hero, because you see the fret board, musical notes in real time tabulatures.

You can look up most songs and they will tell you or rather rank the skill level which is cool. Of course just for fun I look up Polyphia songs and the skill level is off the charts for those virtuosos.

 

[resilient]

Update just for the sake of fun!

I'm still going to weekly lessons, but I'm considering canceling. 1) The guy is old... but tbh a little out of touch with the styles I want to learn 2) He usually prints out tabs that I can look up online or in my tab apps that I paid for. I practice anywhere from 15 minutes to an hour or so a day. I would practice longer, but I work full time, put an hour into the gym on weekdays, and am studying online for two different online colleges.

I'm having a blast learning to read tablatures though. I bought a slick Martin acoustic guitar last month for a bargain price from Guitar Center that was too good to pass up.

Here are my two guitars:

The electric is a Schecter Hellraiser Hybrid Diamond series.

Other things I've bought to up my learning curve:

• Capo
• Metronome that I can set to tab speed (i.e. 120 BPM and up)
• Music stand to put the iPad, tab sheets, and tab books on
• 360 Guitar Technique by Chris Letchford of Scale the Summit
• Guide to tapping book
• 4 tab books from Scale the Summit

Rock on!

Guitar guys: What are your thoughts on 7-string guitars? Yay? Nay? I hear it's good for some metal guitarist. I like this Ibanez...

Thoughts on guitar fx processors? Get a board? Just start with one pedal? The tapping technique I'm learning sounds good with a delay effect.

Many musicians I respect too use: AXE FX II XL+ Fractal. $2k....

 

[Sho-No-Luv]

Update just for the sake of fun!

I'm still going to weekly lessons, but I'm considering canceling. 1) The guy is old... but tbh a little out of touch with the styles I want to learn 2) He usually prints out tabs that I can look up online or in my tab apps that I paid for. I practice anywhere from 15 minutes to an hour or so a day. I would practice longer, but I work full time, put an hour into the gym on weekdays, and am studying online for two different online colleges.

I'm having a blast learning to read tablatures though. I bought a slick Martin acoustic guitar last month for a bargain price from Guitar Center that was too good to pass up.

Here are my two guitars:

The electric is a Schecter Hellraiser Hybrid Diamond series.

Other things I've bought to up my learning curve:

• Capo
• Metronome that I can set to tab speed (i.e. 120 BPM and up)
• Music stand to put the iPad, tab sheets, and tab books on
• 360 Guitar Technique by Chris Letchford of Scale the Summit
• Guide to tapping book
• 4 tab books from Scale the Summit

Rock on!

Guitar guys: What are your thoughts on 7-string guitars? Yay? Nay? I hear it's good for some metal guitarist. I like this Ibanez...

Thoughts on guitar fx processors? Get a board? Just start with one pedal? The tapping technique I'm learning sounds good with a delay effect.

Many musicians I respect too use: AXE FX II XL+ Fractal. $2k....

My thoughts are that you should master the simplest things before anything else. That means learning how to play a regular six string well first.

It also means that you should be able to play all your patterns, licks, runs, scales and arpeggios clean without effects.

Same thing applies to keyboard players and sustain pedals..

Same thing applies to diatonic harmony, major and minor scale harmony vs being able to play outside the key. I say this because some people want to be able to play lots of exotic things, but really haven't mastered well established western scale tone harmony.

 

[resilient]

Cool, cool. Thanks for the advice. So I'll hold off getting a 7-string and FX processor for a while and stick to mastering the basics.

I have a decent Peavey amp (not pictured above) that can play tremolo, phaser, reverse, flanger while messing with pre-gain, low/mid/high, and some delay for experimenting with different sounds. The amp also has a USB port that if I research more, I could probably download some more effects/patches off the internet some semi-signature sounds.