# Thoughts on for-sale artist tab packs?



## secretpizza (Jul 8, 2020)

From time to time, I’ll pick up a guitar tab transcription from bands that I like, because 1) it supports the band, 2) it helps me improve my technique, and 3) lets be real, the tabs get taken down off of songsterr or whatever. When it comes from Sheethappens, I pretty much trust that what I’m getting is accurate, not just because they claim that the artists review the product, but based on my experience of learning songs from those tabs.

However, I’ve noticed when you grab tab packs from other sources, the result is pretty often a mixed bag. The example I’m referring to right now is Polyphia (mock me at your leisure, but the dudes can play and Tim Henson has an interesting ear for arrangement). I picked up the tabs for New Levels and honestly started and then quit several songs because the chord shapes in the tabs seemed...well, impossible.

A couple days ago I decided to take another crack at it, and started working on the song Death Note (mostly because Ichika’s intro is just incredible). Pretty quickly I started having issues with the chord shapes and getting a few passing licks to sound right; there were shapes in there that legitimately would require an additional finger (or Allan Holdsworth’s hands), and I ain’t got it.

I jumped on YouTube and found a few covers, and quickly realized that the tab is very off, in several places. It’s apparent not just in seeing how the song is performed, but also because there’s a logic to how the chords and variations on the chords are structured that the tabs totally lack, whereas the cover puts it all into the correct place, if that makes sense. I checked out another song, Saucy, that I had tried and failed to learn, and this time I found an instruction by Tim himself. The chord that had me throwing up my hands in anger was (from low E to high):

5
x
7
5
8
8

I could never get find a way to hold down both 5s with my index while muting the A, and getting my pinky to cover both high B and E on the 8th fret was killing me. In the video, though, Tim clearly shows and describes the chord as three notes - 5 on the low E, 7 on the D, and 8 on the high E. Worlds easier to play. 

Anyway, I’m ranting, but the point is this - how do these tab books come into existence? It’s totally clear that no one from the band checked out the tab, because the one I bought is clearly wrong. Where do the transcriptions come from?


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## Nicki (Jul 8, 2020)

Mute the A with the tip of your ring finger...


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## secretpizza (Jul 8, 2020)

Well, sure, but what I’m saying is 1) that would have required me to bar the two highest strings with my pinky, which is pretty hard, especially with how quickly the chord changes happen, and 2) that’s not how Tim actually plays it. I’m wondering how we end up with tabs that are wrong, which the artist sells, when the artist clearly doesn’t play it that way. Other than sheethappens, I have no clue where these tabs come from, and I’m wondering if anyone has any insight.


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## budda (Jul 8, 2020)

I would just buy from sheet happens. That said I also don't buy tabs, so take that with a grain of salt. Without vetting the company selling the tab books, it's not going to be clear where the info was gotten from.


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## secretpizza (Jul 8, 2020)

That’s probably what I’ll do going forward. Lesson learned I guess!


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## Lorcan Ward (Jul 8, 2020)

This has been going on since the beginning of guitar tab books. The old Metallica and Megadeth tab books were just awful, Ben Eller did some great videos on how to play a lot of their parts properly and how inaccurate the tab books that countless people learned from were. Evan on here is going great work correcting all the old Dream Theater tab books and even has videos for the really bad sections.

The biggest problem is tab books are often made by people who are just rushing them out for their paycheck. As a result they don’t check any live videos or research into the guitarists style and technique eg: Yngwie plays 3 notes per string, Paul uses string skipping instead of sweeping, tapping arpeggios instead of sweeping, the guitarist doesn’t bar etc so the fingering is very inaccurate. 

Often it’s clear they didn’t even check to see if what they tabbed was even playable like the examples you gave. A lot of the time tablature is roughly what they play, it’s fine for a lot of people since the majority of people who buy a tab book are going to scrutinise that deep.

It was rare up until recently that tab books were made by the artists. Jason Richardson’s I, Necrophagist’s Epitaph and Obscura’s Cosmogenesis are prime examples of well done artist made tab books. The majority of the time it’s just someone contracted out to do it which explains how much they vary in quality. But artist made tab can be awful to because they can tab what they meant to play or what they play live, both not matching up with the studio version the consumer will reference.

SheetHappens are quite good but they could be a lot better. I get sent their tabs regularly to correct and I feel they have a 95% approach where they don’t put in the work to refine that last 5%. They got super annoyed at me when I sent them an email giving them some advice on how to approve their tabs which explained a lot.

Edit: Just to ad if you learn to transcribe and really work on it you can learn anything you want by ear so you don’t have to rely on tabs anymore. It’s a very valuable skill to have.


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## Adieu (Jul 8, 2020)

Do any of these come with free samples to see what you're getting yourself into?


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## TheShreddinHand (Jul 9, 2020)

Sheet happens is largely good but there were completely wrong positions on the conquering dystopia book I’d got when you watched videos of jeff/Keith playing. Similarly the tapping part in Angel Vivaldi’s Serotonin song was wrong. If I recall offhand in either the away with words or universal language book they had the high B string labeled as tunes to A on some songs which is just sloppy editing.


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## secretpizza (Jul 10, 2020)

I agree about Richardson’s ‘I’ being a pretty unparalleled example. I’m not mad about it or anything - as Lorcan Ward said, I could have tabbed it by ear - and maybe that’s the way I’ll go in the future. I’ve had really good results using YouTube videos to learn some minor Holdsworth stuff and honestly, the dudes who covered the Polyphia tunes are pretty easy to learn from if you don’t mind stop/starting the video.

As a side note, I love that Uncle Ben video decrypting the Fight Fire with Fire riff - I could NEVER get that to sound right, and listening through the production, somewhat sloppy execution, and the scoopiest guitars was damn near impossible. I think he really nailed the final transcription.


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## Kwert (Jul 18, 2020)

TheShreddinHand said:


> Sheet happens is largely good but there were completely wrong positions on the conquering dystopia book I’d got when you watched videos of jeff/Keith playing. Similarly the tapping part in Angel Vivaldi’s Serotonin song was wrong. If I recall offhand in either the away with words or universal language book they had the high B string labeled as tunes to A on some songs which is just sloppy editing.




Yeah, I love Sheet Happens but even they have mistakes in their books (that are artist reviewed). The Chon Newborn Sun book has some differences in Potion (the second half of the tab actually just has wrong notes) and in the Puzzle solo that you can spot if you watch clips of them playing live. I'm sure there are some more but I haven't gone through the book yet.

I think the books are great, but should definitely be used in conjunction with recordings/videos.


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## c7spheres (Jul 18, 2020)

secretpizza said:


> From time to time, I’ll pick up a guitar tab transcription from bands that I like, because 1) it supports the band, 2) it helps me improve my technique, and 3) lets be real, the tabs get taken down off of songsterr or whatever. When it comes from Sheethappens, I pretty much trust that what I’m getting is accurate, not just because they claim that the artists review the product, but based on my experience of learning songs from those tabs.
> 
> However, I’ve noticed when you grab tab packs from other sources, the result is pretty often a mixed bag. The example I’m referring to right now is Polyphia (mock me at your leisure, but the dudes can play and Tim Henson has an interesting ear for arrangement). I picked up the tabs for New Levels and honestly started and then quit several songs because the chord shapes in the tabs seemed...well, impossible.
> 
> ...




Bar the 5th fret with index, only enough pressure is needed to make those two notes sound and the muted high b string , 7th fret is middle finger, 8th fret is pink and ring fingers. 

Oh wait it's upside down. So Fingering is the same. Use all fingers don't bar high 8th frets.


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## fantom (Jul 22, 2020)

I agree with most of what has been said. The older tab books are written by people who wanted to get paid. If publishers could sell can sell the work, why would the they care if the tabs were perfect... that made sense because most guitarists that cared about everything being perfect would probably have tried to figure it out by ear or would have asked someone like a guitar teacher or friend how to play a song.

Everything changed with the internet, where even more horrid tabs became even more normal. Not only were publishers not selling product, but the bar lowered. As a result, we got less quality work.

So ya, learn it by ear. If you can't figure it out, email the band what you think they are playing and ask for corrections. I did this 20 years ago and got responses with corrections. Not sure what artists would do now. They would probably try to sell you a Skype lesson lol.

And for what it is worth, the most invaluable artist written tab book I bought was the Emperor book written by Ihsahn. That man has some really awkward chord and fingerings that I couldn't figure out for the life of me. It opened my eyes to trying new things and getting out of a rut. No idea if it was accurate, but it sounded much more like the album then the best I could do without it. He also nailed most of the songs I wanted to learn across their discography.


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