Hello!
I’m wondering if things have changed. I started learning guitar in 2010 or so, and back then at school we all had Guitar Pro or something similar and we used to learn by listening to the track and to the guitar pro tab in turns.
I’ve been seeing a lot of videos about computer virtual amps recently and realised the world of guitar has changed and I’ve been disconnected from it for a long time. Is the tab/guitar pro method still the popular one? How do you learn?
Since then, I’ve moved on to 100% by ear because there were no tabs for my artists anyway. But I’m just wondering what the world of guitar learning is like now?
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Mostly using Songsterr, but it’s not always ideal. Back in the day I used Guitar Pro with tabs downloaded from Ultimate-Guitar but that’s no longer a thing anymore. Would have to pay subscription to both of them and probably STILL get a ton of incorrect tabs. I remember how many tabs I had to fix myself back then.
You don’t need a subscription to download tabs from UG only to see the tabs made by the editors. (Maybe you need a free account though.)
Tux Guitar is a free replacement for Guitar Pro. It’s not as good, but it works fine if you just want to view tabs and it has a neat training mode for playback.
I really dislike tuxguitar. Musescore is another alternative. Even though musescore is meant more as a scoring and engraving program, it works great for tabs too. The UI on tuxguitar is just so ugly imo lol.
Thanks for the tip!
Rocksmith mostly. If I can’t find a custom dlc of a song I want, I also have Guitar Pro 8 hooked up to Ableton Live for the same general experience.
I feel online tabs are wrong more often than not. I prefer youtube tutorials, plus they can give you tips and tricks along the way.
I use tabs (mostly because I’m nowhere near good to enough to learn by ear). Songsterr is my go-to site
I start off by looking at what’s available in Ultimate-guitar, then adjusting based on what I’m playing vs. what I’m hearing on the track.
I try to learn by ear and switch to tabs when I get stuck
In my day I went to Guitar Center and purchased the tab book. They were official publications and usually distributed for each album. They were magazine-sized, heavier weight pages, nicely printed and organized, and included the lyrics alongside the tabs which was great. Then I’d go home and hit play with the guitar in my hands.
It was the 90s, so it’s not like I didn’t have Google for searching. Those would give you random sites with ASCII text tabs and did the job as well.
“Official” is pretty loose here. Record labels (or even bands directly) may have given license to market as such, but they certainly weren’t vetted for accuracy by the actual musicians. Art of Guitar on YouTube will periodically go and visit some of those old tab books to show how awful some of them are. Was still really nice to have them at time, as plenty of people weren’t online yet to check Olga.
Guitar Pro 5 then, now, and forever. If a tab doesn’t existt, I create one.
I play bass, so it’s a little different, but I still just look up tabs.
I’m the rare case that I can’t find any I start with the roots and try it by ear.
I’ll try by ear first, if it’s a bit more tricky I’ll load up a YouTube tutorial.
I’ll learn tabs. I practice along with the song using a DAW. I’ll create a project where each track is a song I’m learning. I’ll hit the solo button on the track I’m learning and also the track my guitar is playing through. The volume for each song is preset (after I adjust). It’s quicker and easier than trying to play through Windows Media Player and having to adjust volume every time.
If it’s a popular song another method is to search YouTube using the song title plus the word “tracks”. Sometimes I can find songs with isolated tracks or backing tracks
I try to go by ear, but i’m not that good, so i struggle a lot
