Where to get guitar tabs?

Matt Derrick

Matt Derrick

Retired Wanderer
Staff member
So I used to play guitar a lot, but drifted away from it for about 10 years or so. Now I got a new (to me) guitar from a pawn shop and I'm looking to get back into it. Thing is, I used to go to ultimate-guitar.com but I just checked it out now and wow is that site spammy now. So I guess I'm looking for good places to find guitar tablature so I can learn new songs. Bonus points for places that have more folk punkish stuff, but all genres are good.
 
Ultimate guitar might well be the longest ongoing worst site on the internet. Literally kept their tabs and shitty midis behind a paywall since at least 2007 and have done nothing but further choke every pixel of your screen with ass ads since.
I really love the app "songster", its literally the only app i ever paid money for and that was five dollars so it would play the midi. You can slow that down and loop sections too, also has great legible drum tabs which is quite rare i've notice. The app itself is free and you can access the tabs without play along but tbh its totally worth it. Theyre tabs catalog is great and long ranging, they used to have Blackbird Raum guitar cover chord tabs but last i checked it seems theyre no long there but still plenty of good shit.
TL;DR its ultiamate guitar but its not ran by loser guitar center cool guys trying to sell you corny junk
 
haha i guess that shows how long it's been since I looked up guitar tabs cause I remember when everything on UG was free...
 
basically they'd make you buy their midi player (i forget what it was called, i had pirated it it was pretty decent) to access many of their tabs, the "ultimate guitar pro tab" which many of the exact same tabs were at one point free. Looking at the site now, i give them credit theyre play along software looks really good and maybe worth the $70 one time payment but songsters is complete with what it has and thats just $5 (for mobile). Also it actually seems less spammy than it was. I used to dread back in the day using my shitty internet to load a tab just cause it would waste all its time loading Gibson ads and whatnot lol
 
I remember like 15-20 years ago I would find tabs on a site called OLGA(Online Guitar Archive) but I just checked it and I think it's either not operational anymore or I just don't know how to navigate it. From there I just kinda went to Youtube videos and found people playing the songs I wanted to learn. Sometimes you get lucky and they even have a link to tabs. Or you can just slow down the tempo and watch their fingers.

At this point I can pretty much just listen to songs and figure out where they're playing on the neck and what they're doing. I think anyone can do that, it's just a matter of sitting down with the music and your guitar and then just paying close attention to the guitar portion. Then put your hands on the neck and take a guess. Does it sound too high or too low? Move your hand up or down accordingly until you find the notes. Jot down the tabs as you figure it out.

Watch videos of the actual songs you want to learn. A lot of times you can at least see where on the neck they're playing and more or less their hand formation. Try to use what knowledge you have of chords and styles and just adjust your hands until you find it. You can hear when you're playing the same notes. There's no wavering between your guitar and the guitar in the song. It's in harmony. I think it's a good thing to practice, learning that way.
 
If you can find the specific name of a collection containing songs you want to learn then you could try searching a shadow library. Your results may be quite amusing; as mine were when I tried to look up tabs for the NYC based band "Interpol".
 
I second songster! UG is fine if you're looking for popular songs to learn quickly, but unless you wanna be bombarded with ads every time you try to learn a tab, I'd really suggest songster more.
 
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