anyone who plays guitar, bend over for the record companies.?

Question

I was just out having a smoke, listeing to music, thinkin o man id like to learn how to play that. So i went online, and checked the song out, its been pulled. All of a sudden guitar tablature sites are getting removed and song are also getting pulled due to legality issues. Anyone who plays guitar should be bullshit, not only due to the fact that tabs are goin to get harder to get, but also cuz it makes you think.
That today music is not about music, about money. The companies gettin this money have been gettin ****** by illegal downloading. Now they are bending us over to destroy our ability to play music we enjoy. There is nothing illegal with showing your interpretation of music so others can learn how to play, but apparently theyre tryin to find a way. I want to kno peoples opinion on this, from all perspectives, the music company, the artist, the guitar player and the site owner.

Answer 1

I play and teach on the side(I started long before tabs showed up on the Web....)- I'll be the guitar player...

Tab is great for showing you how to play a certain song note-for-note-its advantage over standard notation is that it shows the fingerings.

Having said that, I wonder if pulling all those tabs off isn't a blessing in disguise. Too many students just seem to want to learn, as I said above, note for note. I really think what we are seeing(and I'm not saying in all cases, but generally) is that too many younger players want to copy the riffs slavishly- I'm just as guilty, too-but there is a lot to be said for learning to play by ear. Start by listening to some simple songs with a I,IV,V progression- see where the chord changes are, listen to the lyrics, figure out the melody and bass line on the fretboard. The toughest are going to be your first few.

Back when I was learning, I remember players would take a vinyl LP which normally spun at 33 rpm, and play it at 16(some old phonographs had speed settings for 78(old shellac records, 45 rpm singles, 33 and 16 rpm LP's)- to try to figure out the solos. We now have the CD Trainers by TASCAM to do that.

I've used tab to learn some songs, and there's nothing wrong with adding to your reportoir(?-the only subject I ever even came close to flunking was French)-but I'm really convinced that if you don't develop your ears, you're short-changing yourself as a musician.

There's some good free ear-training software out there for downloading- just google 'ear training' and see what shows up-

Good Luck,
Seamus

PS- To get to the point I should have made above, yeah, pulling tabs off the net is a pain, but there are copyright laws, and the sheet music publishers have to eat, too....Maybe if we put tabs on the net that are intentionally misnamed, but give a player an idea as to what they should be... like, for example "Iron Man" could be "Magnetic Metal Person".... just a thought...

Answer 2

First, I would doubt that this is the result of legal action by the record companies... tab is not the same as the recordings which they have a copyright to. This would be action by the music publisher - who licenses things like sheet music and tab (though record companies do love to own these rights if they are able to snag them away from unknowledgable artists in a first contract).

Second, the music business has ALWAYS been about money. This is why it is called the music business. The fact is that many liberties in this area have been allowed, but as with anything, at some point it becomes large enough that there become two major issues: 1) money - if you make your living in music, don't discount this. It's not easy to make a living in music and artists that retain publishing rights tend to count on these as their main source of income; 2) failure to protect rights can be used to argue the change of rights from personal to public in future litigations, so it is often a case of protect it or lose it.

Still, it's sad, but the music business is having problems at the moment, and rightly or wrongly they are closing ranks to make sure they are not being taken advantage of. Most of the publicity has focused on record companies pursuing filing sharing and pirated songs, but you can find issues with music publishing having become aggressive a few years before any of that came up. First with venues that regularly book cover bands if they did not have their licensing in order. Or the whole thing that blew up with the Boy Scouts and songs they sing around campfires? The fact that archives with tabs have been left alone for so long is kind of suprising.

And as said too, tab does have some plusses, but it can interfere with developing other, better ways to learn songs (and, much of the tab on the internet is of somewhat questionable quality as well).

Answer 3

guitarists point of view- Its bad, and the companies targeted the smaller sites first, as you notice certian large sites did get knocked down but others are up and running.

Its a shame not because people are stealing music but just trying to jam a song.Im going to bet that besides most of the tabs not being 100 percent correct, nowhere near 100 percent of the people downloading and printing out tabs are playing them at shows to make money.

If anyone tabs any of my music I dont really careA lot of the bands I know that play in the same studio will often jam with each other and trade riffs and ideas anyway, so whats the harm of having it written down for future reference?

Answer 4

Boss makes several inexpensive models of digital 4-track recorders some have built in cd burners, most have usb ports for transferring your recordings to computer.