Guitar tab source that is accurate?

greiswig

greiswig

Power User
Nothing to do with Fractal gear, but...

I have a gig with a Chicago tribute band. I've never worked on Terry Kath's stuff before, and I don't need to figure solos verbatim, but I'd like to get close. More importantly to me, though, the rhythm guitar parts tend to be pretty buried by horns and they are hard to figure out. So far, I haven't found a good source of tabs for their stuff that seems accurate. Everything just has root chords, not the actual voicings I think I'm hearing.

Anyone recommend a decent source for more accurate tabs for stuff like this, Steely Dan, etc.?
 
This is probably only partially helpful... I don't know of a GOOD tab source (are there actually any on the internet?) but myself, I have found it useful to study old videos of Terry's playing and discovered that he tended to use a lot of the same basic C and G shapes up and down the neck in his rhythm playing to keep the left hand pretty simple as he went at it pretty ferociously with his right hand. Hope that helps a little.

For example...
 
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Thanks, @tealtonerick . Yeah, I've tried doing that as well as looking at Leonid & Friends (Highly recommended, BTW!). It's just hard for me to tell the partial chords being hit from videos. I think I can get it by ear pretty close, but I'm always interested in taking an opportunity like this to learn something new.
 
greiswig said:
Thanks, @tealtonerick . Yeah, I've tried doing that as well as looking at Leonid & Friends (Highly recommended, BTW!). It's just hard for me to tell the partial chords being hit from videos. I think I can get it by ear pretty close, but I'm always interested in taking an opportunity like this to learn something new.
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Yeah the videos just get you in the ball park with the CAGE shapes. Then I have to work it out by ear also.

And yes L&F does a great job!
 
I don't think there ever exists any accurate tabs of anything. It's all guestimates by some guy with better hearing anyway. I've bought pro tab books, I've used free online tabs, they're all the same in my experience. The golden rule seems to be to use tabs as an estimate, and go for live recordings, live videos as much as you can. With studio recordings you can have infinite layers of guitars muddling up what you think is the main guitar parts. Live you won't have that clutter. Plus sometimes studio recordings are layers in such a way that you think how am I ever going to cover all those parts in a coherent arrangement? The live performance usually sorts all of those problems out for you.
 
greiswig said:
Nothing to do with Fractal gear, but...

I have a gig with a Chicago tribute band. I've never worked on Terry Kath's stuff before, and I don't need to figure solos verbatim, but I'd like to get close. More importantly to me, though, the rhythm guitar parts tend to be pretty buried by horns and they are hard to figure out. So far, I haven't found a good source of tabs for their stuff that seems accurate. Everything just has root chords, not the actual voicings I think I'm hearing.

Anyone recommend a decent source for more accurate tabs for stuff like this, Steely Dan, etc.?
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Not sure if these guys have the same internet I do but youtube is loaded with terry kath stuff. Is it perfect? probably not. But that's not what you asked for. Search in the YOUTUBE search bar, not google search bar. Terry Kath Solo's instruction. HTH. Yes I know that's not TABS, but some do have tabs
 
Muad'zin said:
I don't think there ever exists any accurate tabs of anything. It's all guestimates by some guy with better hearing anyway. I've bought pro tab books, I've used free online tabs, they're all the same in my experience. The golden rule seems to be to use tabs as an estimate, and go for live recordings, live videos as much as you can. With studio recordings you can have infinite layers of guitars muddling up what you think is the main guitar parts. Live you won't have that clutter. Plus sometimes studio recordings are layers in such a way that you think how am I ever going to cover all those parts in a coherent arrangement? The live performance usually sorts all of those problems out for you.
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I think @Bakerman might disagree ;)

There are even tab books that have been reviewed/approved by the original artists...

As far as free tabs on the internet I would agree, though. Very hit or miss.

@greiswig - you might be better off searching YouTube for "how to play X" videos.
 
Stratman68 said:
Not sure if these guys have the same internet I do but youtube is loaded with terry kath stuff. Is it perfect? probably not. But that's not what you asked for. Search in the YOUTUBE search bar, not google search bar. Terry Kath Solo's instruction. HTH. Yes I know that's not TABS, but some do have tabs
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Yeah, the solos are pretty easy to pick out, even if they're difficult to pull off. But the rhythm parts are more buried by motion and the rest of the mix.
 
Stratman68 said:
This is true. There are a few guys that pretty much nail both. One is Shutup&play. There are others.

BTW, Terry Kath is one of my hero's...............
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Back when I used to listen to Chicago, I was playing brass and bass guitar. So that was pretty much my focus. I kind of remember thinking "Wow, that was a cool lick" on the guitar, but until I started really listening to the parts for this band audition, I had no idea. The man could play! Great voice as well. So yeah, big shoes to fill.
 
This young guy is pretty spot on with Steely Dan rhythms and he puts chord diagrams on the videos..... and other stuff also.

 
I have found very few examples of accurate tabs. Most will get you in the right ballpark, but they rarely have the level of detail that a player would need to replicate the performance. In many examples, the chords are simplified, the arrangement isn't fully mapped, and the solo might be entirely missing. It's not because those tabs are "bad"; it just takes a lot of work to go from "close enough" to "accurate". I play guitar in a Bowie tribute, and my transcriptions are painstakingly accurate, which takes a lot of time to create, and more time to really master. My strong recommendation is that you use something like MuseScore or GuitarPro to do your own transcriptions. That is the best way to really analyze and understand the nuances of a player such as Terry Kath.

It took me two days of work to transcribe Gerry Leonard's solo on "I Can't Give Everything Away". It has a lot of chromatism and unique phrasing / dynamics. But it was the only way for me to get it right. Transcribing raises our understanding of music.
 
I have a few Dream Theater tab books that are very accurate, probably because they are edited by JP himself. The vast majority of music books are transcribed by someone other than the writer. Some are better than others. Cherry Lane "Play it like it is" and Hal Leonard "Guitar Recorded Versions" books are pretty good. Free online tabs, more times than not are a waste of time, unless they were copied from a book.

I'll come across position differences here and there, so technically the notes shown in the book are correct, but they are played differently. Watching live videos can sometimes be misleading too, since players will sometimes change things up a little to make them easier to play live and they won't sound exactly the same as the recorded version.

One example is Metallica's "The Thing that Should Not Be" on Master of Puppets. I've seen several different tabs that show to play it in drop D, while James and Kirk play it in D Standard. It's actually easier to play in drop D, but doesn't sound exactly the same since the overall tuning changes the timbre a little and the chord changes are physically different.

Message in A Bottle by the Police is another one. Some tabs show it higher on the neck on the low strings, while I've seen Andy playing it with lower positions on high strings instead. Again, same notes, but different tone and different feel.
 
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WITELITE said:
I've found this site to be pretty good as a starting point for Steely Dan. We did a number of Steely Dan in October which I posted awhile back and this is a good starting point for the ones they have. @Budda is correct otherwise

Our covers - https://forum.fractalaudio.com/threads/the-royal-scam.166734/#post-2004953

Transcriptions - https://www.hakwright.co.uk/steelydan/

MM
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Nice work, but your bassist has his axe backwards. ;)

Seriously, nice job on the couple of Steely Dan numbers I saw.
 
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