Guitar tab source that is accurate?

mr_fender said:
I have a few Dream Theater tab books that are very accurate, probably because they are edited by JP himself.
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That probably isn't the reason. Which books are you referring to?
mr_fender said:
Cherry Lane "Play it like it is" and Hal Leonard "Guitar Recorded Versions" books are pretty good.
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I've seen too many problems with both series to agree with that usually being true. The bar for "better than an average GRV" is pretty low, and I've discussed this with one editor at HL often. Here's one example: Tomorrow I'm starting an overhaul (editing Sibelius files enough to mostly call it re-transcribing) of the Metallica - Hardwired... GRV book for its next print run. There are dozens of major errors in riffs and about a hundred other things I have marked to fix already, and that's without having checked about 2/3 of the solos yet. I haven't seen any recent GRVs that were much better, and this isn't the only thing on the list of songs to fix eventually.
mr_fender said:
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.
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A little footnote about the tuning: the solo seems to be standard on the studio version because there are a couple open G notes (one with a bar dive, which is less conclusive since it could have been F pulled up to G I suppose). That could explain the wrong guess of all Drop D on the original transcription. There are other issues in the riffs like the larger Absus4 voicing (6666xx) where it's is really just a0 x11 x11 x00 x11 02 02 02 etc.
mr_fender said:
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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It's definitely 4th, 5th, 7th, 2nd position on the album from the tone of it and the slide down from C# in the Bsus2, but he did plays the Asus2 and Bsus2 lower (root on 5th string) live.
 
The two DT books I have are Awake and Metropolis Pt2: Scenes from a Memory. Both are from Warner Bros Publications, Authentic Guitar-Tab Editions. Everything I've been able to learn so far (not as much as I'd like, JP is a beast) seems spot on with the album. I do tend to learn more by ear and just use the tabs as a guide though. My music reading abilities are not what they used to be.

My old ...And Justice For All book from Cherry Lane has the wrong tempo for Harvester of Sorrow. Shows 84, but the album version is about 94 bpm. None of them are ever perfect.

For Message in a Bottle, Andy I noticed plays it higher on the neck 4th, 5th, 7th, 2nd positions in the actual video for the song, but live he seems to use the lower positions more. I agree with the sliding down sound from the high position on the album.

Another one that always bugged me was Thunderstruck by AC/DC. In the video Angus is playing the repeating B string lick one handed legato. It is definitely not played legato on the album and every note is picked. It's one of those goofy rockstar showing off things that caused a lot of people to learn the song wrong.
 
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My first clue was years ago, when I bought a Robben Ford book because I wanted to learn some of the Blue Line songs. I'm sitting there playing what's written and going "Man, that does NOT sound right." But there were other parts where there was a chord voicing or something that I hadn't caught by ear, so it was helpful. I learned to take the tabs with a big grain of salt and trust my ear. In fact, I pretty much stopped using tabs altogether.

But for situations like mine, where you quickly have to spin up a bunch of material, it'd be really nice to have accurate tabs. C'est la vie!
 
mr_fender said:
The two DT books I have are Awake and Metropolis Pt2: Scenes from a Memory. Both are from Warner Bros Publications, Authentic Guitar-Tab Editions. Everything I've been able to learn so far (not as much as I'd like, JP is a beast) seems spot on with the album.
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There's quite a bit of wrong stuff in both of those (more in Awake) but I'd believe JP did some type of actual editing on them, considering what else the WB gtr. book department was putting out around then. The Six Degrees and Train of Thought books after Scenes were much worse. Things got better in 2005 (Octavarium) IMO when my friend Ryan and I started doing all the DT guitar books.
 
What do you use to listen to the songs? I assume you slow down the faster parts for note for note analysis.
 
mr_fender said:
What do you use to listen to the songs? I assume you slow down the faster parts for note for note analysis.
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Usually Amazing Slow Downer, which has the clearest slowdown function I've heard. Sometimes Riffstation for isolating certain parts. ASD's stereo karaoke mode is great for hard-panned things like rhythm guitar, but it doesn't really have a way to isolate a centered solo or something 70% left, etc.

Also this once in a while, but mainly when trying to hear a drum part or vocal better. https://github.com/deezer/spleeter It's not as great for isolating guitar or bass. Online version here https://splitter.ai/
 
Bakerman said:
Usually Amazing Slow Downer, which has the clearest slowdown function I've heard. Sometimes Riffstation for isolating certain parts. ASD's stereo karaoke mode is great for hard-panned things like rhythm guitar, but it doesn't really have a way to isolate a centered solo or something 70% left, etc.

Also this once in a while, but mainly when trying to hear a drum part or vocal better. https://github.com/deezer/spleeter It's not as great for isolating guitar or bass. Online version here https://splitter.ai/
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Ever tried Transcribe?
 
Admin M@ said:
I have never tried to use tab. For me it's brute force or nothing. I'm stupid like that.
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Yep, me too. For whatever reason, I've always looked at using tabs or chord charts as cheating. Gotta figure it out by ear.

I do like Transcribe! for slowing down parts. It does have a feature that suggests chords/notes but I haven't really used it to know how accurate it is.
 
Bakerman said:
Usually Amazing Slow Downer, which has the clearest slowdown function I've heard. Sometimes Riffstation for isolating certain parts. ASD's stereo karaoke mode is great for hard-panned things like rhythm guitar, but it doesn't really have a way to isolate a centered solo or something 70% left, etc.

Also this once in a while, but mainly when trying to hear a drum part or vocal better. https://github.com/deezer/spleeter It's not as great for isolating guitar or bass. Online version here https://splitter.ai/
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+1 for Amazing Slow Downer.

http://ronimusic.com/
 
They don't have tabs, but Karaoke Versions site has well done covers. Chose a song, then select Custom Backing Track. From there you can Solo tracks to isolate desired parts. You can buy the whole song, but sometimes all you need is the provided sample section just to get you going.
 
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