Bad tablature is worse than useless because it's so disheartening. For young musicians such as I was myself at one point, you just assume that you suck or lack something fundamental to get it right. Since it looks so official, you just assume that it must be correct. It's very discouraging.
That's why ear training is so important. I suck at it but I can piece songs together if I can watch the performance to get an idea of the positions. Transcribing is hard, I think people go a bit hard on these books, they're not good but as bad as people say imo.
EXACTLY how I felt when I got the tab book for Steve Vai’s “Passion and Warfare” when it first came out. Waited forever for it to come out only to have it full of mistakes. It was so butchered, I took it upon myself to photocopy every page with mistakes and corrected them, then sent them to the publisher (Hal Leonard). Ended up getting a gig proofreading some of their tab books afterward, including Vai’s “Alien Love Secrets.” If you have or can get your hands on the first edition of “Passion and Warfare” tab book, I’d love to see your take on it.
I had that book as well. But here's the thing: I had NO BUSINESS trying to learn out of it. I had only been playing for 2 or 3 years(mostly Beatles songs) and thought "now I have the tab book, it should be easier learning how to play like Vai!" NOPE...😂 At least the cover was pretty. 30 years later and I STILL can't play like Vai...oh well. 🎸
That's surprising to hear, because HL has a reputation for their tab books being mostly correct, or at least more so than cherry lane or the other companies. I guess it really is hard to find a good, accurate tab book.
That's why I'm glad I grew up learning tabs online because if it doesn't sound like the record you just search for a different tab or video. That's a sick guitar btw.
@@adriatic.vineyards You can learn by ear? I feel like knowing what chords and notes the song is playing would be insanely hard. Maybe that's just because I'm like brand new to playing guitar.
My friend got it when it came out. I took one look at it and thought I was reading mandarin. Then again, I don't think I could learn to play any of his stuff correctly even if Vai himself was teaching me.
I think the reason for that is in part that you can only tab out those things if you're good enough or almost good enough to play them yourself. If you don't have the technique to play a Vai lick you will probably disregard fingerings since you just assume that if it sounds right it is, without thinking if it's even playable at high speed. There's a lot of ways to play the same thing on guitar, that's the annoying part of transcription.
I gave myself such a hard time for not being able to play Cowboys and Domination Solos from these tabs. This is part of the reason I think I gave up and didn't pick up a guitar again for about 20 years. Now with a proper practice schedule, and proper tabs, even at my ripe old age my playing is improving massively.
That's the thing, I'm 34, I was learning when I was 11 or 12, me and my friends always used to fall out because of these bastard books and whether it was better to learn by ear. My generation produced so many guitarists that developed bad habits and stuff, it's insane.
Being a young learner of guitar back in 86/87, I learned I guess what be known as typical. Learning by ear. Most of my favorite guitarists learned by ear. Rewinding the 8track,cassette and LPs hundreds of times. By 89 I was doing ok. Armed with an old 25w Traynor, a Boss distortion pedal, and an Ibanez Roadstar 2. I bout shit when I finally figured out the “Highway to Hell” riffs lol. In 89 I heard “And Justice for All” for the first time. Immediately began to One, Harvester and so on. Getting it pretty damn close. Until I couldn’t figure any more out I kinda shelved the idea of learning more by ear. Then….a tab book came out for “Justice”. Holy shit I was excited beyond belief. I didn’t even look on the inside of it at the record store I just fucking grabbed it, bought it, n straight home. SMH 🤦♂️ Omg, the butchery of the coolest riffs I’ve ever heard were in this book. Even as an unschooled no note reading dumbass I was like this ain’t right!!!??!!! My favorite riff was “Eye of the Beholder”. In this book, this, “Eye” was so badly done I put my guitar down for about 4yrs. Every guitarist I knew said “ Yeah man those are the tabs bro!” I was like, fuck, something ain’t right. So convinced my learning by ear sucked ass I put my guitar down for those 3/4 yrs LoL.
I always used to take these books as gospel until I had the opportunity to meet Wolf Marshall in my younger days. Super cool and humble dude but I was shocked to find out these books were just tabbed out by regular musicians who were pretty much just slowing down the recordings and guessing. Up until then I always thought that the actual guitarists had to authenticate the book with their blessing. It was like finding out Santa Claus isn't real...😥
you have to wonder who green lights all these terrible tab books, especially when they are flat out wrong. Does anyone double check these? My band recorded a cover of "Cowboys From Hell" I learned it by ear, I trust myself...
I wish my ear was strong enough to just pick up how to play a riff or lick correctly. But yeah, I think tabs are notoriously bad for one simple reason. You don't have the artist's input with the actual transcribing. Plus, I think that a lot of these people that work on these tab books are outside of their genre. A Pantera fan and musician wouldn't transcribe the songs the way this book was written.
It's like you're creating an exclusive series based on every tab book I've purchased. They destroyed my confidence so much I believed I simply wasn't naturally gifted enough and lost my desire to learn. Your videos have been a great source of inspiration to get back into guitar again. Sadly, I have arthritis now, so I'll never be able to achieve the level I wanted to be at 24 years ago.
I'm in the same boat bro, I got so good between 12-14 with my tape deck, ear and tabs, we actually had to work for it, the UA-cam generation opened the floodgates for guitarists and spoiled them. At 46 my arthritis is so bad I can barely play basic power cords anymore 😭 sucks because I have a renewed interest in playing and wish I could do the things I could at 16. Getting old sucks balls and yes I see this is two years old sry.
I have great respect for you for learning and demonstrating all the *wrong* ways to play these songs, especially when you can play the *right* ways so well.
I had this book. I remember checking the tabs against single songs transcribed in guitar magazines(like Walk and Cowboys) and the magazines were always better. So I just learned from the magazines instead. I covered Walk in different Cover bands I was in and ALWAYS played it in dropped D. Never knew it was D standard. Still sounded good, though. 😁
I’m glad I found this series/channel. I haven’t used tab books in like 15 years, but when I was a kid, I had every tab book I could find from bands I liked to try and learn all their songs. I definitely took them as gospel, to the point where I remember actually arguing with my guitar teacher about how to play either an Audioslave or RATM solo (can’t remember for sure.) I showed him the book and he listened to the song and was like “yeah that’s definitely not right” and I remember being so shocked and confused that he thought he knew better than the “OFFICIAL TAB BOOK”. Then I saw a live video of Tom Morello playing it and my teacher was right, the book was totally off. I never realized this was such a widespread problem though. I assumed as a kid that the artists actually worked with the publishers to make these books. I see now that’s definitely not true. Anyways, cool series and channel! Looking forward to whatever wacky tab book you cover next!
The orchestra thing reminded me how much I hated learning guitar parts from "real" notation. 😂 I only remember doing it once, and it was the utterly awesome bridge section of Hum "Stars" I had some "Alternative Hits" book and got so disappointed to find it was all in notation, but I HAD to learn that part! And I still play it to this day! Actually, I just put a version of it up on my Instagram a few weeks or months ago. Lmao. Love that riff so much.
The solo for the tapping part of 'Get the Funk Out' is one of the most obvious, half-assed attempts in the history of transcription. I recall looking at in once and then deciding I would be better off figuring it out on my own.
The tab book for Blood, Sugar, Sex, Magik by RHCP was the best one I ever found. It had guitar, bass, and drums all together. The bass was dead on accurate.
The tuning isn’t a half step off, it’s just under a quarter step 😉 Dime used to tune down 40 cents flat (According to Rex Brown). So Cowboys was E minus 40 cents, songs in D were D minus 40 etc.
I think it's been measured before and it actually varies a fair bit by album or even song. It makes it extremely difficult to play along with their stuff.
That's why, after I read an article with Dime in Guitar World, I'd tune to the song when playing along. I remember Dime said he plays "in the middle" of any tuning. He said it gave it "more balls" or grit, or something a long those lines. What a GUITARIST though!!!
I remember my brother’s frustration when he was using tab books. He got a guns n roses book and learn sweet child o mine. They didn’t show anywhere that the 2 lines were 2 different guitars, and at 13 my brother did his best and tried to force slash and Izzy’s parts all in to 1 part and it took a while to figure it out that he was doing lead and rhythm as 1. Tab books are straight up trash
So glad you did a video on this one. I remember a lot of stuff being inaccurate, but completely forgot about the goofy font. This book taught me to trust my ears more back in the day. Kind of wish I still had it just so I could laugh at it some more.
I lent this book to a friend many years ago, forgetting that I had wedged one of Dimes picks from the cowboys tour in between the pages. It was black with CFH on one side and Diamond Darrell on the other, you could see the string gouges on it and everything. Never saw it again and never fully believed my friend when he said he hadn't seen it. My own fault for not keeping it in a safe place.
Cool dude, a friend of mine got me a pic like that and an autograph on my tape insert cuz I was too young to be in clubs then and it was before he came out as dimebag instead of diamond so I was shocked when he brought the pick and the insert was signed dimebag, he said dime was so cool and explained how ATCO records thought it was too risque so they made him change it to diamond.
I remember this book, as a learner over 20 years ago. Great to see it reviewed like this - so many little memories. My guitar playing friends and I came to several of the very same conclusions, back then. Albeit, learning resources were so scarce back then, compared with today. So in many instances, we mistakenly trusted what these 'authoritative' books were telling us, until ear and experience eventually taught otherwise. The 12-15-19, or whatever - it's been awhile! - symmetrical pattern in the Domination solo, was a classic example. Aurally, this part is very exciting and mysterious. And yes, fast! Being told, by this tab book, that the section was played, at that speed, via an incredibly convoluted and ever-changing fingering pattern, left us with the illusion that we needed to scale far greater technical heights (than were actually required!) to achieve what he was doing. It made Dime seem like a literal wizard, with impossible technique. And yes, he was! but not in the way portrayed. The misleading transcriptions weren't great per se, but, trying to see the positive, it did raise our technical ambitions in some ways. Like, "if he's doing THAT, then I'm ... gonna have to do THIS!". Only to later come a full circle, back to simplifying things in order to get the same result. On a tangent: These days I occasionally see young shredders doing really physically gymnastic techniques, in order to get a lick or phrase which aurally differs relatively little from a far physically simpler technique, and, well - the appreciation is there for what they're doing, on a physical wow level, but personally, the payoff for spending endless woodshed hours just to phrase something in a fancy way that the layperson couldn't aurally tell apart from the norm, is ... reduced, as I get older. :)
You should do a “ Bad internet tabs” as well. I’ve noticed a lot of discrepancies on sites like UG. Goldmine on there 😆. As you and I are about the same age , your videos take me back to the early 90s when I had these too. 🤘🏻
No matter where you look, all tabs have the same mistakes. They're simply copying from each other, including the wrong tabs. I have signed up to UG and tried to enter a few corrected versions but they have all been rejected with the explanation "this tab already exists on our site" or "it's not different enough from other versions" so I stopped trying. 🤷🏻♂
Ngl, being an arranger and score writer, I've always preferred Score layout (it doesn't need to be called "Orchestral Score", just score will work), but when I write, I always include the individual parts
ugh, Walk's riff was painful. awesome video. A lot of this stuff were passed on to online tabs. It made guitar learning pretty annoying because, as you said, the tabs were saying one thing and my ears were listening something different. I should check all of these songs again tho, ears only.
I think they just hired some jazz musical college dropout, who's pissed cause this is the only job he could get. So, he said screw it, and half-assed it.😁 Edit: Keep doing the Guitar God's work Mike! I love this videos! I've been playing for 39 years, and it was SO frustrating with these tab books! I tried to learn everything by ear when I could. One of my proudest moments, is when I figured out the beginning of Diary of a Madman by ear, and later learning I had gotten it right!🤘😝🤘
I remember getting this book after waiting weeks for it to arrive at my local music store. I was so excited I spent the whole weekend at my friends house with barely any sleep trying to learn as much as we could. We spent years unlearning and fixing mistakes.
Am glad I have discovered someone else who has found tab books sub par and doing crazy stuff. The worst book i own is pronabably "the best of iron maiden: the first ten years" in some songs it just doesnt have the solos if i remember correctly and its got some odd chords in that maiden wouldnt use.
Great job Mike .have felt this frustration before and I am glad you shed a light on the fact it is not us it is the bad interpretations.but you also make the the great point to question things and use your ears to improve on the great guitar learning experience. Cheers from Australia
Seeing things like this makes me kind of glad in a weird way that I never bothered buying any of these tab books & I can really thank my teacher for encouraging me to trust my ear over what was written on the page. That said, I do think some of the issues in these books could come down to there not really being a "standard" way to write out tab at the time?
Damn... I thought I sucked at guitar because I couldn't play that Domination's solo pattern but I just learned it incorrectly lol. It's kinda easy when you learn it the proper way. Thank you for showing this.
I believe I actually saw a video or something with Rex Brown and he said the actual tuning for Walk is down a full step plus a few extra cents. So it's technically not in D standard, it's somewhere slightly lower. I'd imagine one of the guys from the album would know best, but it was a long time ago.
Wow, you have opened my eyes to a lot of the problems I have been having for years! I have thousands of dollars of tab books. Can we sue them for us not advancing as we should? Usually if something is not right, and enough people complain, compensation is due! It's not our fault they hired unqualified people to transcribe the songs. Love your videos by the way. And those old Sanctus songs rock. The best songs are when your young and hungry! Thats when you feel the power.
I remember seeing a tab book that said Cowboys From Hell was in E major! 😂😂On a serious note, I'm so glad that he makes these videos to prove that tab books are NOT always accurate! Too many tabbers on the internet treat tab books as perfect, but these videos are concrete proof to the contrary.
I commented on one of your pantera vids asking why you didn't play Walk" in drop . Now I know. I learned it from bad tab books back in the day lol. Keep rocking.
Guitar for the Practicing Musician tried a full-band score approach for one or two issues after their better transcribers left and sales were lagging. I remember Skid Row's "The Threat" being given this treatment, and wondering "Why this tune?" 🤔 It's amazing trying to imagine how a bad idea like this gets not only traction in a pitch meeting, but actually published. (Like there are high school jazz bands that will buy this to have something to play between an Earth, Wind & Fire medley and a Dizzy Gillespie's "Salt Peanuts"?) (Either that, or somewhere, there are metal band directors?) 🙄 Solid vid as always 🤘😎
I really enjoy these videos. Still I‘d love too see alternatives for those books that are actually mostly good and well scored out. Would help plebs like myself even more.
I remember learning Mouth For War out of Guitar World magazine which was usually pretty good. For the harmonic part, they said to "fret" the strings on the front edge of the neck pickup. It didn't sound too far off, but it was a pain in the ass to do.
I was so poor I couldn't even afford a Tab book LoL, I was lucky enough to bale enough hay over the summer to buy a used generic 21 fret guitar for $50 bux in a Radio Shack store in our hillbilly town, and I tortured my fingers for months just to learn Black Sabbath power chords, but it was kool man' lol.
Appreciate you doing what you do homie life is pretty hectic but I bought a guitar I really wanna learn how to play its something iv always wanted to do iv ben following your channel for a while im not ready to fully commit to lessons just because im really busy but I appreciate you dropping some knowledge much love homie
Man I remember this several years ago we had a metal tribute band and I just finally decided I was maybe lazy or dumb when the tabs didn't make any sense so I used my ears when the tab didnt make sense. Wow I had no idea how far off some of the tabs were. I just said heck with it and my "version" was as much tab as I could interpret along with sounded out by ear. Honestly I had a reputation for being a better quitarist than many in my area but I think it was becauuse I really tried to visualize "how woukd they play it"? I learned scales when many just tried to play without learning. Scales really helped me visualize or physically "see" how another guitarist like dime was playing something. Not how does the stupid tab say it is. This video makes me feel better I now realize I was NOT crazy the tabs were often just wrong. Thanks!!!! 👍😃👍 God Bless
I missed our last live stream I was hoping we was going to have one soon and this is one of the hardest songs to learn from that book I thought it was incorrect but wasn't for sure you are the man Mike!!!!!!🤘🤘🤘🤘👍👍🥃🍻
I started out with the Jimi Hendrix Are You Experienced note for note tab book. It may have been faithful to Jimis playing but I’ll never know. Jimi’s style is so intimidating, he puts so much in his playing. Trying to learn that as a newbie was next to impossible. I thought the magazine Guitar Player For the Practicing Musician had pretty accurate tabs. They did Jimis Star Spangled Banner and gave the pitches for all his dive bombs 😜
Great video! I have this book. Got it for Christmas in like '93 or '94 I believe. I had to make it work. I remember when I got it I was bummed out because it didn't have a lot of songs in it that I wanted to learn.
I remember looking at this book at the guitar shop I took lessons at in high school. When I saw how the chorus for This Love was tabbed using a power chord on the first fret instead of the open E I was like “this book is dumb I’m not wasting my hard earned McDonald’s paycheck on this thrash.” Best decision I have ever made.
I used to argue with the "Tab Kids" all the time. I learned by ear and although I didn't always get it right, I could definitely hear when they got it wrong. Good luck trying to change someone's mind when they can point to an official tab book. Thanks for the trip down memory lane. 🤘
Really good series of videos and makes me think I wasn’t as bad as I thought - used to buy guitar magazines all the time too and wonder how many of them made me feel “crap” haha when it turns out they were wrong. Much older or wiser now use the ear!
Even more frustrating is Pantera's inbetween tunings 1/4 steps down in a lot of there tunings. I figured that out (tenx to the internet guitar community) just a couple of years ago, Eddie van Halen did this as well.
Back in the day I lived in a small town and couldn't get anywhere for guitar lessons, so my only hope was tab books. Ultimately it made me believe I'd never learn and sold the guitar. That was 20 years ago and I'm afraid it'd be too late to learn, so I watch videos like this to feel better about myself retrospectively.
I felt the same way! I was so pumped when I got this book... I was giddy (literally giggling and shaking) all the way home and couldn't wait to learn it so I could unleash the fury that these songs held... I thought I was a horrible player for not being able to get the riffs down. I got some of the basics, but later found even those were wrong because of the incorrect tuning... This book truly made me F*cking Hostile...
I learned a lot of stuff from Ultimate-Guitar tabs back when it didn't have any paid services or an app. I learned very quickly to trust my ear. In fact, it used to piss me off when I was learning guitar and these tabs would be so different from what I was hearing. Eventually I just got used to it and came to the conclusion that no tab could be completely right, for whatever reason. These days if I want to learn a rhythm, I ignore the tabs and go for a chord chart, I can see the tuning and the chords I should be using. I can hear everything else in the recording. If I want to learn a lead, then the tabs are necessary.
I am so glad that I am now able to learn by ear. I was so frustrated even with online tabs. Even when I was a beginner they always felt so wrong. The only thing I need to know now is the tuning or the tonic of the song and I'll figure it out mostly by ear, maybe watch somebody play it on youtube to figure out the more difficult parts. But in other words screw tabs, they suck. Always learn by ear
Even tabs online in the early 2000's discouraged me because I could never find accurate/complete tabs. Ended up not touching the guitar for a decade. Just came back to it in the last couple years and progressed a ton thanks to Songsterr and other resources
I have the Hal Leonard book for Coheed and Cambria's Good Apollo I album...mistakes EVERYWHERE, which is not what I would've expected from Hal Leonard, of all publishers. It's one of my very favorite albums, so when I saw Claudio and Travis play all of those songs live and compared it to what's in the book, I was quite upset. Songs like Wake Up and Fuel For The Feeding End aren't even close to correct. I'd love to see you tackle that one!
Lol I had that book, I think I had most of these bad tab books you've made vids about. it brings back memories of being frustrated that what the books were showing did not sound like the record. Hey have you ever watched any "Guitar Method in the style of Such and Such musican" by Curt Mitchell? Like waaaay back in the 90's I ordered a few of his VHS cassettes, "Guitar Method In The Style Of Ozzy's Hitmen", "Guitar Method In The Style Of Pantera", there were vids for Metallica, AC/DC... there was a vid like that for most other huge hard rock and metal guitarists. Curt Mitchell made a video showing how to play the songs of all these great guitarists... but play em WRONG lmao. The vast majority of the songs were incomplete and way off, and the title of the songs weren't even correct sometimes. Like in the Pantera vid he had wrong song titles like "Hold Your Mouth for the War", "this Life (wtf?)", "Keep This Love", "Hostile", "...and many more!"... and much of it was played wrong and sounded like 'ol Curt just listened to the songs a couple times and then just transcribed his first guess at all the parts. Curt is still teachin' guitar, he's got a website, hope he has gone back and corrected the vids since the 90's and early 2000's.
Wow, what a nightmare! I had the same frustrations when I saw this year's ago. Sometimes trusting your ear is better than these transcriptions. Thanks!
Jesus! I still have this book from 25 years ago. I was so pleased getting it, only to find it was chaotic. I still don't trust the Mouth for War solo. I actually looked two nights ago to see if you added this. Much appreciated!
I remember I had a tab book for Queen's "Classic Queen" that was like that, with every instrument written out. I thought that was kinda cool, even though being strictly a guitar player, I had absolutely no need for that, lol
Cool video, man! But on Cowboys, it is just a heavy open E during the verses. And gnarly palm-muting , using an up-stroke. I see most people miss that key detail. But once you know, it sounds awesome!!! 😝🔥🤘🏻🎸
I still have some of these books. The very first book I purchased had something called "super tab". I didn't know at the time how to read tab but I quickly found out that the "super tab" is not even for the correct instrument, guitar, like it claimed. Lucretia by Megadeth had no intro. It started where the singing started. Seems like it may have been for vocals but that barely fit either.
I remember looking through a lot of tab books and being like... What? Mostly I used them to get a general idea of where abouts the song is played because they seemed so bizarre. I'm glad it wasn't just me.
You all do know that the "official" tab book or any tab book is someone else's interpretation of a song. The bands guitarist isn't there showing them the song note for note. Add the artists themselves change the way they play the song over time. Any tab book is like wikipedia it's a good place to start but not the definitive source.
I brought a tab book to a guitar lesson back in the 90s to ask my teacher something and he instantly dropped what we had been working on and spent the next few weeks teaching me how to learn things by ear.
About fifteen years ago I showed a Def Leppard solo in a tab book to my guitar teacher. He had a go at it and said "I don't think this has been done properly." Back then I was confused because I thought all tabs in tab books must be completely correct.
I remember using bad tab books in the early 90s and thinking "this doesn't make sense, I can't hear this" but we thought these are done by pros so must be correct. then it eventually dawn's on you that a piano player probably wrote it out on staff then converted it to tab after a quick listen through. Also these tabs sometimes put their out corrections in to the original music I suppose the guy doing it must have thought that a note on the record was a mistake and they would "correct it"
As painful as it is to see this kind of thing it's pretty damn funny, my heart goes out to all the guitarists of 80/90s metal struggling with this nonsense, I Was there too it was bad times. I coulda sworn I was subbed to this channel, oh well, I am now! Oh man that domination solo made me spit my tea out when you played it, thanks pal, you owe me a cup of tea! Was damn funny though.
With UA-cam video lessons, online sharing of tabs, and interactive guitar tab programs all available today, is there any reason to buy a tab book? When I started playing in the late 80's, there was no internet, so all we had was the tab books.
I have to agree with all of this, I noticed and in many ways reacted the same way, to everything he's saying about these pantera books. I still have my first Pantera tab book,, and completely abandoned it after a honest week of trying to learn from it, decades ago.
Started playing guitar in 89. Didn't take lesson just used GFTPM and tab books. In hind site they really set me back as a player because they never show that proper hand positions. trying to learn songs 'tabbed" in the wrong position caused me to pick up bad habits and awkward fingerings.
I think this was tabbed out purposely in a similar way as the Japanese band score tab books. They are usually more accurate and laid out in a better manner though. I know I usually prefer the Japanese books. When you get used to the font it's not so bad. 🤘😎🤘
I was going to ask about that: I have a couple of old japanese Malmsteen transcription books that use that sort of font - they are pretty bad though, full of silly mistakes and weird fingerings
Gosh... got this book too, learned lots of Pantera from it and worse - tought my students! But I realized pretty quckly it's bad tab. However I did not know there's so MUCH bad tab going round - thanks for these great interesting vids dude!
Hahahahahahah Someone like Brent Mason can do 😂😂9:40. 3 notes pattern is already not easy to do, and book made it 10 times harder 😂, second part of the solo is funny as hell hahahahahhahah. By the way, what Yousician shows for the 3 notes pattern is, 11-12-15 alternate picking, and following 11-12-15 as hammer ons, I don't know if correct, which doesn't really matter, both ways sounds as good, and you played really well, I am also working on the pattern sometimes :P. My fingers sometimes stumble on each other playing it, and it doesn't sound very clean like yours.
I taught myself to play guitar with the tab book of Metallica's Black Album and there is only one other book that really helped me out: Slayer's Live Aggression. All other books (Megadeth, Iron Maiden ...) threw me off so hard, I often felt being too dumb to play guitar. It's vindicating good to learn that everybody struggled and the dumb ones were the authors.
I really enjoy this sort of videos, but how about doing the opposite as well: reviewing books that are actually really good and managed to capture the guitarist's play style and overall song feel well? Would love to see that
Bad tablature is worse than useless because it's so disheartening. For young musicians such as I was myself at one point, you just assume that you suck or lack something fundamental to get it right. Since it looks so official, you just assume that it must be correct. It's very discouraging.
When I learned the bass part, I learned it all on one string back in the day mostly by ear as well. It ended up becoming part of my playing style
That's why ear training is so important. I suck at it but I can piece songs together if I can watch the performance to get an idea of the positions. Transcribing is hard, I think people go a bit hard on these books, they're not good but as bad as people say imo.
When I found out I had a better ear for music than most tabbers seem to... Well, it was both bolstering and disheartening.
EXACTLY how I felt when I got the tab book for Steve Vai’s “Passion and Warfare” when it first came out. Waited forever for it to come out only to have it full of mistakes. It was so butchered, I took it upon myself to photocopy every page with mistakes and corrected them, then sent them to the publisher (Hal Leonard). Ended up getting a gig proofreading some of their tab books afterward, including Vai’s “Alien Love Secrets.”
If you have or can get your hands on the first edition of “Passion and Warfare” tab book, I’d love to see your take on it.
I had that book as well and...totally agree with you!
I had that book as well. But here's the thing: I had NO BUSINESS trying to learn out of it. I had only been playing for 2 or 3 years(mostly Beatles songs) and thought "now I have the tab book, it should be easier learning how to play like Vai!" NOPE...😂 At least the cover was pretty. 30 years later and I STILL can't play like Vai...oh well. 🎸
The four Zappa books are also pretty bad in some places, to the detriment of all, ESPECIALLY Peaches en Regalia.
That's why I'm glad, by the time I got around to buying the tab book for "Passion and Warfare", it was Steve Vai himself that edited it.
That's surprising to hear, because HL has a reputation for their tab books being mostly correct, or at least more so than cherry lane or the other companies. I guess it really is hard to find a good, accurate tab book.
That's why I'm glad I grew up learning tabs online because if it doesn't sound like the record you just search for a different tab or video. That's a sick guitar btw.
Same..mxtabs man
But I did have a Pantera tab book that was just silly too lol
There were different books and magazines with different tabs
Learning by ear > tabs
Tabs are fine though and pretty much all new guitarists in this day and age start there
@@adriatic.vineyards You can learn by ear? I feel like knowing what chords and notes the song is playing would be insanely hard. Maybe that's just because I'm like brand new to playing guitar.
Steve vai's passion and warfare tab book takes that complex kind of multiple instrument tabbing to a new insane level trust me
I seem to recall a fish? Some wavy lines? And the eye of Horus? And i was, like, oh cool. That's how you play it. WTF??!!!
My friend got it when it came out. I took one look at it and thought I was reading mandarin. Then again, I don't think I could learn to play any of his stuff correctly even if Vai himself was teaching me.
Haha yeh lots of symbols in Alien love Secrets... a lot of mistakes with the tab in the book though
Didn't Vai get a break by transcribing for other artists? Seems ironic that his own tab book (probably not by him) is a mess!
I think the reason for that is in part that you can only tab out those things if you're good enough or almost good enough to play them yourself. If you don't have the technique to play a Vai lick you will probably disregard fingerings since you just assume that if it sounds right it is, without thinking if it's even playable at high speed. There's a lot of ways to play the same thing on guitar, that's the annoying part of transcription.
the harm and arm part at 6:05 is the best bit lol
Yeah it's almost like some slang Dime would have come up with himself.
I gave myself such a hard time for not being able to play Cowboys and Domination Solos from these tabs. This is part of the reason I think I gave up and didn't pick up a guitar again for about 20 years. Now with a proper practice schedule, and proper tabs, even at my ripe old age my playing is improving massively.
Keep on rocking brother!
I'm beginning to understand why so many guitarists from prior generations have so much vitriol against using tabs.
Dude foreal haha
Yep. I once bought a tab book in the late 80s. I've never used tab since and I've never even seen an accurate one.
That's the thing, I'm 34, I was learning when I was 11 or 12, me and my friends always used to fall out because of these bastard books and whether it was better to learn by ear. My generation produced so many guitarists that developed bad habits and stuff, it's insane.
i tried to learn that cowboys from hell tab back in the day. ended up learning most of it by hear
What if your ear sucks ass? Is there any way to learn with all these shitty tab books out there?
Hear
Lol, it's "by ear"
Hear, hear!
@@richardsanchez9190 UA-cam vids is another way to learn it
Being a young learner of guitar back in 86/87, I learned I guess what be known as typical. Learning by ear. Most of my favorite guitarists learned by ear. Rewinding the 8track,cassette and LPs hundreds of times. By 89 I was doing ok. Armed with an old 25w Traynor, a Boss distortion pedal, and an Ibanez Roadstar 2. I bout shit when I finally figured out the “Highway to Hell” riffs lol. In 89 I heard “And Justice for All” for the first time. Immediately began to One, Harvester and so on. Getting it pretty damn close. Until I couldn’t figure any more out I kinda shelved the idea of learning more by ear. Then….a tab book came out for “Justice”. Holy shit I was excited beyond belief. I didn’t even look on the inside of it at the record store I just fucking grabbed it, bought it, n straight home. SMH 🤦♂️ Omg, the butchery of the coolest riffs I’ve ever heard were in this book. Even as an unschooled no note reading dumbass I was like this ain’t right!!!??!!! My favorite riff was “Eye of the Beholder”. In this book, this, “Eye” was so badly done I put my guitar down for about 4yrs. Every guitarist I knew said “ Yeah man those are the tabs bro!” I was like, fuck, something ain’t right. So convinced my learning by ear sucked ass I put my guitar down for those 3/4 yrs LoL.
I always used to take these books as gospel until I had the opportunity to meet Wolf Marshall in my younger days. Super cool and humble dude but I was shocked to find out these books were just tabbed out by regular musicians who were pretty much just slowing down the recordings and guessing. Up until then I always thought that the actual guitarists had to authenticate the book with their blessing. It was like finding out Santa Claus isn't real...😥
you have to wonder who green lights all these terrible tab books, especially when they are flat out wrong. Does anyone double check these? My band recorded a cover of "Cowboys From Hell" I learned it by ear, I trust myself...
I wish my ear was strong enough to just pick up how to play a riff or lick correctly. But yeah, I think tabs are notoriously bad for one simple reason. You don't have the artist's input with the actual transcribing. Plus, I think that a lot of these people that work on these tab books are outside of their genre. A Pantera fan and musician wouldn't transcribe the songs the way this book was written.
Satan green lit them. Satan.
@@TheArtofGuitar Satan would never! Old Beelzebub loves metal... this is the work of Jehova!
@@custardstuff5178 yeah I'm pretty sure Old Scratch is just as upset at this book as the rest of us.
@@custardstuff5178 Maybe Satan had a bad day?
It's like you're creating an exclusive series based on every tab book I've purchased. They destroyed my confidence so much I believed I simply wasn't naturally gifted enough and lost my desire to learn. Your videos have been a great source of inspiration to get back into guitar again. Sadly, I have arthritis now, so I'll never be able to achieve the level I wanted to be at 24 years ago.
I'm in the same boat bro, I got so good between 12-14 with my tape deck, ear and tabs, we actually had to work for it, the UA-cam generation opened the floodgates for guitarists and spoiled them. At 46 my arthritis is so bad I can barely play basic power cords anymore 😭 sucks because I have a renewed interest in playing and wish I could do the things I could at 16. Getting old sucks balls and yes I see this is two years old sry.
I have great respect for you for learning and demonstrating all the *wrong* ways to play these songs, especially when you can play the *right* ways so well.
I had this book. I remember checking the tabs against single songs transcribed in guitar magazines(like Walk and Cowboys) and the magazines were always better. So I just learned from the magazines instead. I covered Walk in different Cover bands I was in and ALWAYS played it in dropped D. Never knew it was D standard. Still sounded good, though. 😁
The transcriptions in drop D always leave out the power chords with the 5th under the root. Takes some of that growl out of the song.
I’m glad I found this series/channel. I haven’t used tab books in like 15 years, but when I was a kid, I had every tab book I could find from bands I liked to try and learn all their songs. I definitely took them as gospel, to the point where I remember actually arguing with my guitar teacher about how to play either an Audioslave or RATM solo (can’t remember for sure.) I showed him the book and he listened to the song and was like “yeah that’s definitely not right” and I remember being so shocked and confused that he thought he knew better than the “OFFICIAL TAB BOOK”. Then I saw a live video of Tom Morello playing it and my teacher was right, the book was totally off.
I never realized this was such a widespread problem though. I assumed as a kid that the artists actually worked with the publishers to make these books. I see now that’s definitely not true.
Anyways, cool series and channel! Looking forward to whatever wacky tab book you cover next!
The orchestra thing reminded me how much I hated learning guitar parts from "real" notation. 😂
I only remember doing it once, and it was the utterly awesome bridge section of Hum "Stars"
I had some "Alternative Hits" book and got so disappointed to find it was all in notation, but I HAD to learn that part! And I still play it to this day!
Actually, I just put a version of it up on my Instagram a few weeks or months ago. Lmao. Love that riff so much.
Man… do any of the Extreme tab books.. the first one is horrendous, but they’re so difficult!
The solo for the tapping part of 'Get the Funk Out' is one of the most obvious, half-assed attempts in the history of transcription. I recall looking at in once and then deciding I would be better off figuring it out on my own.
The tab book for Blood, Sugar, Sex, Magik by RHCP was the best one I ever found. It had guitar, bass, and drums all together. The bass was dead on accurate.
The tuning isn’t a half step off, it’s just under a quarter step 😉
Dime used to tune down 40 cents flat (According to Rex Brown).
So Cowboys was E minus 40 cents, songs in D were D minus 40 etc.
I think it's been measured before and it actually varies a fair bit by album or even song. It makes it extremely difficult to play along with their stuff.
That's why, after I read an article with Dime in Guitar World, I'd tune to the song when playing along. I remember Dime said he plays "in the middle" of any tuning. He said it gave it "more balls" or grit, or something a long those lines. What a GUITARIST though!!!
Dime was a lot like EVH, he'd tune his guitar to itself by ear as it happened to be and then Rex would tune his bass by ear off of Dime.
He ditched that for Damageplan which I kinda thought was weird as that quarter step flat was one of Dime's signature things
Dime tuned it like that because he spent his last 40 cents on a beer, so he couldn't put them into the guitar.
I remember my brother’s frustration when he was using tab books. He got a guns n roses book and learn sweet child o mine. They didn’t show anywhere that the 2 lines were 2 different guitars, and at 13 my brother did his best and tried to force slash and Izzy’s parts all in to 1 part and it took a while to figure it out that he was doing lead and rhythm as 1. Tab books are straight up trash
So glad you did a video on this one. I remember a lot of stuff being inaccurate, but completely forgot about the goofy font. This book taught me to trust my ears more back in the day. Kind of wish I still had it just so I could laugh at it some more.
I lent this book to a friend many years ago, forgetting that I had wedged one of Dimes picks from the cowboys tour in between the pages. It was black with CFH on one side and Diamond Darrell on the other, you could see the string gouges on it and everything. Never saw it again and never fully believed my friend when he said he hadn't seen it. My own fault for not keeping it in a safe place.
Cool dude, a friend of mine got me a pic like that and an autograph on my tape insert cuz I was too young to be in clubs then and it was before he came out as dimebag instead of diamond so I was shocked when he brought the pick and the insert was signed dimebag, he said dime was so cool and explained how ATCO records thought it was too risque so they made him change it to diamond.
I remember this book, as a learner over 20 years ago. Great to see it reviewed like this - so many little memories. My guitar playing friends and I came to several of the very same conclusions, back then. Albeit, learning resources were so scarce back then, compared with today. So in many instances, we mistakenly trusted what these 'authoritative' books were telling us, until ear and experience eventually taught otherwise.
The 12-15-19, or whatever - it's been awhile! - symmetrical pattern in the Domination solo, was a classic example. Aurally, this part is very exciting and mysterious. And yes, fast! Being told, by this tab book, that the section was played, at that speed, via an incredibly convoluted and ever-changing fingering pattern, left us with the illusion that we needed to scale far greater technical heights (than were actually required!) to achieve what he was doing. It made Dime seem like a literal wizard, with impossible technique. And yes, he was! but not in the way portrayed.
The misleading transcriptions weren't great per se, but, trying to see the positive, it did raise our technical ambitions in some ways. Like, "if he's doing THAT, then I'm ... gonna have to do THIS!".
Only to later come a full circle, back to simplifying things in order to get the same result. On a tangent: These days I occasionally see young shredders doing really physically gymnastic techniques, in order to get a lick or phrase which aurally differs relatively little from a far physically simpler technique, and, well - the appreciation is there for what they're doing, on a physical wow level, but personally, the payoff for spending endless woodshed hours just to phrase something in a fancy way that the layperson couldn't aurally tell apart from the norm, is ... reduced, as I get older. :)
You should do a “ Bad internet tabs” as well. I’ve noticed a lot of discrepancies on sites like UG. Goldmine on there 😆. As you and I are about the same age , your videos take me back to the early 90s when I had these too. 🤘🏻
The official tabs in songsterr are always wrong
No matter where you look, all tabs have the same mistakes. They're simply copying from each other, including the wrong tabs. I have signed up to UG and tried to enter a few corrected versions but they have all been rejected with the explanation "this tab already exists on our site" or "it's not different enough from other versions" so I stopped trying. 🤷🏻♂
Ngl, being an arranger and score writer, I've always preferred Score layout (it doesn't need to be called "Orchestral Score", just score will work), but when I write, I always include the individual parts
ugh, Walk's riff was painful.
awesome video.
A lot of this stuff were passed on to online tabs. It made guitar learning pretty annoying because, as you said, the tabs were saying one thing and my ears were listening something different.
I should check all of these songs again tho, ears only.
This is how you turn your hate to productive...great analysis!
I think they just hired some jazz musical college dropout, who's pissed cause this is the only job he could get. So, he said screw it, and half-assed it.😁
Edit: Keep doing the Guitar God's work Mike! I love this videos! I've been playing for 39 years, and it was SO frustrating with these tab books! I tried to learn everything by ear when I could. One of my proudest moments, is when I figured out the beginning of Diary of a Madman by ear, and later learning I had gotten it right!🤘😝🤘
I remember getting this book after waiting weeks for it to arrive at my local music store. I was so excited I spent the whole weekend at my friends house with barely any sleep trying to learn as much as we could. We spent years unlearning and fixing mistakes.
Am glad I have discovered someone else who has found tab books sub par and doing crazy stuff. The worst book i own is pronabably "the best of iron maiden: the first ten years" in some songs it just doesnt have the solos if i remember correctly and its got some odd chords in that maiden wouldnt use.
Great job Mike .have felt this frustration before and I am glad you shed a light on the fact it is not us it is the bad interpretations.but you also make the the great point to question things and use your ears to improve on the great guitar learning experience. Cheers from Australia
Seeing things like this makes me kind of glad in a weird way that I never bothered buying any of these tab books & I can really thank my teacher for encouraging me to trust my ear over what was written on the page. That said, I do think some of the issues in these books could come down to there not really being a "standard" way to write out tab at the time?
Damn... I thought I sucked at guitar because I couldn't play that Domination's solo pattern but I just learned it incorrectly lol. It's kinda easy when you learn it the proper way. Thank you for showing this.
I believe I actually saw a video or something with Rex Brown and he said the actual tuning for Walk is down a full step plus a few extra cents. So it's technically not in D standard, it's somewhere slightly lower. I'd imagine one of the guys from the album would know best, but it was a long time ago.
6:56 "Ok it was me"
I cracked up 😂
Three on a string technique unlocks and de-mystifies so much...dimebag took that and added a different note and its something new. Love it.
Wow, you have opened my eyes to a lot of the problems I have been having for years! I have thousands of dollars of tab books. Can we sue them for us not advancing as we should? Usually if something is not right, and enough people complain, compensation is due! It's not our fault they hired unqualified people to transcribe the songs. Love your videos by the way. And those old Sanctus songs rock. The best songs are when your young and hungry! Thats when you feel the power.
I remember seeing a tab book that said Cowboys From Hell was in E major! 😂😂On a serious note, I'm so glad that he makes these videos to prove that tab books are NOT always accurate! Too many tabbers on the internet treat tab books as perfect, but these videos are concrete proof to the contrary.
"Primal Concrete" proof. ;)
Sweet vintage Charvel! And great playing.
I commented on one of your pantera vids asking why you didn't play Walk" in drop . Now I know. I learned it from bad tab books back in the day lol. Keep rocking.
Guitar for the Practicing Musician tried a full-band score approach for one or two issues after their better transcribers left and sales were lagging.
I remember Skid Row's "The Threat" being given this treatment, and wondering "Why this tune?" 🤔
It's amazing trying to imagine how a bad idea like this gets not only traction in a pitch meeting, but actually published. (Like there are high school jazz bands that will buy this to have something to play between an Earth, Wind & Fire medley and a Dizzy Gillespie's "Salt Peanuts"?)
(Either that, or somewhere, there are metal band directors?)
🙄
Solid vid as always 🤘😎
Would be funny to have a whole band learn all the (incorrect) parts from these books and perform them.
I really enjoy these videos. Still I‘d love too see alternatives for those books that are actually mostly good and well scored out. Would help plebs like myself even more.
I remember learning Mouth For War out of Guitar World magazine which was usually pretty good. For the harmonic part, they said to "fret" the strings on the front edge of the neck pickup. It didn't sound too far off, but it was a pain in the ass to do.
I was so poor I couldn't even afford a Tab book LoL, I was lucky enough to bale enough hay over the summer to buy a used generic 21 fret guitar for $50 bux in a Radio Shack store in our hillbilly town, and I tortured my fingers for months just to learn Black Sabbath power chords, but it was kool man' lol.
Appreciate you doing what you do homie life is pretty hectic but I bought a guitar I really wanna learn how to play its something iv always wanted to do iv ben following your channel for a while im not ready to fully commit to lessons just because im really busy but I appreciate you dropping some knowledge much love homie
Man I remember this several years ago we had a metal tribute band and I just finally decided I was maybe lazy or dumb when the tabs didn't make any sense so I used my ears when the tab didnt make sense. Wow I had no idea how far off some of the tabs were. I just said heck with it and my "version" was as much tab as I could interpret along with sounded out by ear. Honestly I had a reputation for being a better quitarist than many in my area but I think it was becauuse I really tried to visualize "how woukd they play it"? I learned scales when many just tried to play without learning. Scales really helped me visualize or physically "see" how another guitarist like dime was playing something. Not how does the stupid tab say it is. This video makes me feel better I now realize I was NOT crazy the tabs were often just wrong. Thanks!!!! 👍😃👍 God Bless
I missed our last live stream I was hoping we was going to have one soon and this is one of the hardest songs to learn from that book I thought it was incorrect but wasn't for sure you are the man Mike!!!!!!🤘🤘🤘🤘👍👍🥃🍻
I started out with the Jimi Hendrix Are You Experienced note for note tab book. It may have been faithful to Jimis playing but I’ll never know. Jimi’s style is so intimidating, he puts so much in his playing. Trying to learn that as a newbie was next to impossible.
I thought the magazine Guitar Player For the Practicing Musician had pretty accurate tabs. They did Jimis Star Spangled Banner and gave the pitches for all his dive bombs 😜
I remember once the worst Christmas ever in the mid 80s when I got two Van Halen album books - transcribed for piano. I still have them.
Great video! I have this book. Got it for Christmas in like '93 or '94 I believe. I had to make it work. I remember when I got it I was bummed out because it didn't have a lot of songs in it that I wanted to learn.
awesome vid and IT WOULD BE GRAND IF YOI DID A LIVESTREAM RN love everything you donlmao i’ve been inactive and miss the streams lol
I remember looking at this book at the guitar shop I took lessons at in high school. When I saw how the chorus for This Love was tabbed using a power chord on the first fret instead of the open E I was like “this book is dumb I’m not wasting my hard earned McDonald’s paycheck on this thrash.” Best decision I have ever made.
I used to argue with the "Tab Kids" all the time. I learned by ear and although I didn't always get it right, I could definitely hear when they got it wrong. Good luck trying to change someone's mind when they can point to an official tab book. Thanks for the trip down memory lane. 🤘
Really good series of videos and makes me think I wasn’t as bad as I thought - used to buy guitar magazines all the time too and wonder how many of them made me feel “crap” haha when it turns out they were wrong. Much older or wiser now use the ear!
Even more frustrating is Pantera's inbetween tunings 1/4 steps down in a lot of there tunings. I figured that out (tenx to the internet guitar community) just a couple of years ago, Eddie van Halen did this as well.
Back in the day I lived in a small town and couldn't get anywhere for guitar lessons, so my only hope was tab books. Ultimately it made me believe I'd never learn and sold the guitar. That was 20 years ago and I'm afraid it'd be too late to learn, so I watch videos like this to feel better about myself retrospectively.
I felt the same way! I was so pumped when I got this book... I was giddy (literally giggling and shaking) all the way home and couldn't wait to learn it so I could unleash the fury that these songs held...
I thought I was a horrible player for not being able to get the riffs down. I got some of the basics, but later found even those were wrong because of the incorrect tuning... This book truly made me F*cking Hostile...
I had this book! I specifically remember the F part i domination, it was just so wrong. Should have trusted my ears! Great video!
I have that same 475 Deluxe as my primary (1989). I regretably painted it years ago.
I learned a lot of stuff from Ultimate-Guitar tabs back when it didn't have any paid services or an app. I learned very quickly to trust my ear. In fact, it used to piss me off when I was learning guitar and these tabs would be so different from what I was hearing. Eventually I just got used to it and came to the conclusion that no tab could be completely right, for whatever reason. These days if I want to learn a rhythm, I ignore the tabs and go for a chord chart, I can see the tuning and the chords I should be using. I can hear everything else in the recording. If I want to learn a lead, then the tabs are necessary.
I am so glad that I am now able to learn by ear. I was so frustrated even with online tabs. Even when I was a beginner they always felt so wrong. The only thing I need to know now is the tuning or the tonic of the song and I'll figure it out mostly by ear, maybe watch somebody play it on youtube to figure out the more difficult parts. But in other words screw tabs, they suck. Always learn by ear
Even tabs online in the early 2000's discouraged me because I could never find accurate/complete tabs. Ended up not touching the guitar for a decade. Just came back to it in the last couple years and progressed a ton thanks to Songsterr and other resources
I have the Hal Leonard book for Coheed and Cambria's Good Apollo I album...mistakes EVERYWHERE, which is not what I would've expected from Hal Leonard, of all publishers. It's one of my very favorite albums, so when I saw Claudio and Travis play all of those songs live and compared it to what's in the book, I was quite upset. Songs like Wake Up and Fuel For The Feeding End aren't even close to correct. I'd love to see you tackle that one!
i love Pantera & love Dime's style. So looking forward to more Pantera/Dimebag videos from you 🤘🏼🤘🏼
Lol I had that book, I think I had most of these bad tab books you've made vids about.
it brings back memories of being frustrated that what the books were showing did not sound like the record.
Hey have you ever watched any "Guitar Method in the style of Such and Such musican" by Curt Mitchell?
Like waaaay back in the 90's I ordered a few of his VHS cassettes, "Guitar Method In The Style Of Ozzy's Hitmen", "Guitar Method In The Style Of Pantera", there were vids for Metallica, AC/DC... there was a vid like that for most other huge hard rock and metal guitarists.
Curt Mitchell made a video showing how to play the songs of all these great guitarists... but play em WRONG lmao.
The vast majority of the songs were incomplete and way off, and the title of the songs weren't even correct sometimes.
Like in the Pantera vid he had wrong song titles like "Hold Your Mouth for the War", "this Life (wtf?)", "Keep This Love", "Hostile", "...and many more!"... and much of it was played wrong and sounded like 'ol Curt just listened to the songs a couple times and then just transcribed his first guess at all the parts.
Curt is still teachin' guitar, he's got a website, hope he has gone back and corrected the vids since the 90's and early 2000's.
Wow, what a nightmare! I had the same frustrations when I saw this year's ago. Sometimes trusting your ear is better than these transcriptions. Thanks!
Jesus! I still have this book from 25 years ago. I was so pleased getting it, only to find it was chaotic. I still don't trust the Mouth for War solo. I actually looked two nights ago to see if you added this. Much appreciated!
I remember I had a tab book for Queen's "Classic Queen" that was like that, with every instrument written out. I thought that was kinda cool, even though being strictly a guitar player, I had absolutely no need for that, lol
Cool video, man! But on Cowboys, it is just a heavy open E during the verses. And gnarly palm-muting , using an up-stroke. I see most people miss that key detail. But once you know, it sounds awesome!!! 😝🔥🤘🏻🎸
I still have some of these books. The very first book I purchased had something called "super tab". I didn't know at the time how to read tab but I quickly found out that the "super tab" is not even for the correct instrument, guitar, like it claimed. Lucretia by Megadeth had no intro. It started where the singing started. Seems like it may have been for vocals but that barely fit either.
I remember looking through a lot of tab books and being like... What? Mostly I used them to get a general idea of where abouts the song is played because they seemed so bizarre. I'm glad it wasn't just me.
Darl-licks are some badass riffing. Way out there with bends, vibrato, dives, and smashing it all together.
Had the same excitement you mentioned initially when buying these books in the early to mid 90s, oh the irony!
I never really got into Pantera but this video was really intriguing.
You all do know that the "official" tab book or any tab book is someone else's interpretation of a song. The bands guitarist isn't there showing them the song note for note. Add the artists themselves change the way they play the song over time. Any tab book is like wikipedia it's a good place to start but not the definitive source.
I brought a tab book to a guitar lesson back in the 90s to ask my teacher something and he instantly dropped what we had been working on and spent the next few weeks teaching me how to learn things by ear.
About fifteen years ago I showed a Def Leppard solo in a tab book to my guitar teacher. He had a go at it and said "I don't think this has been done properly." Back then I was confused because I thought all tabs in tab books must be completely correct.
I remember using bad tab books in the early 90s and thinking "this doesn't make sense, I can't hear this" but we thought these are done by pros so must be correct. then it eventually dawn's on you that a piano player probably wrote it out on staff then converted it to tab after a quick listen through. Also these tabs sometimes put their out corrections in to the original music I suppose the guy doing it must have thought that a note on the record was a mistake and they would "correct it"
That's what I thought too. Or maybe my distortion sound isn't right. Or I just sucked.
As painful as it is to see this kind of thing it's pretty damn funny, my heart goes out to all the guitarists of 80/90s metal struggling with this nonsense, I Was there too it was bad times.
I coulda sworn I was subbed to this channel, oh well, I am now!
Oh man that domination solo made me spit my tea out when you played it, thanks pal, you owe me a cup of tea! Was damn funny though.
Hey I had that one! I had Ride the lightning, Black album,And Metallica Riff by Riff too, that one was good.
Check out Slayer's Reign in blood Tab Book, there's a few mistakes here and there
With UA-cam video lessons, online sharing of tabs, and interactive guitar tab programs all available today, is there any reason to buy a tab book?
When I started playing in the late 80's, there was no internet, so all we had was the tab books.
I love how you explain this stuff. Thanks for making these videos
I have to agree with all of this, I noticed and in many ways reacted the same way, to everything he's saying about these pantera books. I still have my first Pantera tab book,, and completely abandoned it after a honest week of trying to learn from it, decades ago.
Dangit Mike, you're obliterating my tab book library lol
"I just imagine that poor kid-... okay, it was me."
God, I felt that.
Love that Charvel.
Started playing guitar in 89. Didn't take lesson just used GFTPM and tab books. In hind site they really set me back as a player because they never show that proper hand positions. trying to learn songs 'tabbed" in the wrong position caused me to pick up bad habits and awkward fingerings.
Thanks for the heads up Mike 🤘
I think this was tabbed out purposely in a similar way as the Japanese band score tab books. They are usually more accurate and laid out in a better manner though. I know I usually prefer the Japanese books. When you get used to the font it's not so bad. 🤘😎🤘
I was going to ask about that: I have a couple of old japanese Malmsteen transcription books that use that sort of font - they are pretty bad though, full of silly mistakes and weird fingerings
Gosh... got this book too, learned lots of Pantera from it and worse - tought my students! But I realized pretty quckly it's bad tab. However I did not know there's so MUCH bad tab going round - thanks for these great interesting vids dude!
Sweet Crackle Charvel! I remember seeing it, never could afford at the time.
Hahahahahahah Someone like Brent Mason can do 😂😂9:40. 3 notes pattern is already not easy to do, and book made it 10 times harder 😂, second part of the solo is funny as hell hahahahahhahah. By the way, what Yousician shows for the 3 notes pattern is, 11-12-15 alternate picking, and following 11-12-15 as hammer ons, I don't know if correct, which doesn't really matter, both ways sounds as good, and you played really well, I am also working on the pattern sometimes :P. My fingers sometimes stumble on each other playing it, and it doesn't sound very clean like yours.
I had this book and remember giving up on the cowboys from hell solo cause I couldn’t play the intro, nice to find out years later it’s way easier🤦♂️
That domination lick sounded like jazz😀😀
Acid Jazz
I love this series! Trust your ears 👂
Unless your ears suck. 🤣
@@TheArtofGuitar 😂😅
I had the one for KISS' debut album. It said to use a pitch shifter during Deuce lol
I taught myself to play guitar with the tab book of Metallica's Black Album and there is only one other book that really helped me out: Slayer's Live Aggression. All other books (Megadeth, Iron Maiden ...) threw me off so hard, I often felt being too dumb to play guitar. It's vindicating good to learn that everybody struggled and the dumb ones were the authors.
I really enjoy this sort of videos, but how about doing the opposite as well: reviewing books that are actually really good and managed to capture the guitarist's play style and overall song feel well?
Would love to see that
Many bands release their own tab books nowadays, so they're basically 100% perfect, barring any tiny typo mistakes or something.
4:43 Walk is actually D standard but more flat. Just use a tuner set to 430Hz instead of 440Hz, and it's perfect.