

The more detailed the tablature is, the more likely it's a violation. Some experts say that many of the Web sites appear to be infringing copyright. I started.ĪRNOLD: But not everybody thinks it's amazing. You know, I was - you had to buy the record and sit down with the record and listen to it again and again and again. You know, I think back to when I was a kid. SAM DAVIS (Guitar Teacher): Which is amazing. It's really given me a sense of the fact that I've made some progress in my guitar. You can't take the sky from me.ĪRNOLD: Ford, the student, says he's always going online to look up guitar tabs. FORD: (Singing) Burn the land, and boil the sea. But it's enough of a guide for Ford and his teacher, Sam Davis, to have some fun with it. You need to have heard the song before to really be able to play it. It uses dashes, numbers, and letters to represent the strings, frets, and chords.

RUDY FORD (Guitar Student): So it goes.ĪRNOLD: Its not formal sheet music. On the music stand, he's got some tablature he found online for a song he wanted to learn. NPR's Chris Arnold reports.įorty-year-old school administrator Rudy Ford(ph) is at his guitar teacher's apartment in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Now the music publishing industry is trying to shut sites down with threats of legal action. The sites are proliferating and attracting millions of visitors. They go to Web sites where other guitar players post a kind of quick and dirty sheet music called tablature.
Subscription music tablatures how to#
Many people learning to play guitar have figured out how to find the chords to songs they want to play over the Internet for free.
