I was reading a discussion about UG and how their money-seeking practices are rather poor, for lack of better words.
Does anyone know if there is an open-source database of tabs and chord charts, or perhaps some kind of aggregator for community contributions?
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That’s a really good question! All I’ve got is software sadly, but it might help the cause at least:
GUITab is a visual editor for tabs
TuxGuitar for opening and editing power tabs, making PDFs of tabs, midi etc.
I’ve found a couple of neat tab places specific to bands themselves, but they’re not open source as much as maintained by one or a few people - nonetheless not UG :)
Sonic Youth have an officially hosted tab place on their site.
The Fall have tabs hosted on what I think is a fan site :)
I’m guessing the reason there’s not one already is the sheer number of copyright issues that would appear the second it’s online - Ultimate Guitar made some kind of deal if I remember correctly, which is probably why they’re so aggressive about making me download the silly app and buying premium. :/
Back in the early 2000s, we had MX Tabs which was not quite open source but amazing. It collapsed because of copyright issues. But while it lasted, it had basically anything you can think of. Usually 4 or 5 versions and they were all wrong in different ways.
Oh wow, that took me back! I used to learn bass songs on MX Tabs, but it was so long ago I forgot; I still have Nirvana tabs from MX that younger me printed out! :)
The music and entertainment industry is fucked up. How is tabs even copyrighted? Are recipes copyrighted? Bullshit.
I found this article while searching, seems like guitar tabs aren’t covered by fair use out of an antiquated standard.
There used to be… OLGA. Hounded out of existence years ago, replaced by the current hellsites. RIP
If you’re into lute, baroque guitar, etc, there’s a ton of that stuff available in various ancient tab systems. Don’t have the links handy but there are online archives. ed: here are some links
I understand… We must make public domain lute music go mainstream. Then no need for UG.
Seriously tho, thanks for those lute tabs, I’ve been looking for something different to play around with
