MeMu instrument tabs

January 24, 2008 4:17 AM

Could there be a place within Mefi Music for people to post tabs?

Pretty self explanatory idea. Sometimes I find myself wanting to know how someone played a certain song, but I feel like I'd just be a burden on whoever I messaged asking how they played a song. Would it be possible to have a place where people could post the tabliture to their songs? I haven't really thought of how it could work into Metafilters whole design concept, but I think it'd be neat.

Just seems like something that could be kind of fun. Maybe no one would do it, but I think it'd be sweet to find covers of songs by metafilter users uploaded to MeMu. A nice Challenge could be about covering another users song, perhaps.

posted by Corduroy to MetaFilter Music at 4:17 AM (23 comments total)

I think it'd be nice to have a place for standard notation as well.
posted by Zero Gravitas at 4:54 AM on January 24

Doesn't seem like the amount of people who would contribute the transcriptions with their songs would be large enough to justify creating and maintaining such a system.

I'd just encourage HiFites to put it up on their own website however they please.
posted by Mikey-San at 4:54 AM on January 24

Would-be tabbers, strive do as nice a job as the ones on the Cynic page.
posted by Wolfdog at 5:13 AM on January 24

Agreed about the challenge - "cover someone else's song" has worked a treat elsewhere and would be really fun here too - but I'm not sure I understand what you mean about tablature, other than that you are hoping people will post it anyway so it's already there without you having to ask for it. That's also a burden and I think most people won't, especially non-guitarists.

People who do want to share tabs don't need a special place, surely, as we have comments, and the code tag hopefully works for the formatting, eg:


|-----------------------------|-
|-----------------------------|-
|------2-----0-------0--------|-
|----2-----2-------0--------0-|-
|--0-----3-------2-----0h2----|-
|--------------3--------------|-



(Unless I screwed it up somehow.)
posted by motty at 5:31 AM on January 24

/moshes frantically
posted by Jofus at 5:41 AM on January 24

|------------------------------------------------------------------|-
|------------------------------------------------------------------|-
|------------------------------------------------------------------|-
|--2-------5-------5---7---7-------9-8-9-8-9---8---5---7---7-------|-
|--2-------5-------5---7---7-------9-8-9-8-9---8---5---7---7-------|-
|--0-------3-------3---5---5-------7-6-7-6-7---6---3---5---5-------|-
posted by goodnewsfortheinsane at 5:45 AM on January 24 [5 favorites]

That's in the wrong position, gnfti. But if you want it to sound like Tony, you do play it on the fat string.
posted by Wolfdog at 6:00 AM on January 24

Freebird!
posted by Jofus at 6:03 AM on January 24

I owe Blackthorn on Broadway $530.
posted by Plutor at 6:09 AM on January 24

Just to clarify, this wouldn't be meant as a requirement, at all. Just an area to put tabs (which would not be limited to guitar, hopefully). But, after thinking about it more, it's probably true not enough people would contribute to justify it.

I do think that a cover challenge would be a lot of fun, though. And for the less experienced among us, a tab (or standard notation) would be useful. Maybe in the challenge, if you want to cover someones song, you should just message that person, rather than if you want your song covered, put up a tab.
posted by Corduroy at 6:54 AM on January 24

Building a specific site function for housing tabs/notation is putting the cart before the horse, I think. Mikey-San has it right: If you're interested in how someone played something, do ask them and see if they can provide an answer, or if someone else wants to have a go at transcription if they're no good at it.

If you personally have already tabbed out a part of something you've posted and want to share it, throw it in a comment like motty and gnfti suggest up thread, or put it in a text file on a server and link it.

Generating tab and notation is time-consuming work, and I could be wrong and out of the loop but I'd estimate that the vast majority of folks who are posting songs to Music aren't doing so for their compositions.
posted by cortex at 7:14 AM on January 24

Tablature: good idea.

MeFi cover challenge: another great idea. We need a need type of challenge anyway, and this sounds perfect.

February, anyone?
posted by ORthey at 7:29 AM on January 24

I nominate Born To Run by Bruce Springsteen.

/NOT TRAMPIST
posted by Jofus at 8:06 AM on January 24

Dropped D tuning, GNFTI
posted by psmealey at 9:25 AM on January 24

Homer: [reading screen] "To Start Press Any Key". Where's the ANY key? I see Esk ["ESC"], Catarl ["CTRL"], and Pig-Up ["PGUP"]. There doesn't seem to be any ANY key. Woo! All this computer hacking is making me thirsty. I think I'll order a TAB.
posted by Fuzzy Monster at 2:28 PM on January 24

I personally would happily do chord charts, but as cortex said, I never do actual tabs or notation and I would imagine most of the people are like that. Not that anyone here is asking for my tabs, of course, I'm just saying it for statistical purposes.

Also, if someone was so interested in a song of mine to ask, I guess I'd find a way to do it. Or perhaps send a video of me playing the song (just because it's faster).
posted by micayetoca at 3:29 PM on January 24

There's nary a chord change to be found in any of my music, so tabs would look pretty sad. A one-note tab? I don't think so... But I could offer suggestions on how to bang on a small twisted piece of junk metal!
posted by flapjax at midnite at 3:42 PM on January 24

Freebird!
posted by Jofus at 6:03 AM on January 24 [+] [!]

* looks up surprised from scratching self and coding*

*holds up lighter*
posted by freebird at 4:37 PM on January 24

gnfti, I'm a pianist, and can't read tabs, but somehow still knew what song that was. Well done.
posted by CitrusFreak12 at 4:55 PM on January 24

Ok, gnfti, I'm ignorant and I give up. What was that tab a snatch of? (I first thought it might be Paranoid, which would have been cute, but it isn't.)
posted by motty at 3:48 PM on January 25

motty, you're kidding? You are sooo close, it's IRON MAN!
posted by snsranch at 6:03 PM on January 25

It's a little more obvious if you replace all the individual note values with the word "DUN".
posted by cortex at 6:05 PM on January 25 [2 favorites]

Cheers, snsranch.

I guess I never had that big a Sabbath phase - years ago I had some weird bootleg vinyl called Black Sabbath Volume 2, but that was all, and moreover, now I've looked it up a bit, all that consisted of was some but not all of the Paranoid album - War Pigs, Fairies Wear Boots, Paranoid etc. I don't remember Iron Man being on it. Bah. Shame on me etc.
posted by motty at 1:15 PM on January 26