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SurfGuitar101 Forums » Surf Musician »

Permalink TAB Books and Web Sites for Surf Guitar

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What are you favorite books and web sites for learning Surf Tunes? I've been working with some You Tube videos, but I was wondering what other sources you use. Is there a Big Fake Book of Surf Tunes somewhere?

All opinions expressed by this poster are well thought out and based on actual experience and/or scientific experimentation, except for those which are knee-jerk reactions or good sounding fantasies.

https://www.youtube.com/user/jbruceguitar

You can get Dave Celentano's book on surf guitar. He worked with Steve Soest of the Torquays and provides some concepts, tabs, as well as full tabs & backing tracks on a CD of 6 Torquays songs you can learn. The songs actually will - sorta - take you through some different levels of playing. Pretty fun.

Martin Cilia has a ton of tabs, with many backing tracks, at his website. There is also The Atlantics' website with many backing tracks & a their book of full tabs from the Flight of the Surf Guitar album.

Wes
SoCal ex-pat with a snow shovel

DISCLAIMER: The above is opinion/suggestion only & should not be used for mission planning/navigation, tweaking of instruments, beverage selection, or wardrobe choices.

https://www.youtube.com/user/jbruceguitar?feature=em-subs_digest

Thanks!

All opinions expressed by this poster are well thought out and based on actual experience and/or scientific experimentation, except for those which are knee-jerk reactions or good sounding fantasies.

Dave Celentano's book is great!

Other good tab books include:

Hal Leonard's Surf Playalong:

Hal Leonard's Ventures Playalong

There are also a number of Hank Marvin playalong books..for instance:

Play Guitar with Hank Marvin

And lots of great, but expensive Japanese 'Guitar Karoke' books featuring the Ventures...check ebay.

Danny Amis of the Straitjackets had a book of tab..not sure if it's still available or not. Also, Hal Leonard has a book of Dick Dale tab.

I was a bit of a playalong/tab collector for a few years. I guess I graduated, but I think this sort of stuff is fun and it helped me get to another level.

Playalong books that are sadly missing...Link Wray and Jimmy Bryant (non-surf, but essential). And wouldn't we all love a playalong books from Slacktone, Satan's Pilgrams, and the Straitjackets.

Yep, it's fun and helpful but I strongly advice start putting the tunes down by ear, tabs or notes, as soon as possible) surely will check what I have in my archives but just do it!

Waikiki Makaki surf-rock band from Ukraine

New Single is out!

https://waikikimakaki.bandcamp.com/album/rhino-blues-full-contact-surf-single

Waikiki Makaki

https://linktr.ee/waikikimakaki

Lost Diver

https://lostdiver.bandcamp.com
https://soundcloud.com/vitaly-yakushin

there is not much book /tab ect.. to learn surf song and in fact you must have to pick up by ear a lot ,this is the way i do cause lot of thing i want to play are unfindable
there is lot of song i want to play but my ears are not good enought to catch them ,lot of very fast song are very hard too catch by ear for me :example the volcanos song whirlpool and Kilauea more over they were play fast too
if i want to work them i need to spend lot of time to cut them in part and wrote them on tab immediately to avoid to forget how to play it

I've gone from needing full tabs, to tabs for parts of songs that make no sense to my ears, to needing the chord progression and working it out myself. It's helped to start with more straightforward songs, but it's fun to learn a more complex "up and down" the fret board songs too.

There's been a couple of times I've thought a song is in a certain key, then when I've played along it's totally different (should have done that first!) but the adjustment to the "real" key has been easy. This is without knowing any real scales to be honest.

And seeing the patterns of notes, and thus scales emerging opens up a lot of things...hold on that "box" of notes I'm playing in is the same for X, Y, and Z songs...of course, they're the same key.

Then you start writing your own thinly ripped-off numbers!

Samurai wrote:

Yep, it's fun and helpful but I strongly advice start putting the tunes down by ear, tabs or notes, as soon as possible) surely will check what I have in my archives but just do it!

I agree; I'm an ear player, lost my sight-reading when I left the piano in high school. My use for tab is sometimes out of curiosity ("where on the neck is this being played?"). But I've found the best way to make it solid is to simply do the work & nug it out; perhaps (because of a joint limitation) maybe find a different way mechanically to get from point A to point D. But tabs seldom take in some of the wonderful rhythm & supporting chords that are in the music but which are important as the melody. For that I simply have to pay attention to the overall vibe of the song & use the ears. Different approaches for different people.

Wes
SoCal ex-pat with a snow shovel

DISCLAIMER: The above is opinion/suggestion only & should not be used for mission planning/navigation, tweaking of instruments, beverage selection, or wardrobe choices.

With MP3 players having vari-speed capabilities (retains pitch), it really makes it so much easier to tab-out guitar lines. I find that tab books can be frustratingly inaccurate and misleading, particularly around fretboard positioning. Tab books tend to show positions all around the fretboard rather than economizing movement and playing those notes in a small range of frets. However, I've seen tab books showing the Misirlou guitar lines being played on adjacent strings rather than playing the entire melody line on a single string. When I see that, I just think that the editor had zero idea of the history of that song.

Vari-speed was used after a number of recordings were made to increase the speed, reduce the run time, and to give the track a bit more excitement. Knowing that this was a common tactic, if a person sits down to learn a tune that seems like it would be so much easier to play it one fret lower, chances are that this was the way it is actually played for the recording. The pitch is usually around a half-step (one fret) higher than it was actually played.
So, I defiantly play "Penetration" in F# despite tab books showing G and other players playing in in G.

I think that the tab books that are out there merely give a good start and get players on the right path to doing their own transcriptions. A critical ear, theory basics, and some critical thinking go a long way to working out your own version of a transcription. I have heard a lot of really poor performances from players on Youtube that had no clue about the tune so that brings out my competitive nature to one-up them in the quality of my playing and accuracy of transcribing. Anything to push oneself to not settle for mediocrity is a good thing, IMHO. On the other hand, I do not bash people for trying and I certainly would never discourage anyone. After all, a bit of open interpretation, creativity, and putting your own stamp on things is fair game...as that was the original spirit of surf in the first place!!!

Lorne
The Surf Shakers: https://www.facebook.com/TheSurfShakers
Vancouver BC Canada

Last edited: May 05, 2017 14:01:14

I usually learn things by ear, but tabs give a rough overview I can work from. Many are inaccurate and you wonder what the person who tabbed it was thinking. A few good shortcuts are always helpful if they are accurate.

All opinions expressed by this poster are well thought out and based on actual experience and/or scientific experimentation, except for those which are knee-jerk reactions or good sounding fantasies.

Just remembered Danny Amis (Daddy-O Grande from Los Straitjackets) has some:

http://www.daddyogrande.com/tablature.html

Site dude - S3 Agent #202
Need help with the site? SG101 FAQ - Send me a private message - Email me

"It starts... when it begins" -- Ralf Kilauea

The Atlantics have a music/tab book. http://theatlantics.com/shop/

Also see -https://martincilia.com/guitar-tabs/

Samurai wrote:

Yep, it's fun and helpful but I strongly advice start putting the tunes down by ear, tabs or notes, as soon as possible) surely will check what I have in my archives but just do it!

I totally agree - I have two books on surf (Still haven't looked at either yet - I like deconstructing or reverse engineering instrumentals)- That's the fun part for me - Some I can crack right off because their like others songs I already know and few that are in a weird scale that takes me weeks (Depends on the song really.)

The Ventures put out a few training records "Play Guitar With the Ventures" LP's and were the ones most kids picked up songs from in the 1960's. Chet Atkins put one out before that, which George Harrison had and taught the other Beatles how to play. There again many just slowed regular 45's down to 33 1/3 to pick out notes on songs - I use a DJ CD/USB player to do the same thing - It's old school technique - Many kids in the 60's traded ideas at school or in the neighborhood on playing like many people do now on YouTube etc. Then just spend a million hours practicing.

Now they have apps to do the same thing with ripped music etc...some bands in the 1960's made 45's back then just so they could remember their own songs - now we have the net.

Last edited: Jan 21, 2019 18:39:02

This course on TrueFire is really fun! https://truefire.com/surf-guitar-lessons/essentials/c1204
I've only just started it, but so far I love it. The course shows you common shapes and progressions used in surf/spy/Hawaiian allowing you to easily pick up new riffs by ear.
A solid investment for sure!

Dennis

PTPDennis wrote:

This course on TrueFire is really fun! https://truefire.com/surf-guitar-lessons/essentials/c1204
I've only just started it, but so far I love it. The course shows you common shapes and progressions used in surf/spy/Hawaiian allowing you to easily pick up new riffs by ear.
A solid investment for sure!

Dennis

Yes, a great course no matter the beginner you or not.

Waikiki Makaki surf-rock band from Ukraine

New Single is out!

https://waikikimakaki.bandcamp.com/album/rhino-blues-full-contact-surf-single

Waikiki Makaki

https://linktr.ee/waikikimakaki

Lost Diver

https://lostdiver.bandcamp.com
https://soundcloud.com/vitaly-yakushin

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