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Here is my take on tab. As a guitarist I find I am going through 2
phases with tablature.
Phase 1: Consumer. When you don't know jack about the guitar it is
nice to be able to play stuff you like instead of Mel Bay or
whatever. When you have a tabbed out song you can concentrate on
getting your fingers and brain to work out the actual mechanics of
playing the guitar. Plus you stay excited about being able to play
music you love even if its not perfect.
Phase 2: Producer. Once you get the basics of physically playing the
guitar I have found making tablature to be a big help on my ears.
Personally I have made great strides in my listening skills if I make
myself sit down and tab out a song. Much to my surprise I am starting
to be able to figure stuff out much easier and yes, I even figured a
lick or two out without holding a guitar in my hand (doesn't happen
often yet for me!).
So in those two respects I think it helps. After a while you don't
need it so much anymore.
And we all probably know that 90% of the tab out there on the web is
at best incomplete and in all likelihood riddled with errors. You
have to take the pieces out that are right and correct the bad parts,
which is a pretty good exercise too.
I encourage people to upload tab to the files section, and maybe get
a kind of peer review process going to shake out the bugs.
BTW, recently I picked up a cool instructional surf guitar book
(still amazed one even exists). It comes with a CD that has several
Torquays tracks on it. Each track has 2 versions, one is the full
song, and the other has the lead guitar removed. The Torquays rock
too! Its called "Surf Guitar" and the author is Dave Celentano. I got
mine through Elderly Instruments ().
I'm just starting to learn to play the guitar and wondered if anyone
could recommend any instro-surf tablature and what type of strings
would be the best to use to get the authentic sound?
Cheers Kev.
> I'm just starting to learn to play the guitar and wondered if anyone
could recommend any instro-surf tablature and what type of strings
would be the best to use to get the authentic sound?
Cheers Kev.
Here are several good surf guitar tab books:
The Ventures "Pipeline: 25 Surfin' Hits for Solo Guitar," Creative Concepts
Publishing/Hal
Leonard.
"Surf Guitar: Authentic Note-for-note Guitar Tab Transcriptions" Hal Leonard
"Where Are They Now? Surf & Spy Guitar," Warner Bros. Publishing
More advanced:
"The Atlantics: Flight of the Surf Guitar" (www.theatlantics.com).
"Surf Guitar: Play Along With the Torquays"
Videos:
Classic Surf For Guitar Vols. I & II, Song Express/Warner Bros. Video
There are also many tabs on this site, as well as various tab sites such as OLGA
(On-Line
Guitar Archive). The books are usually more accurate, however. You should also
playing by
ear - pretty much everyone recommends that after you have been playing for
awhile.
Re: strings. More than half of the players here claim to use flat-wounds, .11s
or .12s or
.13s. Fender or D'Addario Chromes seem popular. A lot depends on your guitar - I
like
roundwounds on my Strat, but intend to use flat wounds on my Jazzmaster project.
Best
advice: try out different strings, find ones you like. Flats are more "mellow,"
and typically
less bright than round wounds, and they also eliminate that finger sliding sound
you often
hear with round wound strings. They were used extensively in the early 1960s,
esp. by
surf bands. There are many discussions and debates about strings in previous
posts to
this site.
Good luck!
Gavin
--- In , "Gavin Ehringer"
<gavinehringer@e...> wrote:
>
> > I'm just starting to learn to play the guitar and wondered if
anyone
> could recommend any instro-surf tablature and what type of strings
> would be the best to use to get the authentic sound?
> Cheers Kev.
Isn't there a tab folder under the files section of this group? same
for reverborama?
as far as strings go, what gavin said, + choose between nickel and
steel, nickel being mellower and more vintage-sounding, steel more
aggresive and modern. nickel doesn't wear out your frets, steel does
eventually, if that's a consideration. I think roundwoundplayers
around here generally prefer nickel, with flatwounds its 50/50.
good luck!
WR
