One of the reasons why the guitar has become a staple in pop culture is its immediate accessibility. In lieu of standard notation, guitar players have developed tablature - a more intuitive representation of a song that uses numbers to indicate which fret on a guitar each note is played. Even the most inexperienced musicians can usually learn the system in a matter of minutes.
One of the problems with tablature is that it does a poor job representing rhythm and the duration that each note is played - both of which are essential. To remedy this, most people play a recording of the original song as they examine a tab so they can figure out when to play each note. But this process is frustrating and time consuming.
Songsterr, a new startup that launched earlier this month, is looking to help guitar players skirt this issue by accompanying each song with an audio file that plays alongside it. The site’s Flash player will also automatically scroll through each tab, indicating exactly which note is being played.
While the player will be a great help to many novices, it’s lacking support for a number of techniques found in more difficult songs, like slides, bends, and vibrato. There’s also no support for multiple instruments, which are found in most popular songs, and some of the tabs are incomplete (for example, the Johnny B. Goode tab omits the song’s signature intro riff). However, the company says that it will improve on these issues within the next month.
The site is mimicking functionality that has been offered by downloadable software clients like Guitar Pro and Power Tab for years, but is doing it from within the browser - a big plus given the portable nature of the guitar, when you might not always be near your own computer. At launch, the site includes 150 songs and says that it will have 50,000 songs by the end of the month, along with support for user uploads in the Guitar Pro format.
Unfortunately, while the site is off to a good start and has a massive number of potential users, it’s likely going to get derailed by lawsuits from the record industry. Many of the web’s most popular tab sites have been waging a losing war with copyright holders for years, as even user-created tabs for songs are considered infringements. The company is based in Russia so it may be able to avoid the lawsuits for a while, but don’t expect this one to last if it can’t secure some deals with record labels.
The player, and the website is very cool. Any word on the business model?
UMapper - http://www.umapper.com
Thanks, Andrei. We haven’t made a final decision on business model yet…
This is nice and sexy. I love seeing sites like this that actually do something!
Julie
CMO, groupROAR
it’s about time u nerds posted something that rocks.
Neatest comment ever
Great idea and cool product…especially when you consider that Guitar Pro is $60. It will be great when they add more songs.
It’s nice to have a guitar site for all guitar lovers there. Our technology now is getting higher everyday.
For a legal alternative, based in the US, try Musicnotes.com. It’s the leading online downloadable sheet music resource. Their client basically does the same thing (tracks are played in MIDI) and their song selection is massive.
This is looking pretty good. The number of songs listed have gone up, since last time I checked. I am pretty sure they would populate it soon, as claimed.
The interface is clean and good looking. The options to handle the tabs while they are being played are minimal, however with time I am sure they would add in may more options to slow down or repeat a particular section of the song over and over till one gets it right, like in Guitar Pro.
This is quite innovative and i hope the record companies dont give these guys any trouble as a this concept has a good potential.
Looks cool. What I couldn’t find was an explaination of what all the symbols and number mean. For an absolute novice, how does one get started reading the page?
Peter
http://usbtests.com
You can ignore nearly everything assuming the song and the guitar you’re playing are in standard tuning. Just look at the numbers that are on each line (ignore the 3/4 in the picture above, you don’t actually play those).
The lines on the tab each represent a string. The top line represents the skinniest string (E), 2nd line is B, and so on. The bottom line is the thickest string (E, again).
The number on each line represents the fret you should hold down when you pluck the string. If there’s a 2 on the top line, you’d pluck the skinniest string while holding down the second fret.
This is just a letter A.
System Of A Down - B.Y.O.B
The best guitar riff ever!!
This is well done. Hope it stays up!
It really is time to “Rethink Copyright Law”:
http://www.techcrunch.com/2008.....right-law/
I’m going to go pickup my guitar and play a few riffs!! (I haven’t played in years - this is exactly what I’ve been needing)
This is a good idea, but it’s far from being as good as Guitar Pro. It has like 10% of the Guitar Pro features:
The only available sound is clean guitar, which sounds weird for rock songs like Back in Black.
There are no guitar effects like bend, palm mute, etc. So for Back in Black the transcription is wrong (the A on bar 4 is a full bend…).
It’s impossible to choose a given tempo (the only option is to play it half speed).
There’s only one track - on guitar pro you can have drums, bass, etc. and play along it while setting the guitar volume to zero for example.
And you can’t edit the songs or write a new one !
So right now I’d rather pay $60 for Guitar Pro.
Check out Power Tabs too, it’s my personal favorite.
Any word on a version for Bass Guitars?
Will soon be added along with other instruments.
Man … this site rocks … how do they make money!!? This is my new favorite site!! It used to be the original W3C site, but this one … marvelous!!
Wow, another step forward to musical laziness. Don’t get me wrong, anything to help a new guitarist is awesome, but there are hundreds of thousands of gadgets like this right now. Learning the guitar has become a corporate thing. What about the good old days of learning a song by ear, which teaches you amazing things when it comes time to write your own music. Its a lot like the “give a man a fish” scenario.
Though I do dig the fretlight guitar, and somebody made a killing off of that, but they deserved it. Brilliant idea and it must have been mind boggling to get it rolling.
And what’s with this internet thingy spreading all this knowledge around? In the good old days you had to read a book or attend university. What’s next, computer ’software’ that helps you create some kind of digital art?
Pfffff.
Doh! I remember making a program in flash like this 3 years ago for a uni project. oh well. Carpe Diem
coool
sounds kinda cool..
although what is really needed (well, what i’d find useful as a guitarist) is a browser based system, that will let me upload a song and then mess about with the speed so i can slow the solo or riffs down and then tab it myself.
also, a greasemonkey script that displays tabs next to videos on youtube would be really handy. damn, if only i could code.
This is awesome! Too bad I’m stuck at work because I really want to go home and rock out to AC/DC Back in Black now.
GuitarPort.com has been doing this since 2003.
Shuule is an online guitar pro player based on javascript and java. It can play existing gp3, gp4, gp5 files found on the web. For more information check out the blog:
http://shuule.blogspot.com
or go directly to testing site:
http://shuule.com