OLGA Shut Down by DMCA (again!)

Gavitron writes "The online Guitar Tablature Archive OLGA.net has been shutdown again, to "ensure that composers and songwriters will continue to have incentive to create new music for generations to come." Scant details exist, but there is more information in forums and blogs."

Terrible!

Examples of the compositions infringed include "Beautiful Day" written by Clayton/Evans/Mullen/Hewson and administered by Universal Music Publishing, and "I Want To Hold Your Hand" written by Lennon/McCarthy and administered by Sony/ATV Tunes LLC.

Isn't it awful? If people keep infringing his copyrights, John Lennon might have to quit music and get a day job! Then where will all the Beatles fans be? They'll be moaning about how they aren't getting any new Beatles music, I'm sure.

Re:Terrible!

Lennon/McCarthy? I doubt McCarthy would be happy to be working with someone as socialist as Lennon... ;)

Lennon's rolling in his grave

Right. What his 'representatives' are doing with his music seems to be the very antithesis of his philosophy. Indeed, recall the lyrics to Imagine:

Imagine no possessions,
I wonder if you can,
No need for greed or hunger,
A brotherhood of man,
Imagine all the people
Sharing all the world...

Re:Lennon's rolling in his grave

Those are his lyrics, not his philosophy. He lived in a very big house and had many material possessions.

Re:Terrible!

Given that copyright was intended to give artists incentive to continue creating music (which is the grandparent's point, and also happens to be true), how does the Lennon estate justify its privilege to hold the rights to John's work? How are they furthering the cause of encouraging new music creation?

For thousands of years, we had no IP laws. Minstrels, musicians, writers and poets copied from one another and competed for the resulting ubiquity of their works. Hundreds of thousands of books were thus preserved, until they were intentionally destroyed at Alexandria.

My family gets together with several other families every year for a big Easter weekend camp out, and Saturday night is always dedicated to a campfire sing-along. This year, one of my cousins brought a huge compilation of Beatles arrangements (fully licensed) to the sing along. There was only one book, but somehow everyone around the fire knew the songs. We'd all heard them from our parents' album collections. Some of us remembered a now-defunct all-Beatles radio station that played strong for one summer and then shut down because it was unprofitable. Some of us even remember singing "I Wanna Hold Your Hand" or the Money Can't Buy Me Love Madrigal in choir. Considering the Beatles haven't been heavily advertised since Anthology, which was almost 10 years ago, I'd say that was pretty damn good. Estates and commercialism aside, the Beatles wrote and performed some amazing music. If all the IP laws in the world disappeared tomorrow, their music would not be forgotten. So what is the function of the Lennon estate again?

Legal Failure corrected by Innovation and Market

I see this as much more of a symptom of the perversion of the legal
system by the special interests of corporations (and their lawyers).

Unfortunately justice is still out of reach for many of us, and I
think the number of people who cannot afford to go to court is growing.
Corporations take advantage of their wealth and this financial imbalance.

Corporations in their short sightedness rather than competing through
innovation and invention seek to compete by controlling the market by
suppressing competition where possible.

Copyright and Patent laws were originally created to prevent this and
strike a balance between the rights of the user and the creator. The idea
was to create a functioning market where innovation is encouraged and
sufficiently rewarded, while retaining open competition and consumer choice.

Copyright and IP law is particularly vulnerable since its complexity and
the need to seek a balance between content users and content providers
makes easy to pervert. That combined with the general lack of knowledge
about copyright law and fair use and a systematic public campaign by the
content industry to confuse the issue, has lead to the current situation.

It is disappointing that judges, lawyers and politicians (the guardians of
our legal system) have failed to protect our legal system from growing
greed and corruption.

Despite all this the content industry middlemen (RIAA etc...) will lose.
The reasons are simple:
1) A new medium, the internet allows anyone to connect with customers.
2) A number of users are no longer interested in working with
the content industry middlemen.
3) A large number of users are willing to share their content for free.

This is creating a large pool of accessible content that the content industry
middlemen do not own or control in anyway. As this pool grows which it inevitably will
the very content "protection" laws lobbied for by the record industry will
protect the rights of the creators of this music. Since the creators have
the right to distribute their content under any licensing scheme that they
see fit (eg. creative commons) they can distribute it for free.

Consumers faced with the choice of easy free to use accessible content and the
choice of copy protected digitally managed "official" industry content
will simply vote with their feet.

These sorts of legal challenges just help create a hostile climate for traditional
industry content users and will hasten the decline of the traditional content industry
as these consumers move on.

These are the violent thrashes of a dying beast...
(which unfortunately will take time and cause much damage).

We've seen it with software... and we'll see it again...

Wait a minute...

Let me get this straight... somehow showing somebody how to play a song will prevent people from writing new songs? I'm sorry, Logic has just stuffed it's head so far up it's own ass that it disappeared.

Re:Wait a minute...

I view this as a major win for music fans everywhere. Think about it--the closure of tab sites on the net will result in a reduction in the number of bad cover bands. Either those people will never play music, or they'll be forced to attempt to create their own music. Judging by the talent of most cover bands, I'm guessing it will be the former. End result--less suck in the music world!

[yes, it's a joke. no, i don't think closing tab sites is a good thing.]

Re:Wait a minute...

Think about it--the closure of tab sites on the net will result in a reduction in the number of bad cover bands.

Nah, we don' need no steenkin' website to show us how to play "Stairway to Heaven" really badly, we can figure it out all by ourselves.

Your ass called, and it wants its wrong info back.

As other posters have commented, there is *no* venue that requires sheet music. In fact, they could give a rats ass if you know how to read it, learned it from a yeti in the mountains or was given the knowledge divinely.

Most venues would be overjoyed if they could play the radio, have bands, and have a jukebox without paying ASCAP or BMI. It's an expense, and I've seen a few venues that don't pay it. When pressed, they say, "Why should I have to pay to play the radio? It's free in my car and in my home!"

So, you're wrong. So wrong in fact, that you could be right - if you were talking about 60 years ago, or an orchestra, but we're talking about TAB and chords, guitar and popular songs. Single note playing intruments in orchestras use music written for the instrument they play - and are not required to own, purchase, or otherwise HAVE sheet music by any! venue. (Maybe a bandleader who's a copyright nazi or a published composer whose music is being played might require it, but those days are fading fast - if not gone already!)

So, please. Either get back in your time machine and join us in the present, pick up a manual on what the hell is going on in the real world, or shutty.

Music has been passed down for generations

Without somewhere to get the pass on the music it will be lost.

I would feel great pride if I were a composer having my tune played around the world by people, its like having your code used all around.
Its not like knowing the chords will give anybody an advantage to become an international star, and I doubt it would lost anyone money.

Re:Music has been passed down for generations

Without somewhere to get the pass on the music it will be lost.

Yes, exactly. That's why they're doing this.

If they don't clamp down on public memory, then they can't sell the same crap 20 years from now and call it new.

Re:So what exactly is wrong with amateur tabs?

What the hell are they afraid of?

That they won't be able to sell you the same tune for an Nth time in the form of an "official" (and often crappy) guitar translation.

OLGA to become an errata sheet?

That they won't be able to sell you the same tune for an Nth time in the form of an "official" (and often crappy) guitar translation.

If this is the case, then OLGA might again rise from the ashes as a sort of "errata sheet" to the official translation, explaining every single error in every single song book. Criticism of a copyrighted work is likely to be ruled as fair use of that work and thus not an infringement (17 USC 107 [copyright.gov]).

Fucking 1984 speak

Continue to have incentive blah blah blah... What is this bullshit? Quit spinning the reasons. You think the website hurts sales, so you want to shut it down. Fine. JUST SAY IT THAT WAY.

In my opinion, the creepiest part of 1984 (go reread it) is that language is being dumbed down so as to control modes of thought. The Big Brother ideal is that in 50 years people are too stupid to remember complicated concepts, since the simplified language no longer allows for them to be formed. It's why I want to shoot anybody who actually buys this sort of phrasing, such as what the RIAA is giving us.

Thanks corporate America, for trying to make us all that much dumber.

Re:Fucking 1984 speak

Hummm, let me see:

Real Sentence vs Bush Sentence:
Global Warming vs Global Climate Changes
War Against Middle East vs War on Terror
Palestine vs Middle East

If you check around, not only the media already adopted these political correct terms, but even the normal people did it ... in fact even the geeks do it all the time now.

I clearly remember some years ago, you would always see the words Global Warming and Palestine ... it's frightening to see that in so little time the changed the way people refer to the events in a way that they become clearly more forgiving to the politicians and they don't transmit the really dimension of the facts.

But perhaps it's just me, perhaps I'm dreaming ... are we fighting against the Eurasia or Eastasia now ? ... this morning in the news it said we are fighting against Eastasia in fact that we were always fighting against Eastasia and that Eurasia is our eternal ally, but I remember that in yesterday newspaper it said that we were fighting against Eurasia.

Perhaps I'm crazy ... perhaps the chocolate ration really increased since last week.

I don't get it...

I've never understood how they can make guitar tableture a copyright violation when you have a gazillion sites out there posting lyrics. How is that any different? The tableture is someone's interpretation of what the artists are doing on the guitar or bass. From experience, I can say for a fact that it's rarely entirely accurate, so it's not really a copyright violation. It's artistic interpretation. Lyrics are far more likely to be accurate and therefore far more likely to actually violate copyrights. Still, I don't really think that either should be a violation.

Besides, this is just as likely to help the RIAA as any of their other foot shooting methods. I mean, how much can you piss off your customer base before they simply stop being your customer base?

Re:I don't get it...

With classical music, you can listen to a CD or performance of a work, then "reverse engineer" it to produce the sheet music. Alternatively, if you can get your hands on the original manuscript, then you can copy directly from the source (if the copyright has expired.) In short: You have just as much right to produce sheet music for Beethoven as the current crop of companies do. However, these companies do go to considerable lengths to produce a quality product: extensive research goes into investigating the various versions of the manuscript, typos and errors on the part of the composer/transcriber/whatever are weeded out, and often fingerings/bowings are inserted by famous musicians through exclusive contracts.

For works produced before ~1950 (or whatever it is now...), the only thing that's copyrighted is the version produced by the sheetmusic company. Think of it like a map: the actual geography isn't copyrighted, only the representation of it on the page. You're free to go out and make a map of your own, just don't use the original map as a reference.

For more recent works, the issue is more sticky. I suppose it all depends on the composer. For instance, some demand written permission to perform the work (this is usually ignored by all but the most visible/famous orchestras.) In other cases, anyone might be free to perform the work, as long as the sheetmusic has been bought and paid for (some composers contract out sheetmusic production to some company, and then get royalties/kickbacks when that sheetmusic is sold.)

Regardless, it's not as cut-and-dry as you might think. There are several "layers" to a piece of music: the original manuscript, the sheet music (including bowings/fingerings if any), the actual sound produced by some performance of the work, an individual recording of the work, and perhaps on a more metaphysical level, the actual note progressions themselves. (That is, if I were to go out and write a piece that was based on Shostakovich's "DSCH" signature progression, is that copyright violation?)

As for the topic at hand, these guitar tabuletures are synonymous with fingerings/bowings. This is not sheet music, because it doesn't include the instrument-indepent staff. In the case of violin/viola/cello/etc. music, fingerings/bowings without the staff is almost useless. Who could claim foul if I copied the fingerings from the latest rendition of a classical work still under copyright? The performer or the composer?

There is no exact answer to this, which I suppose makes it the perfect ground for lawyers. Welcome to copyright hell...

Too bad for amateurs, but I understand the concern

I think that the online tab revolution has been wonderful for amateur musicians all over the world (of course, especially guitarists). I've used the tabs, and I think that it is possible to make the case that this is often a fair use of copyright (though, often, not).

That said, I can understand the music industry has concerns like these:
1. They do sell sheet music, and this practice cuts into their profits. I'm guessing that some revenue-sharing model could work, but that the RIAA/BMG/etc. aren't (yet) interested. In fact, I have actually seen some bands distribute their own tabs (or tabs contributed by fans), which I think is a fantastic idea.
2. The quality of most tab is fair to poor. I teach music and guitar, and I always end up correcting tabs (even chords) for students. On some level, this is OK, but the chunky and too-often incorrect chords can really make a tune sound much worse than it is. If I were an artist and thought everyone was learning some ham-handed version of my tune, I'd probably be a bit pissed.
3. In this copyright-dominated world, it does seem that you risk losing your rights if you don't defend them.

I wish it weren't so. I'm a big fan of Lawrence Lessig, and believe that the stifling of things like OLGA make us less creative as a culture. I also love that there are still amateur musicians out there who want to play music for themselves and their friends for the pleasure of making muisic. I hope a good compromise or capitulation (on part of the music industry) is in the works.

Tabs still available on archive.org

Here's one, for example [archive.org]. Can't just go to the root page via archive.org and start clicking links, though, as the links to the artists and tabs aren't modified, even though the tabs are in the archive. And if it hasn't happened already, I'm sure these small text files will be compressed into an archive and posted regularly to Usenet.

Klezmer clarinet virtuoso concealed his fingering

Naftule Brandwein, the Klezmer clarinet virtuoso, turned his back on the audience [amazon.com] in order to keep the secret of the finger he used to achieve certain effects.

Of course, we're talking "trade secret," not "copyright" here.

I wonder whether he ever considered patenting his fingerings? I wonder whether that's possible. It seems to me that it might be.

The RIAA aren't the culprits- this time.

This cease and desist had nothing to do with the RIAA- it was brought by the NMPA and the MPA (if you read the letter). These organizations publish sheet music, not music. They could care less about the popularity of the music itself, and only care about their own sales, which probably are hurt by the availability of tab.

They sell at about $5 per song....

Part of the reason RIAA is going after the free music databases is that they would like to sell you the sheet music for about $5 per song. Checkout MusicNotes [musicnotes.com]. In fact I've seen songs for more than $10 bucks on there, depending on the format.

I never got tabs, they're often incorrect and missing a lot of information. But there is no way guitarist are going to spend $5 per song for sheet music en masse. Personally, I prefer buying books of non-RIAA songs.

They saw that legal online music only took off after iTunes started selling music for $1...

PS. Does anyone know of an online database of public-domain MusicXML [recordare.com] sheet music?

Not the DMCA

The site was not "shut down by the DMCA". It was shut down by copyright law.

PoV from a serious musician, the good/bad/ugly

I can see why on a LEGAL level they would want to shut them down, asides from the DMCA. They have in effect created and distributed a derrivative work from the music. However, it's a really minor offense IMHO. It isn't mallicious or trying to shut people out of money.

It is indirectly (perhaps directly) shutting people out of money however. Artists actually make a TON more from their publishing (which includes music in films, on the cd itself, printed stuff, etc...) than from Record Deals (which rarely make anything). In fact it's one of the easiest ways for a new artist to legitmately make money. As well as songwriters, as that's the ONLY place they get their money from. Using the DMCA is odd, as they have other things they can use against them.

I think it's uncool however that they do this. OLGA first of all isn't really a good representation of the music IMHO. Tabs are, well horrid, for reading music. I can't see why they are getting so bent. This isn't going to push the amount of sheet music purchased up as they hope.

The good side is that maybe for a bit people will (either google other sites or...) learn to use their ears. A real musician doesn't really need tab for playing pop tunes (which most of these songs are). Just use your ears and boom, there they go!

If money is your incentive...

...then you shouldn't be making music.

* /long angry rant on*

I don't agree with a lot of the stuff that people post on here. I don't agree with a lot of people's political views. I am against the war (which I would assume most here are). I'm against smoking bans in states and cities on private property (I think if you don't like a restraunt because it is smoke-filled you can do what my parents and I did when i was litte: tell them their restraunt smells like ass and we won't be back unless they ban smoking in their facility). I think private businesses (but not government or businesses with public contracts) should be able to discriminate against people if they damn well please, whether it be because they don't like gays, catholics, women, white people, or whatever the hell they like (but if they have public contracts they should have to adhere to non-discriminatory policies). If they discriminate I'll be one of the ones telling everyone I know not go there.

I'm a Christian and I believe God created man (not necessarily 6k years ago, but w/e) but I don't think we should teach creation in schools as scientific theory. I don't think homosexuality is necessarly right but I am 100% (and I argue with as many other christians as I can to try to convince them) pro gay-marriage because, thank God we do not live in a theocracy (look at the middle east). I am for drug legalization and against the death penalty. I agree with some and disagree with some of the views that are the norm here.

Yet this kind of shit is just RIDICULOUS. OF COURSE you should NOT be allowed to sneak into the studio, copy the sheets of music (or w/e if they are on a computer), paste them into a file, save it as a PDF and save it online. I think we can pretty much all agree that this should be a civil infraction (I think reasonable people should also agree that there is nothing *criminal* about doing that and the gov should not be paying to investigate copyright infringment either, but w/e).

But if someone figures out the damn chords themselves from listening to the fucking music, YOU SHOULD NOT HAVE ANY ABILITY TO PREVENT THEM FROM SHARING WHAT THEY HAVE HEARD WITH THEIR FRIENDS. GOOD GOD. If someone listens to your music, figures out how to play it on their instrument (lets not limit this to popular music) there should be NO LAW and NO PENALTY for them sharing what they have figured out. To try to control human thought is just unconciable.

There is a *HUGE* difference between trying to share the ability to play a song and infringing on someone's copyright. When copyright was invented (before the U.S. even existed) it didn't extend to people trying to figure out the notes to what they were hearing and playing them back to their friends.

It is already at the point where schools have been sued for performing music in plays etc when they did not have a license to perform it in a public performance. Is this what was intended?

I believe that if you walk up to someone on the street who is not familiar at all with copyright law and ask them questions about what they believe is right or not right, you would garner a pretty reasonable response overall. It is worthy of a lawsuit if you make a play about some guy's script and charge money for it. That guy who wrote the damn thing deserves to be compensated. But if your kid's elementary school finds that play on the 'net and performs it for the parents at Thanksgiving, fuck you if you think that is wrong and fuck you if you think the school should have to pay. Seriously.

There comes a point at which our society needs to decide which way it is going to go. There can either be a place for the modern day media corporations, or they can stay behind. That is their choice. But they cannot drag everyone else back in time with them. If they succeed in taking control of what people can or cannot think then it is only a matter of time before freedom of (or from) religion, freedom to own firearms, freedom to speak our minds (well, drugs are already illegal so we are getting there), etc... also fall to the same preceden

Wanna really get the RIAA fired up?

Take ASCII versions of the tabs and embed them in the mp3 metadata, along with the lyrics. Once released in the wild via .torrent or your favorite p2p app, it's one-stop shopping for starving guitar players.

If the music biz was serious about embracing tech, they'd be selling these files on iTunes / whatever right now -- you could probably sell them for $1 more than the "regular" version of the .mp3. Instead, they bitch and moan about OLGA, shut it down (again) while giving some bullshit excuse (just say you want the publishing revenue already!), and we're exactly where we were ten years ago -- except now you can get .pdf rips of their "official recorded version" tab books that sell for $24.95 or more on eMule etc. for absolutely nothing.

Idiots.

Eventually,

Learning how to play an instrument could become illegal:
When you learn how to play an instrument, you gain the skills to be able to 'reverse-engineer' and copy just about any piece of music. What's to stop you from learning the notes to a melody then?

I suppose if the RIAA had their way they would use software http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/01/18/132923 8&tid=141 [slashdot.org] to write 'hits' and subsequently ram the product down our collective throats.

After all, if they use software to write the music, they no longer need artists.
If they never need to pay an artist, they keep all the profits.

Finally, by discouraging the freedom of sharing of musical exploration and discovery among people, they hope to make us unable to compete.

I wonder how this affects music teachers

Since the MPA and NMPA are now claiming that tabs violate their copyright, how does this affect music teachers? When I learnt how to play a guitar from a private teacher, he used a combination of sheet music and tablature to teach me how to play. He wrote down the music notation as well as the tabs and did not use any published book.

If they MPA and NMPA are shown to have rights concerning music tabs, then teachers will find it much harder to teach since they HAVE to purchase *AA authorized sheet music and cannot 'reverse engineer' the sounds into notations.

The scary part is that in the future other forms of media will be restricted so much that any cultural development will stagnate so much that we all might as well be zombies.

Why is it in RIAA's interest to destroy music?

People become musicians by playing with music. First step is often chord based from sites like OLGA. Then progressing to full tablatures, again from OLGA. Then they are good enought to start making money.
Then they start paying royalties on songs they cover when they start selling music, or mildly serious public performance. RIAA starts making money. But it all starts from those guitar tabs!
RIAA makes money from talent. Talent starts from OLGA. So RIAA makes their money thanks to OLGA. What a great reasong for RIAA to shut it down.
If I thought that they had any logic, I'd be puzzled. But this is just so typical.

Hang on...

In a democracy, we get to discuss what the law should be.

Yes, OLGA has (apparently) broken the law. Should it be law?

Not 'apparent' at all

Yes, OLGA has (apparently) broken the law.

No, this is not apparent at all. The site owner of Olga says so, and I agree with him completely.

Olga (and similar sites) do not publish recordings of songs, which is a clear copyright violation. Nor do they publish lyrics (although they do sometimes). They primarily publish tab files (tabulature), which are specifications of where to place your fingers on a guitar (not even notes), and chord files, which are lists of chords. Now, to see how ridiculous the 'copyright' claim is, consider the case of chord files.

A typical chord file contains something like "G D Em C" - which are all the chords you need to play for quite a lot of rock/pop songs (up to modulation to a different key). A lot of others are covered by "G D C" (even simpler). There are only 6 basic chords on the guitar (in a specific key). Most songs use only a few of those (except for people like e.g. David Bowie, who uses dozens of chords in some songs). Basically, to claim copyright violation here, is to claim that "G D C" is copyrighted. But by which of the 1,000,000 songs that use it? It isn't unique in any way (unlike, say, lyrics or mp3s). Chord files (usually) only contain names of chords, not rythym or anything else. They are brief and nonunique in the extreme. To claim copyright violation would be amusing if it weren't sad.

The case of tab files is different, as these can be fairly specific to a song. However, even here it is far from clear that a copyright violation is being committed. A perfect, note-for-note transcription may seem to be an obvious copyright violation, but 99% of tabs are far from that. They are more like a guess or an interpretation of the song (for example, in nearly all cases they contain only notes, not durations of notes - and again, not even notes, but positions on the guitar).

As a guitar player who has enjoyed Olga for many years, this (repeat) development is sad, and I believe unjustified.

Re:Should all copying be considered infringement?

The "copyrighted" material you are referring to is not as blatant as you so quickly assumed. It is people who think what they are writing down what they are hearing correctly. It is usually pretty close, but they are not the original artists so they do not actually know if it is 100% exact. But you seem to think they are getting the sheet music from the artists and posting exact copies. That is usually never the case with tabs posted online. If you would look at some of the sites instead of assuming, you would see how many different versions of the same tab exist. I don't think the artist wrote that many versions that seem to differ from each other, sometimes vastly. But you do. It is akin to someone retelling a story, by your standards. So any book synopsis should never be printed except by the publisher because you are infringing on someone's copyright by trying to convey what happened in a book.

Re:Should all copying be considered infringement?

Mod parent up. This has long been the theory supporting the legality of tabs. The writers of tabs see them as learning tools at best or derrivative works at the very worst. The fact that tabs are not written out as sheet music also encourages guitarists to purchase CDs in order to learn to play at the correct timing, which is not written into the tablature. Tabs are by-ear transcriptions and their availability has helped untold numbers of budding guitars develop their skills without the need to [buy and] learn from expensive sheet music. Tab websites have slowly been closing their doors due to threats from sheet music associations, the industry, and fear of punishment under copyright laws that leave very few fair use rights in them at all, heavily favoring the recording companies. It's a real shame that yet another one has been pressured to go under.

Re:Innocent before proven guilty

Crikey, I had it down as "you are guilty of anything until proven innocent at extreme cost".

Law = defense
Defense = time
Time = money
Money = profit... QED;
Law = profit

Better watch out. Gitmo awaits you all my learned friends! Rendition...?

Ergo... plead guilty, its cheaper than going broke, even if you are innocent.

Re:Innocent before proven guilty

A guitar tab of copyrighted music is like a plot summary of a copyrighted movie. It's a description of a work, not a copy.

Re:Why?

This reminds me of the joke argument that people make about having their minds erased after hearing music because remembering the song is a form of copying.

Tabs on OLGA aren't from published sheet music, they're written by people learning to play the song by ear. (And, they're usually wrong, in my experience)

Re:Why?

This story reminds me of a short story called Melancholy Elephants [uberm00.net], which gives a theory on what could happen is copyright were extended indefinitely.

"Senator, if I try to hoard the fruits of my husband's genius, I may cripple my race. Don't you see what perpetual copyright implies? It is perpetual racial memory! That bill will give the human race an elephant's memory. Have you ever seen a cheerful elephant?"

An interesting read.

Re:Why?

> Playing by ear is the only method, lazy pricks.

Playing by ear is the lazy way to do it. It's mimicry. Learning how to read music, and understanding musical theory, is the correct way to learn music.

Re:Why?

Then amateur tabs is definitely not the answer. The general concensus today is that most guitarists are unable to even read a staff, especially when it's a 6 (7 or even 12) string guitar chord. Tabs are used everywhere because they are easier, the music staff is pushed up an octave for guitar from piano, and it really was never designed for guitar. This is why they even have finger diagrams for chords. It's much easier than reading several notes, unless you truly learn that way first. If any guitarist saw tabs after learning "hard" chords on staffs, I think they would immediately see the benefits of reading tabs live if they weren't going to memorize it. Would you consider learning tabs as "reading music"? I definitely would.

I agree on understanding music theory though. Not even I have done much of that yet.

And the other thing is that some people are said to just not have a musical ear, which is the reason for written music, including tabs. Someone loves the song Johnny B. Goode, but can't even figure out that fast guitar riff going on through the entire song because they simply can't hear it. And a lot of times that's true for me even, sometimes notes are too fast to hear (this is the time when I pull out Sound Forge and do a time stretch), and I keep matching notes, sometimes tabbing them down, till I finish. Other times the scale is obvious; I think I have a better than ear than some of my friends because some praise tab sites like OLGA, and I hate what I would consider inaccuracies. Books are 100% accurate apparently, but I really don't own many and don't feel like I need to (plus the price). The argument then becomes, as usual, why pay when you can get it for free? Shouldn't written music be like free speech? Why can't the publishing company lower the prices? Sometimes, even the most simple music gets priced at $20 or more per book (I'm not advocating prices based on complexity either). That's more than the album, which you could buy and just play by ear if you have one. My $0.02.

Re:Why?

> Would you consider learning tabs as "reading music"?

Hmm... Not really. It's more like reading "Cliffs Notes." You get the gist of it, but the execution is greatly obscured. Sheet music tells you things that just aren't in tabulatures: most importantly, note and rest duration. But it also shows other things, like note style (legato/staccato), volume changes ([de]crescendos), and there are other handy things like codas. I believe it is also easier to denote dramatic changes in the music, such as time or key signatures, in the middle of a song.

Also with sheet music, it is easier to represent more than one instrument on the same page, although since we are only talking about one instrument here (guitar), that's mostly just a space-saving convenience and not really important in this discussion. Unless you have a friend that plays Bass. :)

BTW, I'm not really suggesting that tabs are worse than sheet music. With tabs, a creative person may take more liberties with the music, adding their own feel to it, making it "theirs." With sheet music, people usually play exactly what is printed, exactly as was originally intended.