It seems like the only two options to get tabs nowadays are gtabs and songsterr. I prefer songsterr out of the two, but constantly get harassed to buy the premium version and certain important features are paywalled.

Basically my question is is there a way to bypass the premium subscription to get all the full features or a better alternative out there with a database of tabs as large as the two have. I want to be able to hear the playback of the tab and control the speed at which it goes.

27 points

I miss the golden age of the late 90’s when tabs were easy to get and free.

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All the sites are heavily enshittifed nowadays. Sad.

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18 points

I really blame Musecore for this, and all of the social engineering that big tech has been doing for years to make profiting off of selling user submitted content seem acceptable.

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12 points

The golden days of Ultimate-Guitar uaer submitted tabs and pirated Guitar Pro 5 (which my guitar teacher gave to me on a burned CD) Good times.

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7 points
Removed by mod
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I just get actual music sheets so I can play the song on any instrument I know how to play. They don’t seem to be hard to get but if you don’t know how to read them it’s not helpful. Could learn; it’s not hard.

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22 points

Ultimate-Guitar has a massive library of free tabs. You don’t need their Pro subscription.

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The thing about ultimate guitar is that you can’t hear the playback without the pro subscription. That’s an important thing for me to have.

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5 points

So like, I know this might sound weird, and I hate to be “that guy” but…

Is it really necessary? I get you probably want to play it like it’s guitar hero, which is cool and great and all. Just, you could also queue up the song in youtube and do it old-school style.

It’s just, good not to be too dependent on your limitations when learning an instrument. At some point, you will surpass them.

Good luck though, don’t let me bring you down.

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I’ve never played guitar hero so I don’t know what you mean by that. I’m learning bass and want to be able to hear the rhythm and actually hear the bass in the program because it’s hard to hear in a lot of songs. Eventually I will get to a level where I don’t need that, but at this point in my journey I do. YouTube is a lot harder to use than tab programs for me.

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1 point

So what you did here was tell a guy who is learning how to play the guitar to “LOL just play it.”

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2 points

Pirate Guitar Pro, install it, and download the GP files from Ultimate Guitar. Easy.

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2 points

You can download PowerTab or TuxGuitar for free. You can also sail the high seas and get the GOAT, Guitar Pro 5. With those programs you can download the Guitar Pro/PowerTab versions of the songs on UG and have all the full featured playback that you want.

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1 point
*

I must be a dummy, I cannot find a way to download anything off UG other than PDF. (I do have a premium subscription.)

Can you spell it out for me? Where the heck are the Guitar Pro or PowerTab versions? I just looked around for 5 minutes and could not figure it out.

Edit to add: I saw someone else with the same question and someone posted a pic. I swear to God I have never seen this button in UG!

https://i.imgur.com/1ph2q2t.png

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15 points

I was having the same issue in The past few years so I finally said fuck it and just forced myself to learn things by ear and or finding notes/chords and going from there to figure out the rest. I’ve been playing for decades so it was time to do that anyway. It’s worth it though as you can figure out stuff effortlessly eventually and it’ll make you an even better player.

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3 points

Pirating by being better at the instrument. Love it.

I’ve been able to play by ear for years but it’s not effortless, it’s much easier to see a chord progression first at least.

So I’m still stuck in the Tab world a bit, except I look up chords to songs then play around with the chords until I have something cool, but that is the beauty of playing finger style, it can sound cool in different ways depending on the strings you play

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15 points
*

You can get torrents full of the archives from sites that used to host tabs for GuitarPro and pirate that software, the one downside is , its like tens of thousands of tabs so its a bit much to organize.

Songsterr seems usable to me with adblocking on, Also I often just search YouTube and find videos with tabs displayed.

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Songsterr is usable with adblocking on however I still get annoying popups in the middle of playing that say switch to premium. You also can’t change the playback speed without premium which is very annoying.

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4 points

Are you not able to use the element zapper to block the pop-up from appearing?

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How do I do this?

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5 points

Tux Guitar is free and can read and edit Guitar Pro tabs.

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12 points

or a better alternative out there with a database of tabs as large as the two have

https://www.justinguitar.com/store/tabs

I don’t know if it’s good enough for your needs, but they have a 7-days trial, so you can check it out for free.

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