No guitar tabs in Heaven

It would seem that the National Music Publishers' Association (NMPA) and the Music Publishers Association (MPA) have finally dropped the hammer on the various guitar tab sites.  This has become obvious in the last few months as I see more and more folks who come to Hillbilly Music looking for hillbilly music guitar tabs.  In general I feel badly for the folks who have depended upon this wonderful if illegal resource.  There are all kinds of anarchists out there however, who would have you believe that these sites are legal or should be legal but according to the laws of the United States and other nations these guitar tab sites are indeed illegal.

As an unpublished songwriter I must say that I had very little sympathy for outfits like the original Napster and the criminals who pirated recorded music.  Certainly I hate the big business music industry but that doesn't make the file sharing punks any better.  Metallica may not have been the best posterboys for the issue but ethics and the law were on their side. 

The issue of guitar tabs on the Internet is a bit less clear.  For one thing we are not dealing with just one bit of information with these guitar tab sites but three separate items: lyrics, melody and chord progression.  As far as I understand as a musician and a former government adviser to artists, chord progressions and titles (song, book or movie) cannot be copyrighted.  Any melody ( eight notes or more rule of thumb ) is subject to copyrights and certainly as written words, lyrics probably are the most easily protected of the three.  The interpretation argument also doesn't hold water since you wouldn't think that a person who read Hemingway and then rewrote the novel from memory should be able to publish the resulting work even for free.

So guitar tabs and lyrics are out but simple chord progressions listed with a title should be legal.  The problem here is that most folks seem to need help with playing the guitar melodies and working out playing the chord progression is difficult without the lyrics as a guide.  The good news for you hillbilly music fans is that you don't need guitar tabs.  The only proper way to play hillbilly music is by feel.  If you need notations to play a hillbilly song there is something wrong ( relatively speaking ) with you.  For one it is in bad taste to copy the leads of another Appalachian musician.  There is a difference between being influenced by another artist and copying them note for note. Appalachian music is almost impossible to notate.  It is often “technically” wrong and the vast array of pseudo chords and other nuances adds to this difficulty.  It is these elements that gives the complexity to this otherwise very simple folk music.

I have to admit that I often look up chord progressions and lyrics on guitar tab websites and I saddened by their current demise. Guitar Tab Universe is a favorite.  Most of the time though I am not looking up hillbilly music but other forms like Pop and Rock since I know in my heart that guitar tabs are an anathema to hillbilly music. 

One tool that can help those interested in hillbilly and Appalachian music is the Nashville Number System. Now there ain't much I like about Nashville and the Nashville Number System probably had a lot to do with the distortion of traditional Appalachian music into the “Pop with a cowboy hat” you hear today, but it is useful.

The NNS is a simple scheme that uses numbers instead of letters to chart out a chord progression.  What this does is create a universal chord progression that can be played in any key.  Here is an example of an NNS chart with three of the seven keys filled in.

For an example, the progression I use for  No Depression in Heaven is 1 4 1 5 1.  Can't get more simple. In the key of G it is G C G D and back to G.   In the key of A it is A D A E and back to A.  Now before you say, “hey moron everyone knows that simple bit of music theory” think a bit.  Not everyone does know music theory and as far as I am concerned much more knowledge than this will KILL that undefinable element that makes pure Appalachian music so special.  The NNS has gotten more complex and I would bet that the complexity can be linked to the bastardization of country music by the Nashville record industry.

Another benefit to the NNS is that it puts up some parameters that keeps hillbilly music from  getting too complex and thus mutating into something else.  Don't get me wrong I am all for the mixing of musical genres but I want to be able to know when I have moved from one style into something different.  In other words if you can't figure out a song with the simple NNS then it is probably too complex to be called hillbilly music.

Comments

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Maybe have a look at tabforge - it’s a free online guitar bass & drum tab archive could be really useful to find the tablature you need ;)

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So I have been playing for around 6 months and been taking lessons, but still there are only a handful of songs I can play through. I know some like Purple Haze, but certain parts I just can't play yet, yet I can play through a number of Beatles and U2 songs easily. I also know parts of Crazy Train, Back In Black, and Iron Man. I am still working on being able to play all these songs through, but I was wondering what are some easier songs to expand my repertoire while I continue to work on these hard ones.

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