All the normal websites have subscriptions and make it a nightmare to print off. I tried looking elsewhere but no where seams to do tabs. Am I missing something obvious?
I’ve seen this one mentioned before for guitar tabs : https://tabarchive.mikethetech.com/
Edit: has been pointed out that they had to disable downloading for legal reasons. Bummer. Way back machine has some of the data archived (may 2022 has some which can be downloaded, but others are dec 2022 or newer which are archived)
Edit2: found a better archive I think. don’t know if my linking it will draw more attention and we lose it. I downloaded a copy just in case and removed the link. Instead I’ll link where I got it from: https://filepursuit.com/ search for mikethetech
This is an anecdote because that site brought me back to another time. Feel free to skip it.
They have part of the OLGA archive there! Back in the day that was my go to. I had printed out multiple three ring binders full of tabs from there. When I would start working with new musicians I would put together a fakebook of 40-50 songs of the right style and just sit around and practice them.
That’s how I went from being a terrible guitarist full of passion to a mediocre guitarist who could badly fake anything well enough that it’s almost recognizable. It was such a great time.
Oh man the OLGA takes me back. Hadn’t heard that name in years.
Given how many guitar tabs archives are online today it’s a shame what happened.
No downloads right now though
Check my edited comment.
Sweet. Thanks man
Sadly you can’t download anything. There’s a note at the bottom of the page:
Note: Site in archive-mode. Downloads temporarily disabled. Working on appropriate route to release archive legally.
If you’ve got a copy…
I’m on my phone but try this
Edit: don’t know if my linking it will draw more attention and we lose it. I downloaded a copy just in case and removed the link. Instead I’ll explain where I got it from: https://filepursuit.com/ search for mikethetech
Got it, thank you!
Such fucking bullshit tabs are policed and paywalled now. It was a free for all 20 years ago and it made bigger fans out of the people consuming that content.
https://filepursuit.com/ search for mikethetech
Back in m guitar days I used https://www.911tabs.com/ And https://www.ultimate-guitar.com/
The last seem to try to force into member ship now, but the first still looks to be free and some years ago most things were printable
You might be able to use the way back machine at archive.org to find tabs before they started forcing a membership.
Oh man this brought me back to when I was happy. I miss being able to make music :,)
In case you didn’t know: Ultimate Guitar only makes it look as you could only print/download the PDF with the subscription. Scroll down to the end of the tab/chords and there’s a small print button.
Of course, you still can’t get the official stuff, but in my experience there’s always one that sounds very close to the original.
As someone who regularly makes contributions to that community, I should mention that if writing sheet music is something you want to get into, you can also just put in some work by writing up some simple chord sheets or tabs.
By contributing to the site you can actually level up your way into most premium features for free.
*Edited for grammar. *
Oh, cool! I didn’t know that, even though I’ve contributed before. Thanks for mentioning!
search some popular torrent sites for “guitar sheet music” or “guitar books”.
IIRC, they used to have a bunch.
tabplayer.online clunky to use but they offer downloads in many formats. i only use it for guitar but a lot of the guitar pro files have tracks for all instruments.
I have around 1.5 Gb tabs in guitar pro format, downloaded from russian torrent tracker rutracker.org
IReal pro is an excellent app, there’s a built in forum for getting user uploads for the chord backing track of most any song. It’s mainly centered around jazz but there’s pop standards as well.
There’s a UI element you can press that lets you represent the chords in guitar tabs or as sheet music in a karaoke like display.
It’s certainly no replacement for playing with other musicians, but it is extremely useful for practicing
