This is the "heart" of this site.
For the dropdown list(press the TAB heading) you will find the tab listed under
time slots or specific headings like "christmas".ON MOBILES GO TO DROPDOWN MENU IN RIGHT HAND CORNER AND CLICK ON DOWN ARROW NEXT TO "TAB" I am sure you will be surprised at how old some of these tunes are. Without exception they have all been played over and over in the intervening years. Many have swum into record charts several times. What is obvious is that you will recognise at least half of the titles no matter what your age or background.
The reason for that is that these tunes/songs have been part of "modern" popular music culture for many generations.
They are from all genres , and indeed, many of them have been adopted by several genres from Big Band to Country to Folk to Rock (etc etc)
We suggest you browse our pages and sort some out that you are fairly familiar with and then have a go. Remember, if you know what it should sound like it should help you play them with some confidence .
HAVE A GO !
Whilst not wanting a "Blog" page or intruding on your privacy I do encourage you to use the "lets chat" facility which is a simple email link to me. Just let me know if anything was especially useful or enjoyable so I can do even more of what people want or enjoy. Happy strumming !!
When I first started tabbing familiar tunes a few things became apparent.The most obvious was that some song lyrics are smooth and even,rather like poetry, with a brief pause between lines.Musically that worked fine for me because they needed little "infill" added to the basic melody.
For example : King of the Road
Trailers for sale or rent(2 beat pause or infill) Rooms to let 50 cents (2 beat pause or infill)
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Other songs are more punctuated
For example: Your Cheatin Heart
Your cheatin heart (4 beat pause or infill) Will tell on you (4 beat pause or infill)
Thats a lot of Clawhammer infill.In modern recordings the gaps are filled by the rhythm section, often bass and drums, or on commercial pop records, a nice band or orchestra, so it all sounds smooth.
Once you start filling the gaps with straight frailing it can start to sound a bit monotonous and jerky
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Then there are the songs with drawn out lyrics. For example The Beatles "Cant buy me love"
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"Cant buy me lo--------ove " Thats one word over 2 bars . Then "no,no,no,no n0----------o "
Holding notes for 8 beats in clawhammer involves either multiple single notes or brush thumbs and can sound awful unless handled carefully, maybe with syncopation,
Often , the results forced me to abandon the song and move on.I was looking for more suitably phrased songs that required less embellishments.Hopefully the ones that have got through are not too repetitive and the melody stands out,
When you go to the TAB section they are classified into historical time slots. There is also a page with simple endings you can tag onto your tunes to add a bit of polish. There is a page where the latest tabs are held for a few weeks before being put into their respective time slots. Just click the title bar to see the PDF tab for that tune.When you open a tab up you may find short playing tips and a brief history which often explains why it has become a familiar tune.
Bear in mind that it is estimated that there are over 100 million commercial song recordings.So if we only recognise just the title of a song it means that it stands out from a heck of a lot of others !!!!
You will find that where known I have included the name of the writer or composer.Many tunes are heavily protected by copyright, but the tabs on this site are meant for musical practice and are non profit making. That more or less excludes them from copyright restrictions . However,if right holders have any objections I will happily withdraw any tab.
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So,have fun.
Go and look at the tab and maybe learn a few simple tunes by heart.
GOOD PICKIN