FUQ (eff -yu - cue) - FAQ's with an EDGE

Tagged As: Classic Guitar James Tab Taylor

Question:
I just bought a new tab/ songbook, and just while flipping through it on the way home, I saw lyric errors on two different songs (not typos, although I saw one of those in the book, too. These are more like misheard lyrics). I haven't had a chance to try out the tabs yet, but the lyric errors sure decreased my confidence in the book. It got me to thinking about who transcribes these things, and who, if anyone, proofreads them. This particular book is new, but the songs have been in many books before. The lyrics are not that difficult to figure out (they are John Denver's songs, and no one sings more clearly than John Denver). Maybe this isn't strictly on topic for this group, but I'm just a bit ticked off. I'll be sending a note to the publisher (Warner Bros, by the way. Hmm, an AOL subsidiary--why doesn't that surprise me?)

Answer:
I've seen numerous errors in published tab over the years. By that I mean books and magazines, not privately transcribed tab over the internet. But the mistakes are usually small.. like a single note that the user can easily correct. My pet peeve about tablature books is the ones that, for instance, tell you to capo the seventh fret, then fail to compensate for the capo in the tab. In that situation, I always find it easier to use the capo to level the playing field and consider it the nut (0), making the 8th fret=1st fret, 9th fret=10th, etc. I have a Warner book of James Taylor tab that I refuse to look at because of the way they've done the tab. I think I have that same James Taylor book from Warner, Classic James Taylor, Authentic Guitar-Tab Edition. Yes, very confusing. They note the capo location but use the actual fret positions instead of the relative ones. Likewise, I find it hard to cross from page to page and keep my eyes on the capo chords.