Hal Leonard books

Does anyone know exactly how these songs are tabbed in the Hal Leonard play along books? Do the bands actually provide tab for the books, or is it just some guitarist tabbing it by ear?

Originally Posted by: bbzswa777Does anyone know exactly how these songs are tabbed in the Hal Leonard play along books? Do the bands actually provide tab for the books, or is it just some guitarist tabbing it by ear?

my understanding is that Hal Leonard employs transcribers, they do the work and then it is cleared by the artists. I know the guy who plays guitar on the play along books and I read were he actually had to submit the finished product directly to the band (I believe the band was Pantera or Slayer) to have it approved for release. to answer your question, I think it is RARE for the band to actually provide tabs.

Which leads me to the question of [U]accurate[/U] tab/sheet music.

I don't think bands play the same song the same way all the time. I don't think concert plays are the same as the 'official' music video or what is heard on CD's/vinyl. I do think there's a certain amount of improvisation during the live shows and the same songs are frequently played differently by the same performers.

Aside from different versions from the same band/artist there is the issue of the same song done by different performers, e.g., Prine's tabs or Raitt's tabs for Angel from Montgomery, Joplin or Kristofferson for Me and Bobby McGee? How many rock/folk/country/blues songs are out there that were recorded by multiple artists, each who had a successful release? How many songs are popular in multiple genres and therefore can have major differences in the tabs? What about 'unplugged' versions?

The concept of [U]accurate[/U] tabs is nebulous, IMO, and, aside from copyrighted sheet music, falls to who heard what when. 'Accurate' tabs must be a real bear of a problem.

"Just one more thing..." Did you ever hear stories of beloved family members or friends who shared beloved recipes...but held back one or two secret ingredients..? ;)

I'm a long-time big fan of the Hal Leonard stuff. Particularly the "play-along" series. I think the tab is accurate (at least enough for me). There are a few songs I learned with HL that were eventually taught on GT... usually I liked the GT version better. I was surprised to hear the artists have any involvement in the whole process - I would have thot that was a "publishers" thing.
I don't stress over hitting every little ghost note and incidental scrape. If I can use the tab as a guide and put together a start-to-finish rendition of a/the song - up to tempo - that's pretty satisfying. Safe to say 90% of the songs I can play (completely) I owe to Hal Leonard ( and the "Jam with" and "Ultimate Play-a-long" series of books/cd's.).
Highly recommended... CHEAP on Amazon.com

Yeah, I came to realize that it doesn't always matter if you know 100% of the actual notes from the recording. It's even possible to think of a variation that sounds better. But as long as what I'm playing sounds like the song and good to a backing track, that's all that matters. But I used to obsess over finding every note from the recording.

But that is really surprising that they send it to the artists for approval. If that is the case, I'm sure a lot of artists will sign off on something that's close enough. Because now that I've been spending a lot of times with some of these books, I know for a fact there are some inaccuracies here and there. The Avenged Sevenfold one comes to mind in particular. Rocksmith actually has a much more accurate version of it, but you'd have to take the time to play it on the game or at least use the game to tab it out yourself (which is what I did!)

~Rusty

Fretsmith - right on. Playing guitar has become much more satisfying since I realized what you are saying and I adopted the philosophy of "sometimes good enough is good enough".