Just like the record?

New guy here.  Just want to play along with some favorite songs.  I bought a couple of books with sheet music and guitar chords.  In both cases, the chords in the books don't match up to the recorded music.  Is there a source for true-to-the-record sheet music or chord listings?  If it's an app or website, which one is most likely providing the accurate songs?  Thanks...

Welcome Bob,

I have been looking for the same thing. I have been using Music Notes, which isn't bad. But in some cases, like the song I am working on now, I am finding some variation from what I am hearing in the solo section. I found this with another song as well and in these cases I just write in what my ears tell me to be true. But I think in most cases I probably get 8 or 9/10ths of the way there. 

Price per song is reasonable - $5.99 or slightly cheaper if you go with the Premium Pro package which gives a bit of a discount and provides 12 downloads.

Format is PDF but according to the site they also offer a midi player for Android or iPhone. I looked at installing it on my phone, but the data collection/access policy is nothing I want on my phone.

Song availability seems pretty good. 

Hopefully someone has the perfect solution and will comment.

https://www.musicnotes.com/

Hey & welcome.

William gave you great advice.  Mostly you want to look for something on the product or package that reads 'authentic' or 'complete score'.  There are simplified versions which just show chord symbols, lyrics & melody.  You want something that shows the complete guitar notation & tab.

Musicnotes is a great site for notation.  But even there you need to make sure you are buying what you want.  For example, this is one of the options when you search for The Beatles 'She Loves You'.

https://www.musicnotes.com/sheetmusic/mtd.asp?ppn=MN0101933

But you want the complete scores, then you're looking for this Hal Leonard book.

https://www.halleonard.com/product-family/PC9796/the-beatles-complete-scores

In my experience Hal Leonard is one of the better companies.  But it depends on what style of music, artist or even song you are looking for.  And sometimes even if it claims to be 'authentic' or 'complete' there is the chance it will contain substitutions or errors.  

What exactly are you looking for?

Hope that helps!

Chris

really glad you jumped in here. I just purchased a copy of Have a Drink on Me from HL to compare to Music Notes and that solo section, which didn't play correct to me on MN, makes much more sense on the HL version.

So Bob, I think I will be spending more time on Hal Leonard going forward.

Bill

Hey, William.  That sounds about right.  Glad you found a decent version!

Hey Bob,

   Having done some freelance transcribing back in the 90's, I can confirm that it's not an exact science by any means. I second the advice you got regarding Hal Leonard for accurate song transcriptions. Of course, I find the Song Lessons here on Guitar Tricks to generally be quite accurate, too. But for a combination of sheer volume of tab with high accuracy, I recommend Hal Leonard's site guitarinstructor.com. You can get an all access pass that gives you access to everything for about $99 / year (although I always take advantage of their Black Friday sale and renew each year for $69/year). That gives you access to thousands and thousands of accurate transcriptions, including many songs that have audio synced to the tab.

Good luck,

Doug

Guitar instructor, for sure! For transcriptions, they dominate by sheer volume of classics. Actually, a few years ago, they were second only to Guitar Tricks before aliens attacked.
I’ve compared particular GT versions to any version on you tube or any other site and Mike, Anders, Tom and the boys weren’t even touched. such a shame those songs went into the wood chipper of classic rock.