this post was submitted on 24 Jul 2023

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Is there an Open-Source Tab Database? (programming.dev)

submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

22 comments fedilink hide all child comments

I was reading a discussion about UG and how their money-seeking practices are rather poor, for lack of better words.

Does anyone know if there is an open-source database of tabs and chord charts, or perhaps some kind of aggregator for community contributions?

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[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

That's a really good question! All I've got is software sadly, but it might help the cause at least:

GUITab is a visual editor for tabs

TuxGuitar for opening and editing power tabs, making PDFs of tabs, midi etc.

I've found a couple of neat tab places specific to bands themselves, but they're not open source as much as maintained by one or a few people - nonetheless not UG :)

Sonic Youth have an officially hosted tab place on their site.

The Fall have tabs hosted on what I think is a fan site :)

I'm guessing the reason there's not one already is the sheer number of copyright issues that would appear the second it's online - Ultimate Guitar made some kind of deal if I remember correctly, which is probably why they're so aggressive about making me download the silly app and buying premium. :/

[–] insomniac 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Back in the early 2000s, we had MX Tabs which was not quite open source but amazing. It collapsed because of copyright issues. But while it lasted, it had basically anything you can think of. Usually 4 or 5 versions and they were all wrong in different ways.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Oh wow, that took me back! I used to learn bass songs on MX Tabs, but it was so long ago I forgot; I still have Nirvana tabs from MX that younger me printed out! :)

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Good question! Given how straight forward the core requirements are (text files and forums) it really could be something FOSS. Hell you could probably do it well enough on a lemmy instance.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

What UG has is years of data and the work of people spotting errors in tabs.

We can certainly make it happen but it is a ton of work and it needs to be by people with training and or years of music experience willing to donate their work.

[–] Ulvain 5 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I mean... You've just defined "open source" to be fair

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago

Crowd sourced, not open.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

True, though Open Source when it comes to "art" is a bit weirder. As others have said maybe Crowd Sourced is the right term, and keeping the content as something like creative commons would be the most open way to go.
I am happy to help with this on the code front but I am not at a skill level where I can write tabs at all.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Scraping/Piracy?

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

I'm curious if scraping UG and uploading elsewhere is considered piracy. Do they "own" submissions of other people's music?

I might just try to make an alt frontend for UG with additional OSS tab submission options. It sounds like a fun project.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

The music and entertainment industry is fucked up. How is tabs even copyrighted? Are recipes copyrighted? Bullshit.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I found this article while searching, seems like guitar tabs aren’t covered by fair use out of an antiquated standard.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (2 children)

That's interesting, I just read a few lines... Does it say how UG has stayed in business? Do they write a check to Big Music?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Ultimate Guitar has an article they wrote about that

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

*someone on their platform wrote about it, not written by UG in an official capacity

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Yeah, they "went legit" years ago and have licensing deals with a lot of music publishers now.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

There used to be... OLGA. Hounded out of existence years ago, replaced by the current hellsites. RIP

If you're into lute, baroque guitar, etc, there's a ton of that stuff available in various ancient tab systems. Don't have the links handy but there are online archives. ed: here are some links

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

I understand... We must make public domain lute music go mainstream. Then no need for UG.

Seriously tho, thanks for those lute tabs, I've been looking for something different to play around with

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

These days gtptabs.com is my first stop when I'm looking for tab. It's a pretty good database, but it's all in GuitarPro format, so you'll need to download TuxGuitar, or some other program that can run gp files.

A lot of the GuitarPro-style tab editors have the capability to automatically generate tab from midi files too. So if you can find a midi version of a song, you can get tab for it that way.

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