Pirating guitar and bass tabs?

It seems like the only two options to get tabs nowadays are gtabs and songsterr. I prefer songsterr out of the two, but constantly get harassed to buy the premium version and certain important features are paywalled.

Basically my question is is there a way to bypass the premium subscription to get all the full features or a better alternative out there with a database of tabs as large as the two have. I want to be able to hear the playback of the tab and control the speed at which it goes.

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I miss the golden age of the late 90’s when tabs were easy to get and free.
- All the sites are heavily enshittifed nowadays. Sad.
  
  I really blame Musecore for this, and all of the social engineering that big tech has been doing for years to make profiting off of selling user submitted content seem acceptable.
- The golden days of Ultimate-Guitar uaer submitted tabs and pirated Guitar Pro 5 (which my guitar teacher gave to me on a burned CD) Good times.
- I just get actual music sheets so I can play the song on any instrument I know how to play. They don't seem to be hard to get but if you don't know how to read them it's not helpful. Could learn; it's not hard.

Ultimate-Guitar has a massive library of free tabs. You don't need their Pro subscription.
- The thing about ultimate guitar is that you can't hear the playback without the pro subscription. That's an important thing for me to have.
  
  So like, I know this might sound weird, and I hate to be "that guy" but...
  Is it really necessary? I get you probably want to play it like it's guitar hero, which is cool and great and all. Just, you could also queue up the song in youtube and do it old-school style.
  It's just, good not to be too dependent on your limitations when learning an instrument. At some point, you will surpass them.
  Good luck though, don't let me bring you down.
  
  Pirate Guitar Pro, install it, and download the GP files from Ultimate Guitar. Easy.
  
  You can download PowerTab or TuxGuitar for free. You can also sail the high seas and get the GOAT, Guitar Pro 5. With those programs you can download the Guitar Pro/PowerTab versions of the songs on UG and have all the full featured playback that you want.

You can get torrents full of the archives from sites that used to host tabs for GuitarPro and pirate that software, the one downside is , its like tens of thousands of tabs so its a bit much to organize.
Songsterr seems usable to me with adblocking on, Also I often just search YouTube and find videos with tabs displayed.
- Songsterr is usable with adblocking on however I still get annoying popups in the middle of playing that say switch to premium. You also can't change the playback speed without premium which is very annoying.
  
  Are you not able to use the element zapper to block the pop-up from appearing?
- Tux Guitar is free and can read and edit Guitar Pro tabs.

I was having the same issue in The past few years so I finally said fuck it and just forced myself to learn things by ear and or finding notes/chords and going from there to figure out the rest. I've been playing for decades so it was time to do that anyway. It's worth it though as you can figure out stuff effortlessly eventually and it'll make you an even better player.
- Pirating by being better at the instrument. Love it.
  I've been able to play by ear for years but it's not effortless, it's much easier to see a chord progression first at least.
  So I'm still stuck in the Tab world a bit, except I look up chords to songs then play around with the chords until I have something cool, but that is the beauty of playing finger style, it can sound cool in different ways depending on the strings you play

or a better alternative out there with a database of tabs as large as the two have
https://www.justinguitar.com/store/tabs
I don't know if it's good enough for your needs, but they have a 7-days trial, so you can check it out for free.

~~BOOM!~~ Only works for non-official / premium from Ultimate-Guitar, so I don't know if that's what you wanted. This works for Songsterr, though.
~~I know you can download stuff from MuseScore for free and MuseScore has guitar tabs but I don't know if you can download guitar tabs directly..~~
- This is exactly what I was looking for, thanks!

An app called Lamucal can make them for you, lyrics and all.
An older app (now defunct), can be found on archive.org, called Riffstation, can do the chords.
Once you have a version of your song you can put it in an app called JustChords. This app will store, display, and transpose your songs. It also has a search feature to pull tabs from other sources.

Hm, I never used songsterr but guitartabs has always been based for me.
I kinda stopped using tabs years ago and just started learning by ear though... [subtle brag]
- I'll check that out, although I'm learning bass right now so hopefully they have bass tabs too.
  That's the goal for someday, hopefully I'll get to a point where I can learn by ear. Gotta get familiar with the fretboard and get a decent level of dexterity first.

Songster has a loophole... If you call it that
Sign up for free account..log in..
Then.. go to the tab you want ...at the bottom... You hit "Edit" once.. Then the "Download" button option is available to click... Download and enjoy
( On PC web browser)

35 comments