Mxtabs back online!

If your a big a fan of tabs, such as myself, they you may have nocticed one of the biggest tab sites on the net www.mxtabs.net closed ealier due to threats from the MPA (Music Publisers Association) . Well mxtabs is back online and in full swing. Check out there "Open Letter" from the website:

Copied from: http://mxtabs.net/letter.htm

An Open Letter

7 years ago, Mxtabs was started as a hobby drum tab site by a young musician attempting to learn drums. Gradually, guitar and bass tabs were added as well for the other musicians in his band to use. Over time, the site gradually grew in popularity to the state it was at 2 months ago, before its voluntary closure.

The entire purpose of Mxtabs was to aid musicians in learning their instruments. Simple guitar, bass, and drum tabs, even if inaccurate, are invaluable in helping people to learn the rudiments of their instrument. In no way was the site designed to circumvent copyrights, in fact, Mxtabs has linked to Sheetmusicplus from its inception, asking users to buy the official sheet music (when available). By December 2005, Mxtabs accounted for over $3000 in sheet music sales monthly, via affiliate links to Sheet Music Plus.

We believe that tabs are ear-transcribed interpretations, used for scholarship and research only. They are not meant to replace sheet music, rather, they serve an entirely different function. Most musicians can not read sheet music or musical notation, and require collections of rudimentary songs to learn the instrument. These methods are almost impossible to access through the current sheet music situation. Additionally, only the most popular artists have sheet music published, leaving lovers of indie genres, for example, unable to find any sheet music for the bands they love. As a result, Mxtabs does not view itself as harmful to the sheet music industry. If anything, Mxtabs increases the numbers of musicians learning to play their instruments, which will translate into sheet music sales as they reach the next level.

It was with shock, therefore, to see the BBC article asking that tab site owners be jailed. To our knowledge, tabs had never been decided as illegal material by any court ruling, and Mxtabs did not believe that it was operating illegally. Nevertheless, the site shut down as a sign of good will. Although we view the MPA demands as extreme and find it completely misleading to say that we are trying to "rob the bank", we recognize that there is some clash between the sheet music industry and tablature.

Therefore, Mxtabs would like to make an open plea to sheet music companies to offer tab licensing. It seems better to actively work with the existing market, than by seeking to destroy it entirely. Tabs are spread by the thousands across the web, and have not reduced in number in the last 2 months since the threats were made. Mxtabs would be willing to work with sheet music publishers to create a situation advantageous to us both.

Please contact mxtabslicensing@ yahoo.com with any proposals or information you might have.

Take that MPA  

http://www.ultimate-guitar.com/

It never went down. Though personally I think Tabs suck, now that I have TabIt.

Ultimate Guitar is horrible :/ There are alot of crazy ads and it has a horrible search feature. You clicka letter and 50 pages come up its almost useless. >_>; Thank god mxtabs is back online.

Thanks, I've been goin to Ultimate guitar ever since it went down.

Sorry to double post, but Ultimate Guitar has highlighted chords so you know what they are. Improvement!!

Heh that can be nice I guess. Ultimate Guitar does have a few good tabs that I haven't seen on mx but thats probably because its been down for a while. None-the-less I expect to finally get my fill of good tabs again

What..Damn its been months...
Since ive seen any light in MxTabs again

I miss playing the guitar. Not a big loss really, I was terrible at it. Which is ironic because I have an uncanny ability to know what's good and what isn't when it comes to music.

But why would you stop playing guitar because a tab site is shut down?You make your own song.

Tabs suck in general. Why look at text files when there's such a thing as this.

y dont u just read music notes its way easyer than tabs in all ways (tabs=lame)

Urm, because I'm playing a guitar and not a piano or voilin?

urm dont matter its caled classical guitar every one at my school reads music notes to play classical guitar so it shouldent be to hard.

uhm who plays classical guitar anymore in today's music industry?

And do you have any personal experience in this matter, or are you just saying "other people do it, so it must be easy"?



Though I will agree that using standard notation is more professional, using tablature format is 10 times easier to read and to write with, especially if you're using TabIt.


woo tabit!

i can read and play note music and tabs on my guitar i perfer tabs =/ i also use tabit (omg im the only official *paid for* person i know =| )

i can read and play note music and tabs on my guitar i perfer tabs =/ i also use tabit (omg im the only official *paid for* person i know =| )

No, I paid for it, too.

Hell, I even moderated the forums for a year.

So that means I never have to pay for updates again.

updates are free anyway...~

Lol, are you honestly trying to tell me I'm wrong, Bodge? I've had TabIt for at least 4 years!


There. At the bottom.

Hell, I even moderated the forums for a year.

So that means I never have to pay for updates again. Very Happy

Updates aren't free when your registration is expired! @_@

sorry did my ...'s and ~ not make it clear i was asking? lol i wasnt sure actualy =/ i bought it over a year ago and i can still get all the updates =/

I originally used a copy of thebodge's copy (1.62) and then later found a copy of 2.01 on P2P. It was the files that make up tabit, such as Tabit.cnt, Tabit.exe, tabit.hlp etc. I just grabbed them all from the person, who I guess was sharing their program files folder. It worked =0

I might buy TabIt if a new version comes out.

sorry did my ...'s and ~ not make it clear i was asking?

Huh? ...'s imply pauses, or perhaps uncertainty at the end of a sentence, and I've never seen ~'s used before anywhere. If I just ignore those, you were apparently saying that updates were free, which was incorrect.
What, is that not what you meant by "updates are free anyway"?  :|

I originally used a copy of thebodge's copy (1.62) and then later found a copy of 2.01 on P2P. It was the files that make up tabit, such as Tabit.cnt, Tabit.exe, tabit.hlp etc. I just grabbed them all from the person, who I guess was sharing their program files folder. It worked =0

I might buy TabIt if a new version comes out.

It's very doubtful that a new version will come out. There's really not much else we can really throw into that program, aside from maybe MIDI importing. Also, JR totally doesn't care about the TabIt project anymore; he's got other projects, so now that he's given us the major requests in the 2.0 version, he's all like "whatever bai LOL XD XD."

The main thing I'm wishing for is using the different volume control method MIDI-wise (controlling actual volume and not note velocity) so that then it'd be possible for things such as note volumes changing mid note =(. I'd definitely buy it if that was implemented. But like you said, it seems like he's been gone a long time =(