From Dan Cross,
Your Guide to Guitar.
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A recent crackdown on guitar tablature by the National Music Publisher's Assocation (NMPA) and Music Publisher's Assocation (MPA) has resulted in the closure of many of the web's top guitar tablature sites.

As a result, many guitar tabs previously available can no longer be found on the web, and many of the remaining tabs are quickly disappearing.

To adapt to these changes, Guitar at About.com has partnered with Musicnotes.com, an online, legal source for guitar tablature. Over time, you'll notice more and more links to tablature on Musicnotes.com throughout the site. The benefits of tablature on Musicnotes include:

• legal, authorized tablature downloads
• an easy-to-print format
• accurate tablature, unlike most unauthorized tab sources on the web
• full lyrics for each song
• the ability to listen to computer-simulated audio of all tablature

The downside of this new service is... tablature on Musicnotes.com is not free, often costing between $4 and $5 per download.

How to Use Musicnotes

After downloading and installing the free Musicnotes plug-in, users will be able to see a free one-page preview of any tablature they're considering purchasing. This preview page can be printed, as well as listened to via Musicnotes' tablature audio playback. This preview should give you the information you need to decide whether this is tablature worth paying for. For some, it may even provide enough information to begin learning the song on your own (see Learning to Transcribe Songs). Note: to access additional tabs on the Musicnotes site, users may have to also download the free Scorch plug-in.

To begin using the Musicnotes.com tablature seen on this site, download the free plug-in now.