The two of us need look no more

Unless you play guitar or know how to "fake play a piano" (neither, I think, are the case with any people I know who would read this blog), then you are missing out on another aspect of the tyrancy of the RIAA.

Well, the Record Industry Association of America and the Music Publishers' Association, anyway.

It used to be that you could log on to any number of databases online and pick up a bit of tablature. Tablature, if you don't know, is a form of musical notation written out for the guitar with the chords to play or the specific pickings. Many aspiring musicians pick up their first skills through tablature- hearing a song they want to play, scouring the internet for the tablature, and then plunking their way to adequacy. I myself picked up most of my skills (*ahem*) this way, learning The Who's Tommy or any number of Weezer songs.

One day last week I searched for one of my favorite databases: http://www.guitartabs.cc/ only to be let down, discovering that the page was no longer up. Later that week, it returned, with a savaged library. I couldn't find any of the bands I'd normally seek out- Barenaked Ladies, David Bowie, Talking Heads, even my beloved Weezer.

What's going on here? More searching on the web proves again that these sites are more and more being stripped down dramatically. What I am confused about, however, is how exactly the RIAA and MPA can justify the tablature of a song as being a copyright infringement. Sure, one could say "Well, it is the artist's music and they have a right to keeping it theirs." Hmm. That isn't quite inclusive of what the government's copyright website says about it.

"The owner of copyright [to a musical piece] retains the exclusive right to do and to authorize others to do the following:

To reproduce the work in copies or phonorecords; to prepare the derivative works based upon the work; to distribute copies or phonorecords publicly by sale; to perform the work publicly; to display the copyrighted work publicly; or to perform the work publicly by means of digital audio transmission."

I may be off base here, but I don't see anything regarding the private tinkering of a beloved song by a fan on his/her guitar. Tablature is not authored by the artist, but is a manuscriptual representation of the song, easing the apprehending of its nuances. I myself have sat and plunked out the parts for a couple songs. Never, however, have I made a dime for someone else's song in this way.

Perhaps I'm walking thin ice here, my band Almost Positive learned many a song through tablature, but we never recorded or performed for profit any of those songs. According to the web page, though, we were in violation, but most certainly not in any respect due to tablature. We would have learned them anyway. Oh yes. We're that good.

So I've ranted my peace. In the end, I am simply frustrated that I can no longer look up how to play "Five Years", but have to dink it out on my own again, just as I will have to for most every other popular song I want to learn. One thing is for certain, I have definitely changed policies and am no longer inclined to pay a dime to any band signed onto a distributor for a song again. Even through iTunes. They've tread on me and I won't stand for it!

Left without the alternative of learning songs through tab, I must, therefore, learn it through repeated listening. If you have any interest in learning a song, please, go here:

http://www.bittorrent.com/
http://www.kazaa.com/us/index.htm (warning, spyware)
http://www.gnucleus.com/Gnucleus/
http://azureus.sourceforge.net/

Download whatever you want. Sure, it's illegal. But what isn't these days? You aren't hurting the artist, not if they can truly play their music live, anyway. And don't worry, if you do download something "illegally", the server will take the brunt of the blow, thanks to the Supreme Court's ruling in May with Grockster. You're cool, baby.

You're cool.