Customer Reviews

Alfred James Taylor Classic Guitar Tab Songbook

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4 star:		(0)
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2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I can't believe this is called authentic guitar tab. Tab means tablature, where every note the guitar plays is shown in tablature notation.

I just bought the book. It is absolutely authentic guitar tab, with every note transcribed. The only drawback is that when a capo is used, the notes aren't relative to the capo. But other than that, this is an excellent book with all of JT's early classics.

Beginners beware, James uses millions of chords and picking patterns that
make the songs quite difficult.

The tab is not written in capo/relative - in other words, if the song requires a capo 3rd fret, then the tab numbers ignore this and are written as if there is no capo. This means you have to try and ignore and see through the capo. It's really a strain. I have dozens of tab books and dozens more from the internet; trust me - it's not done this way. And to top it all off, there is some tab written above the capo in error. I was really looking forward to getting this music but this was a huge dissapointment. I suppose I could correct the ones I like but who has the energy and time for that? I returned it immediately.

James Taylor is one of the major reasons I decided to take up the acoustic guitar years ago and together with Jim Croce, especially Dan Fogelberg and of course the Beatles I have continued all these years to still be hooked to the acoustic sound finding myself always returning before long to it after my periodic forays into classical and electric guitar. Many of James' best work is here although I do question the choice of the tracks as I could have done without "Instrumental I & II" and "Long Ago and Far Away" and had say "Handy Man" and "Only A Dream In Rio" for example. The font size is also small which is unfortunate as it makes it that much harder to read and play along with the cd. The binding seems robust and I can press down hard on the pages to make them stay without the pages coming off the spine as is what happens to too many of the guitar tab books that I've owned over the years. Like the other reviewer I am also disappointed with the way the capoed tracks are transcribed which is very confusing for me and requires quite a bit of work on my part to make sense of it. I had learnt "Fire and Rain" from a transcription in a guitar mag with ease years back when they tabbed the piece as if there was no capo and just indicated the capo position in a footnote instead of how it is shown here relative to the capo. Given most of the tracks here require a capo it means a whole lot more work for me to figure out the tunes because of this which is disappointing.

For these reasons, although I thoroughly enjoy James' work, I find this particular book of transcriptions of his work to be average and there is certainly room for improvement. Given a do-over I'd have chosen a different guitar tab book but as I have already bought this, I guess I'll just make the most of it. If you haven't bought this yet though you have been advised.

This book arrived promptly, in perfect condition and exactly as advertised. A great gift.