Hendrix GIF

Internet Guitar Resources

Welcome to the OLGA Internet Guitar Resources web page!

Practically all of the material to which you will be introduced here is made freely available on the net, under 'copyleft' restrictions. That is, it is for non-profit use only and credit is given to the author whenever their work is distributed. These are basic Internet principles. What makes guitar on the net special is the huge number of people who actively contribute to the development of guitar resources. For years, OLGA has provided a central location for the files and utilities produced by the readers of the various usenet guitar groups, and now it hopes to do the same more generally for web users. It is maintained for free, U. Nevada and all the listed sites supply it for free, in order that we can access it for free.
With the advent of the Web, guitar resources on the net continue to blossom, and the lack of widespread commerce-enabling software means that the tradition is much as is it was before - individuals and companies putting out information for all to see.
If you benefit from guitar material found here or anywhere else on the net, i encourage you not simply to take, but to make some contribution in return. This might simply be sending feedback, suggestions or corrections to the various FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions) files, archives or web pages, or writing chord or tab files, contributing knowledge on the usenet boards, or perhaps creating some net resource of your own and making it available.

On this page you will find:
README's, FAQ's, INFO, Web pages
OLGA - The On-Line Guitar Archive; and other Guitar Archives

INFORMATION

OLGA

The On-Line Guitar Archive is a collection of chords and tabs for 12000+ songs. It also has directories for tablature-producing utilities, lessons, and guitar-building, and this web page of links to Internet guitar info.
It is provided free to the Internet community thanks to the University of Nevada and their sysadmins, the archivists, and the administrators of the many sites world-wide at which the archive can be accessed.

BEFORE YOU GO ANY FURTHER....
Read the warning about copyright before entering the archive.
OLGA has separate archives dedicated to classical, acoustic guitar, and chordpro formatted songs.
Jan-Erik Schuch maintains the chordpro archive, which contains most or all of the songs in chordpro format in the main archive at OLGA, and about 2000 others. The acoustic archive is maintained by Dean Gaudet. There is a separate archive for country music (listed in the next section) that we soon hope to make available through OLGA.

OLGA also contains a number of bass tabs - check the Bass INDEX before going to one of the sites.

If you have a file to submit to the archive, simply send it by email to guitar@nevada.edu
For a help guide to using tablature notation, see Howard's FAQ. For a guide of tips and tricks in writing your file, see John's guide; and for more information, including other ways to submit files, see my How to submit files to OLGA

ACCESSING THE ON-LINE GUITAR ARCHIVE

Try HTTP sites before FTP sites, and try the ftp sites with the most space for users, and those closer to you.

To search for a particular song, try the search engines listed at the bottom.

NOTE: Users running Netscape in Windows will have problems with *.crd (chord) files. Microsoft unfortunately decided to use this suffix for their Cardfile utility, which windows opens and tries to use every time you click on a *.crd file. We hope they take it out in Win95, otherwise we may have to change all the files. But don't worry, we provide a FAQ that tells you how to clobber your cardfile.

NOTE: If you save files with .Z or .gz extensions, you need to decompress these before reading. Read the compression faq.

For ftp instruction relating to archives in general read the Guide To The Tab Archives by Ryan Harding
If you do use manual ftp or ftpmail, it would help to check what files are available and the correct path. Do this by looking at the INDEX.

HTTP sites

FTP sites

WWW (World Wide Web) - Search Engines

If you have a forms capable web browser, use one of the following to search for a song:

Nottingham Univ., U.K.
(Quicker if you turn image-loading off), select a site from the list then fill in and submit the search form. Be careful to spell correctly and remember to save the file after you've downloaded it. Files are automatically uncompressed "On-the-fly"

Leo, Germany Archive including OLGA, the bass archive and the lyrics archive.

Unix (and Vax) Users

Users of manual ftp should split the ftp addresses above into the site name and directory path. Ftp to the site, and once logged on, change into the directory given. This will put you at the top level of the archive proper.

You should also check out Bob Zawalski's 'autotab' utility (based on 'getit'). This allows unix users to execute an ftp command that will run automatically in the background, thus keeping the ftp connection time to an absolute minimum, which saves you money if you pay for connection time. You can get autotab from OLGA

By E-mail

Anyone with e-mail can use a service called ftpmail.

Other Guitar archives:

  • ftp.uwp.edu/pub/music/lyrics This is the main music archive on the net. As well as being an OLGA site (pub/music/guitar) it also has directories for lyrics, folk, artists, pictures, reviews and more.
  • Christian Praise Archive
  • Cowpie Archives (Country) Greg Vaughn runs the Cowpie Newsletter, and the chord and tab files often included are archived here.
  • ftp.maths.tcd.ie/pub/music Smaller archive (4k files), but also has some discographies, GIFs, etc
  • ftp.cs.tu-berlin.de/pub/doc/music Contains about 2400 files
  • Indie Music Archive

  • Digital Tradition The huge folk-music (lyrics) archive at Xerox

    You may also find some guitar-related material at sites for particular artists. Try Chris Bray's page just below; and possibly the two 'Harmony' pages.

    Individuals' Guitar Archives

  • Bem's Guitar Page Small collection of acoustic tabs.
  • Chris Bray's 'Web Guitar Resources' Page Excellent page, containing Chris's own tab files and links to OLGA, and lists of links for guitar magazines, companies and stores. Chris also maintains a fair few of the artist-specific tab sites on the web. Highly recommended.
  • Greg O'Beirne's Tab Collection Files done by Greg himself.
  • Adam Schneider's Page at U Mn Along with people such as Chris, Greg, Andrew Rogers, Harlan Thompson and Mick Anderson, Adam is one of the main 'tabbers' on the net. On his page you can find the 250+ songs he has enchorded, as well as links to all of the OLGA sites.
    Prepared for the WWW by cal woods 1995, 1994
    Please mail me with any corrections, information or comments. What's missing from this site? Info on books and stores in particular.