These are 'unmoderated' groups. This means that anything you post here will not be filtered out by some group 'owner' or 'leader', so be careful what you post! (See below "What NOT to post!")
No one makes any money from these groups. You may pay for your Internet access, but you don't pay anything for the material posted here. These groups, like all of Usenet, are do-it-yourself community projects on a grand scale. So while you are playing some newly gained chords or tab that you have picked up off the group, (and often thinking to yourself 'This is so simple - I should have been able to work this out!') remember that these files only exist because someone sat down, worked them out and wrote them out. If you can do the same for a different song, you'ld be paying back in the best way - by contributing to the community.
alt.guitar.tab and rec.music.makers.guitar.tablature are intended as forums for sharing chords and tabs to assist playing songs on guitar, and discussing how to play songs. In short, these are 'guitar playing' groups.
Do NOT post any chain-mail, or scams in the 'Make Money Fast' vein.
Not only do you show yourself to be a total sucker, they're
probably illegal.
Do NOT post advertisements, even if they are related to guitar.
[There is no group specifically for ads, but the group
alt.guitar is most appropriate.]
How you post to the groups will depend on how you read news. There will be some 'post' command on the software you are using.
If you do not have news, you can use email.
Simply address your mail to:
NEVER post a request without checking the guitar archive. The easiest way to check is if you keep a copy of the FLAT.INDEX. To get a copy, see the section below on accessing OLGA/Mirrors. The INDEX (updated periodically) can also be found on these pages.
ALWAYS, always mail your completed transcriptions to the guitar archive. Simply send it by e-mail to guitar@nevada.edu Send multiple songs individually.
When posting to these groups, the post should contain some prefix in its 'Subject: ' line, to give people a rough idea of what its contents are.
Always use one of the following prefixes:
* It is important you use one of these two when posting something not to do with lyr/crd/tab of a particular song.
Please always refrain from using RE:. The codes listed here should cover any reply you have.
If you are using a newsreader that, when 'reply'ing, or making a 'follow-up' does not allow modification of the 'Subject' line, send these as completely new posts rather than follow-ups, so that you can put 'CRD' or 'TAB'. When a post begins with simply 'Re:' people may miss posting of chords or tabs.
Any chords or tab that you post to these groups may be archived at OLGA. They become the property of OLGA for slight editing and to prevent them being used commercially by others, even though the author's name remains in the file, and it is he or she that will be lionized or disparaged.
If for some reason you do NOT want a file to be archived, you must state so when posting.
If you know how to play the chords for a song, don't wait to be asked! type them up and post them to the groups. The standard way of doing this is simply to put the chord names on a separate line above the lyrics. For example:
Em D/F# G Four seasons in one day
This can cause problems when people have different character widths and tab-settings on their screens, but since most people use standard ascii, this is usually not a problem.
The other way of doing it is to embed the chords in square brackets in the lyrics. For example:
Files formatted in this way can be read by various utilities to produce output of the first type, which is considered easiest to read.
Tablature is tedious to do by hand in ascii, but can be done.
Again, various packages exist to assist you, such as:
Tab-n-Fret, Tab-Master and Bucket-o-Tab
Word 5 and later (Mac and PC) has 'vertical pasting', allowing
you to select and paste part of a line or lines, rather than
the whole thing. Simply hold down the 'option' key when selecting text.
If you don't know what tab is, take at look at this: it's a tab for the start of 'Happy birthday'
D7
e|--------------------------|-----------------3-------|--2-- ...
B|------------------3-----3-|-5-------3---------------|--1-- ...
G|--------------------------|-------------------------|--2-- ...
D|--------------------------|-------------------------|--0-- ...
A|--------------------------|-------------------------|--0-- ...
E|--------------------------|-------------------------|----- ...
1 . 2 . 3 . 1 . 2 . 3 . 1 ...
Ha - ppy Birth - day to You. ...
If you need more introduction, see the 'tab
notation' file kept in the directory ./resources/ at OLGA,
as well as on these pages.
OLGA (the On-Line Guitar Archive) is a collection of chords and tabs for 9000+ songs at the University of OLGA, and duplicated throughout the world at various sites. It is provided free to the Internet community thanks to the University of OLGA and the archive's administrators. Any files taken from the archive, (or indeed from Usenet News), may NOT be used for commercial purposes.
For Mac and Pc users, the best way to access OLGA/Mirrors is by
using the WWW - packages such as "Mosaic" and "Lynx", or by programs
such as 'Fetch' on the mac.
On unix, use Bob Zawalski's 'autotab' utility (based on 'getit').
You can get autotab from the archive at OLGA/Mirrors, in the
directory ./other_stuff
There's also manual ftp on unix. This certainly used to be the most
common way to ftp, but it ties up access for long periods of time,
so you are strongly encouraged to use Mosaic/etc or autotab.
Slowest of all, you can use email, to connect with 'ftpmail'.
To learn the location of the archive and mirrors and how to access these sites by manual ftp, ftpmail and autotab, see Ryan Harding's bi-weekly posting "Guide to the TAB Archives"
The OLGA README file, (along with the OLGA INDEX and Ryan's guide and other files,) can be found on these pages.