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<head><title>Welcome to the Tablature Newsgroups </title></head>
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<center><h2> Welcome to the Usenet news-groups <br>
alt.guitar.tab and<br>
rec.music.makers.guitar.tablature</h2></center><hr>
The guitar community on the net is among the most organized in
free-cyberspace. This file tells you what you need to know with
regard to participating in these groups, and where to find
information on how to access the OLGA Archive of chords, tabs
and lyrics.<p>
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!")<p>
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.<p>
<hr>
<h3>What these newsgroups are for:</h3><p>
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.<p>
<ul><li>
Asking what distortion settings are used for songX IS an
appropriate posting.
<li>Asking whether an entire chord or just the bottom four
strings are played in a song, IS appropriate.<br>
<li>Posting up lyrics/chords/tab for songX is PERFECT use of
these groups!
<li>Making a request for lyrics/chords/tab for songX IS
appropriate.</ul>
<hr>
<h3>What NOT to post to these groups.</h3><p>
Do NOT post any chain-mail, or scams in the 'Make Money Fast' vein.<br>
Not only do you show yourself to be a total sucker, they're
probably illegal.<br>
Do NOT post advertisements, even if they are related to guitar.<br>
[There is no group specifically for ads, but the group
alt.guitar is most appropriate.]<p>
<ul><li>
How many blood transfusions Keith has received over the years
is NOT an appropriate post.
<li>Asking for recommendations on what guitar to buy, is NOT an
appropriate posting to these groups.
</ul>
<hr>
<h3>Posting:</h3><p>
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.<p>
If you do not have news, you can use email. <br>
Simply address your mail to:<br><ul>
alt-guitar-tab@cs.utexas.edu and<br>
rec-music-makers-guitar-tablature@cs.utexas.edu</ul><br>
and make the 'Subject:' line of your mail as you want it to appear
in the newsgroup/s.
<hr><p>
<h3>Suggested Golden Rule 1</h3> <p>
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.
<hr><p>
<h3> Suggested Golden Rule 2</h3> <p>
ALWAYS, always mail your completed transcriptions to the guitar
archive. Simply send it by e-mail to guitar@nevada.edu
Send multiple songs individually.
<hr><p><h3>
Suggested Golden Rule 3</h3><p>
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.<p>
Always use one of the following prefixes:<p>
<ul>
LYR: song (artist) Posting contains only lyrics for a song<br>
CRD: song (artist) Posting contains chords for the song.<br>
TAB: song (artist) Posting contains tablature for the song<br>
BTAB: song (artist) Posting contains bass tablature for the song<br>
PRO: song (artist) Posting contains chord/tab formatted for use
with CHORD utilities. (See below 'Posting Chords')<br>
ADD: song (artist) Posting containing additions or corrections<br>
REQ: song (artist) Posting is a request for the song<br>
* INFO: subject Posting contains information of interest to the group<br>
* DIS: (song) discussion pertaining to (how to play) the song<br></ul><p>
* It is important you use one of these two when posting something
not to do with lyr/crd/tab of a particular song.<p>
<hr>
<h3>Eliminating 'Re:'</h3><p>
Please always refrain from using RE:. The codes listed here should
cover any reply you have.<p>
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.<p>
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.<p>
If for some reason you do NOT want a file to be archived, you must
state so when posting.
<hr><h3>
Posting Chords</h3> <p>
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:<p>
<pre>
Em D/F# G
Four seasons in one day</pre><p><p>
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.<p>
The other way of doing it is to embed the chords in square brackets
in the lyrics. For example:<P><ul>
[Em]Four seasons [D/F#]in one [G]day</ul><p>
Files formatted in this way can be read by various utilities to produce
output of the first type, which is considered easiest to read.<p>
<hr>
Try to put the name of the album/cassette/cd from which you
heard the song in the body of the message. -- Rick Kreifeldt
<hr>
<h3>Tab Utilities</h3><p>
Tablature is tedious to do by hand in ascii, but can be done.<p>
Again, various packages exist to assist you, such as:<br>
Tab-n-Fret, Tab-Master and Bucket-o-Tab<br>
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.<p>
If you don't know what tab is, take at look at this: it's a tab
for the start of 'Happy birthday'<pre>
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. ...
</pre>
If you need more introduction, see the 'tab
notation' file kept in the directory ./resources/ at OLGA,
as well as on these pages.
<hr>
<h3>OLGA </h3><p>
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. <p>
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.<br>
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<br>
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'.<p>
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"<p>
The OLGA README file, (along with the OLGA INDEX and Ryan's
guide and other files,) can be found on these pages.
<p>
<hr>
These suggested guidelines were formulated, reviewed, and commented
on by users of these newsgroups. Thanks for your comments and
participation.
<hr>ppalmer@cray.com (Pete Palmer)<br>
rcwoods@alf2.tcd.ie (cal woods)
<hr>
Prepared for the WWW by <i>cal woods</i>
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