Why do many Beatles chords books suck? | Fab Forum | The Beatles Bible

There are many reasons:

First of all, companies like Hal Leonard are only there to make a profit, they couldn’t care less if they made a mistake.

But the main reason is that most of these professional tab writers don’t bother to actually check to see how the artist actually played the guitar part. For example, see how Tony Iommi actually plays the main riff to Black Sabbath’s Iron Man:

Most TAB books have it being played with the root on the A string instead of the E string because the writers didn’t bother to watch Tony play it live and didn’t bother to pay close attention to what positions he’s using.

Another example is Back In The USSR , most TAB’s have the guitar playing a A D C D blues shuffle, when in reality, all George’s rhythm guitar is doing is playing choppy chord strums like so using barred chords rooted off the E string:

1 2 3 AA AAA

1 2 3 DD DDD

1 2 3 CC CCC

1 2 3 DD DDD

Now what you really want to know is why some tabs are in the wrong key and this connects to the above statement, most TAB writers simply don’t bother with actually putting in some effort and either write the tab for standard tuning or with a capo on a certain fret that makes them feel more comfortable playing the song.

Let’s use Yesterday as an example, Paul tuned his Epiphone Texan down a full step when recording this song, so the chords are:

G F#m B7 Em Em Em7 Cmaj7 D G G G/F# Em D C G

But most tab writers assume it to be in standard, so they write it like so:

F Em A7 Dm Dm Dm/C Bb C F F F/E Dm C Bb F

Another example is Black Sabbath’s Sweet Leaf, most tab writers assume that it’s in the key of A but Tony actually plays it in the key of C with his guitar tuned down to C#, which he did for the majority of songs on Master Of Reality through Sabotage. This is actually really beneficial during the bridge where if you’re playing it right, you can just use open D and E chords, as well as play that little lick on one string like so:

e|4-5-4h5p4p0|

So you see, most TAB writers take the easy way out and if you think big companies like Hal Leonard are more accurate, they’re not.

If you want my advice for accurately learning guitar, I recommend starting with Beatles To A Tee, it’s a great direct to DVD instructional guitar series starring devout Beatles fan Rob Taylor who unlike other TAB writers, actually cares about playing The Beatles the way it was meant to be played and also tries his best to use the proper instruments that The Beatles used to record the song as well.

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Sure, the video series isn’t perfect and good luck trying to contact this guy, I don’t even know if he uses his real name, but what would you rather have, 4 quality instructional videos with 2 or 3 flaws or a chord book loaded with flaws, his videos are available on torrents if you want to know where to get his videos.