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Show HN: YouTube Guitar Tab Parser

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Re: Show HN: YouTube Guitar Tab Parser

#11

Post by almostjazz »

Diogenesian wrote: post #10
breaker-kind wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

counterargument -- these people are making money off of transcribing other people's parts, with no profits shared with the composers.

That's a bad counterargument. Transcribing is transformative. Copying a video into a PDF is not.

I'm not a lawyer but based on some googling it seems like the overwhelming consensus is that selling transcribed sheet music or tabs if you do not have permission from the copyright holder of the song is illegal.

https://www.thatgreatcomposer.com/blog/is-it-legal-to-transc...

https://law.stackexchange.com/questions/96352/dual-question-...

https://www.drumforum.org/threads/what-is-the-legal-basis-fo...

Re: Show HN: YouTube Guitar Tab Parser

#13

Post by rc5150 »

Diogenesian wrote: post #8

Almost all those people charge for the PDFs. They know the PDF is more useful, that's why the video is free. I don't think your software is (or should be) illegal. But it's a form of theft, and incredibly unethical. These people worked very hard on these tabs and don't make much money. You (and kiaansaraiya and neogenix) should be ashamed of yourselves. You don't deserve your guitar if you steal tabs from working mus…

"you don't deserve your guitar if you steal tabs from working musicians"

the same "working" musicians who didn't write the music they're making tabs for, didn't get any permission from the original artists, and in many cases aren't actually playing/tabbing the parts as originally written.

A "working" musician is someone who doesn't monetize someone else's work, regardless of how super hard it must be to write a PDF.

I'd say someone should take your guitar away but I'd bet money you're not doing anything groundbreaking with it anyway.

Re: Show HN: YouTube Guitar Tab Parser

#16

Post by akramachamarei »

Diogenesian wrote: post #10
breaker-kind wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

counterargument -- these people are making money off of transcribing other people's parts, with no profits shared with the composers.

That's a bad counterargument. Transcribing is transformative. Copying a video into a PDF is not.

As an occasional amateur music transcriber I'd say the goal of transcription is not transformation. If I'm transforming, I've failed :)

Inevitably the transcriber makes decisions in how to deviate from the reference recording, be it omission of instruments, microchanges in tempo and pitch or articulation. In theory a good transcription is an exact graphical representation of the abstract sonic intent of the artist.

Of course, if you are combining voices, changing chords, it approaches an arrangement which is a more creative endeavor.

Re: Show HN: YouTube Guitar Tab Parser

#17

Post by sublinear »

rc5150 wrote: post #14
kiaansaraiya wrote: post #2

i've actually been looking for something like this for so long. all the online transcribers make me pay and i just wanna learn how play songs from a video. this is a great idea!

learn by ear! It's free and you don't need youtube!

This is very true. Tabs can help in niche cases where the precision really matters, but most tabs are not that good unless written by the original artist (rare).

If I had spent my first year learning the instrument properly, I wouldn't have wasted the next decade after that fumbling around so much.

Re: Show HN: YouTube Guitar Tab Parser

#18

Post by earthnail »

rc5150 wrote: post #13
Diogenesian wrote: post #8

Almost all those people charge for the PDFs. They know the PDF is more useful, that's why the video is free. I don't think your software is (or should be) illegal. But it's a form of theft, and incredibly unethical. These people worked very hard on these tabs and don't make much money. You (and kiaansaraiya and neogenix) should be ashamed of yourselves. You don't deserve your guitar if you steal tabs from working mus…

"you don't deserve your guitar if you steal tabs from working musicians" the same "working" musicians who didn't write the music they're making tabs for, didn't get any permission from the original artists, and in many cases aren't actually playing/tabbing the parts as originally written. A "working" musician is someone who doesn't monetize someone else's work, regardless of how super hard it must be to write a PDF.…

But then the solution is to just ignore these musicians.

But if you do find that they made something valuable that you can’t find elsewhere, then you should compensate them for that. Because yes, it is a lot of work.

Re: Show HN: YouTube Guitar Tab Parser

#19

Post by XCSme »

I was excited to use it, as I really wanted something like this, then I realized it needs AI/Claude (?)

That sounds like it can get quite costly. Probably there are ways to do it without AI, I would rather manually annotate the tab area with a visual editor.

Re: Show HN: YouTube Guitar Tab Parser

#20

Post by mschulkind »

adrianh wrote: post #3

I'm curious how it works for videos that contain moving tab (as in, the playhead stays in the center while the tab moves behind it). Seems like that sort of tab wouldn't work with this approach...? Kudos from one of the Soundslice guys — we've been making web-based tab and sheet music stuff since 2012. :)

I don't have an answer, but wanted to say that I started using Soundslice about 9 months ago and I absolutely love it. It does exactly the part of transcribing that I want done for me and nothing more, which is basically none of it except the boring stuff.
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