Iām sorry, am I going crazy or are you really charging us to access every part of your lessons individually? I paid for computer access, then paid for app access, and now I need to pay to see the tab? Is this accurate?
Hello @Juliajed - welcome to JustinGuitar and this Community.
Firstly, thanks for taking a subscription to the App. It contains Grades 1-3 of the Beginner course plus much more. That is a premium JustinGuitar product that is not free. There are a few, and very few, other premium courses that are not freely available to anyone and everyone.
I do not understand what you are referring to when you say that you paid for computer access.
First and foremost, the website is free. 99.99% of Justinās website courses are entirely free. He runs it funded by an honour system whereby those who are able to afford it are asked to donate to support the aim of providing guitar lessons for everone. The fact that people do is a recognition of Justinās excellent teaching and materials and the mission to teach music in general.
It is also funded by a very few subscription only courses and the sale of products and merchandise. Nobody is under any obligation to donate or purchase or subscribe to anything. That includes the TAB service you mention. You will undoubtedly find many websites and online lessons who seem to be providing tab free of charge. Justin believes in respecting the intellectual copyright and legal rights of songwriters and rights holders and publishers. He has engaged in many business discussions with the biggest publishing houses and as a result made the decision that the only way he felt he could offer tab to accompany his song lessons was to do it all above board and to charge a subscription - of which an appropriate proportion goes to the publishers and copyright holders. There is no need, categorically no need at all, for anybody to subscribe to the tab service. It is entirely optional.
RE: the App - it was not originally developed to host the video lessons but as a tool for people to play along with backing tracks. It grew and grew and it now offers amazing functionality, including Grades 1 to 3 of the beginner course as video lessons. The website has those lessons along with the supporting text and other materials. The website also has many further grades and courses. You can sign up to the website (and Community) at no cost. You can subscribe to the App also if you wish. They are not connected accounts because the App gets sold through App stores (for ios or android respectively).
ps
I am moving your post out of a lesson specific topic where it may become lost, and into a post of its own concerning the website etc.
If you have any further issues or are uncertain about anything JustinGuitar related please do ask.
I am also tagging @FannyJustinGuitar who has responsibilities on the JustinGuitar team for some of the issues you have raised.
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Hi Richard. I have a couple questions pertaining to your response about charging for tabs.
I think Iām not understanding. Iām sure that makes total sense but to me, those two comments seem to contradict each other.
Please donāt misunderstand. Iām certainly not challenging, I just need to understand because I probably down the road will subscribe to the tab service but before I do, I would like to sample the tabs to see what they are like. I have searched for tabs online and many I find hard to understand. I think, mainly, I like tabs where the chords are depicted, not just showing what strings are played. Some online tabs do not show the chord āchartā. So if there is a way to view some tabs first before buying, that would be great! Thanks Richard!
The TABS that Justin shows look similar to what you can get from the Guitar Pro 8 computer program. They show the chords as well as the standard notation for the guitar part as well as the melody that accompanies any lyrics in the song. They are not just ASCII text.
Justin occasionally provides a discount for Guitar Pro if that interests you.
TABS from this program donāt all look exactly the same because you have a lot of control in that software over how things look (where are the chord boxes placed), do you show standard notation or tabs or both, how much extra detail do you show about timing and dynamics, do you show lyrics or other instruments, etc. Justinās look generally similar to this.
hereās an article about tips for using the software, that includes some screenshots
From the songs that i"ve looked at you have the optiom of either chord view (i.e. chords listed above the lyrics) or tab view.
Thanks James
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Hi Ron
So if you click the tab represented by the fretboard you get the standard chord on lyric representation and if you click the notes symbol you get the standard tab view.
What computer access have you paid for? I have been accessing the Justin Guitar website for years and never paid a cent.
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Oh James, I am so confused. Can you tell me exactly where to find this? And are you talking about app or web? On the web, if I select, āSongsā I see this:
From there, if I select a song and then select āTabsā I get a message telling me that I have to subscribe to get the Tab.
James is showing you the tab subscription. You have access to lyrics with chord diagrams or tabs.
Trying to learn songs using just tabs is the hard way unless you already know the songās chord progression
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I never understood folks who say this.
I find that good tabs (like the ones that Justin includes and you can make in Guitar Pro) are best for learning a song since the chord diagrams are usually on the page somewhere (often at the top of the page with the chord names above the measures, but some people put the diagrams themselves above the measure) AND the way the tabs are written includes information about timing and rhythm. I honestly learned to read these very early in my guitar learning and found them very easy to navigate. A ton of people were baffled why I understood them and yet had trouble with songsheets (chord names and lyrics only. no rhythm or timing information on the page).
ASCII tabs suck for learning, but they help as a reference for something youāve learned yet need prompting to recall. I put ASCII tabs on my songsheets in my songbook app to describe riffs for intros or walkdowns or whatever.
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Ron, re your post ā¦
I mean that Justin is legally obligated to pay the copyright holders and publishers for disseminating tab.
Justinās students are not obligated to opt into the pay-for service. The song lessons are provided entirely free of charge and the songs can be learned without needing to see any tab.
It is only those who really want to see tab for their own reasons who would need to make the decision whether or not to opt in to the pay-for service.
I hope that makes it a little clearer.
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Here is a tiny sample of a song picked at random (Hallelujah).
Chords with lyrics
Fuller TAB
Also note there are a few tools for the tab including transpose (showing the chords if you changed key) and auto-scroll (if you want to play along and have the chords / tab move automatically).
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Mentioning Guitar Pro is fine though Justin does not provide his tab in Guitar Pro format or provide Guitar Pro files as part of the tab subscription.
Julia, as others have pointed out the access to the JustinGuitar website is 100% free . Please contact @FannyJustinGuitar to clarify what youāve paid for and to make sure youāre not victim of a scam.
Ron - James has a subscription which is why he is able to take a screenshot of the view he sees when he goes to the tab of a song on the website.
Without a subscription you will not see what he has shared.
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Have you tried just searching for a song on the website, without clicking either ātabsā or āchordsā, using the filters as appropriate for your level? This will give you a bunch of songs with a free video lesson giving you all the information you need to learn the song.
Clicking on the ātabsā tab will take you to the tabs part of the website. That is indeed a payed subscription. But itās one subscription for the whole tabs section, not just for one song.
Clicking on the āchordsā tab will give you all songs for which Justin teaches a strummed version (not just finger picking).
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thanks for this very good explanation, as I wondered about the difference between App and free Website myself I am good informed now, thank you.
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Thank you, Rick.
Thanks Nate! Yes, as we have discussed before, you and I see tabs the same. Though I struggle with tabs, I feel they really help me with rhythm, seeing I have to think it through how a song āgoesā. So I would like this as an option and eventually will subscribe to Tabs. And thatās why I needed to know what the tabs look like as Richard has provided. I have searched for tabs online that make no sense to me. Some donāt provide the chord or chord charts And some are very archaic that look like a computer printout from the 80ās. So Justinās tabs look great to me! Thank you for your response!