Hey all. I’ve been using the app to learn for about 3 months now. One of my goals has been to be able to play songs for my children.
At this point, I can play fairly well with the backing tracks but i still struggle to play from a tab (especially since they seem to use lyrics to mark where chord changes occur). This is obviously something I will keep working on, but it would be awesome if i could bring my kids into this with some children’s songs in the app.
An inexaustive list:
The wheels on the bus
The itsy bitsy spider
Frere Jacque/Mary had a little lamb
Old McDonald
Twinkle Twinkle
Nice to meet you, Abraham. And welcome to a very friendly community, I do understand where you are coming from, and you never know, your question will, I am sure, be looked at, but Justin is one very, very busy man with a lot going on, but you never know with Justin he is such I kind and nice guy and he does have children so fingers crossed for you cheers HEC
Yeah, as I said I’m still struggling to play from tabs, but the book will be useful to work on that. My littlest likes when I play Eleanor Rigby with the backing track, which is what gave me the thought.
FWIW, tabs don’t use chords-over-lyrics. You’d call that a songsheet or maybe a chord sheet.
A tab can look a few different ways. A super basic version is just ASCII text-based and like songsheets, doesn’t really include timing information. They look something like this (they require fixed-width text to look right):
But you can sometimes find “upgraded” TABS that do include timing information. The software “Guitar Pro” can make these (I’m sure there’s other software around, but Justin offers a discount for Guitar Pro, at least sometimes). I bought it awhile back when the developer was running a sale and Justin had his discount code available at the same time.
As for songsheets and getting accustomed to playing with those, think of it this way. Those are better for a quick reference once you’ve learned a song. It might help you if you can play along with a recording to also have a songsheet visible so you can see how it accompanies what you’re playing.
I found the guitar karaoke part of the app to be especially helpful for me to learn to use songsheets.
I do wish more guitar teachers spent some time on how to learn to use these. My experience with them is really frustrating. My first couple private instructors just handed them to me and expected me to play along with them. I took a group class that went the same way. My last private instructor grumbled about how they suck when I asked him how to use them. This NEEDS to be a topic of instruction whether instructors like it or not because it’s ubiquitous - when you look up songs, you find songsheets.
My wife had no trouble wrapping her head around how to use them. But it took me a long time. and I’m still working on it.
Hello Abraham and welcome to our Community. I play a lot with children, being a Kindergarten Teacher and I have to say that learning the short children’s tunes helped me hugely to develop my skills on the guitar, as I was struggling a lot, especially at the beginning. Justin’s Children Songbook is exactly what you need, even I guess having some song in the App might be easier and more fun for you. Here are my reasons:
the tunes are short and will require to put the effort in for a short time (avoiding to feel overwhelmed and frustrated)
the musicsheet are very well done and it’s always shown, not only where the chord changes, but also where the beat is on each bar, which means basically that you can go to the kitchen and grab whatever would be fun for your children to join in and add some percussion just keeping the beat while singing. It’ll be fun, I can assure you!
these kind of song have only 2 or 3 chords: if you do some focussed practice to listen to the sound of those chords and where they are changing over the melody you’re singing you soon won’t need to read anymore, it takes some practice.
you all will be playing like in a little band!
That said there are no copyrights on these old children tunes and I don’t think it would be too difficult to have them on the App. I would try to reach out to the Musopia team as well.
