When the Internet was young, there was one website that every guitarist went to for tabs and chords: the On-line Guitar Archives, or OLGA, as it was called. Unfortunately, legal issues were the death of OLGA, and guitar tab was scattered across the Web.
Now there are myriad different websites to choose from when searching for guitar tab. Below are five of best, chosen for number of tabs, ease of interface, ease of reading, and lack of spy ware.
Ultimate Guitar Archives
The gold standard in free tab sites. The Ultimate Guitar Archives boasts over 300,000 guitar tabs on their site, the most on the Web. In addition, Ultimate Guitar Archives has music reviews, breaking news, and columns to help specific aspects of the guitarist’s playing. They also provide links for songs done using the Guitar Pro software.
The pop up ads can get annoying at times. Not every visit triggers pop ups though, unlike many other sites. All together, Ultimate Guitar Archives is an excellent site to pick up song tab.
Cosmic-Kitchen
Cosmic-Kitchen is an absolutely beautiful site. It is oriented toward the Classic Rock/ Dead Head set, and its graphics reflect this. The designers also sell hand made tie-dye on the site and have a Lunar Calendar.
The blue-green tab on black background is easy to read, and soothing to the eyes. Cosmic-Kitchen does not have as much guitar tab as the other, larger sites, but they have most of the classics from the sixties and seventies.
AZ Chords
AZ Chords is another good site to find the tab that you need. The home page has a column listing its most popular artists for easy access and searching. The site is colored in blue and white, which can make it difficult to read for a long period of time, important when staring at so many names scrunched together.
The site has a issues with pop ups though. A popup blocker will negate most of them, but there are floating pop ups actually on the site which can be quite annoying.
Guitar Tab Universe
Guitar Tab Universe has a pleasant and clean interface, the second easiest to read of those reviewed, behind Cosmic-Kitchen. It also has a good forum, which once the reader gets through all the spam threads will find informed and experienced musicians. Guitar Tab Universe also offers a large selection of bass and even mandolin tab. While bass is not uncommon, mandolin tab is exceedingly rare.
Cowboy Lyrics
Many free sites focus on tab and chords while ignoring lyrics. Cowboy Lyrics tries to rectify that. Cowboy Lyrics is targeted for fans of Country, Blues, and Folk music, and has very little outside of these genres. Since these genres are often overlooked by tab sites, Cowboy Lyrics is a good supplement. If the guitarist can not find it on a larger site, Cowboy Lyrics is a good stop.
