12 Reasons Why AJFA is the WORST TAB Book Ever Made!
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- čas přidán 3. 05. 2021
- **I found out they fixed a lot of these mistakes and the-released the book eventually. I’ve never seen it but apparently you can still buy this old, messed up, version as well. I’m glad I got the bad one for nostalgic and collectors purposes but I recommend the revised edition if you’re learning. I think. Haha.**
-Imagine my excitement when I first got the book as a kid, and my torment when it steered me in so many wrong directions. :/
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OK, but the AJFA bass-tab-book is correct: 96 empty pages :-)
Okay, I'll have to pin this one after a few days. Way too good! haha
😂😂😂😂
Savage
👏👏👏
The most savage comment out there. Love it.
I guess you could say the tab book didn’t do the album Justice. 😂
Immediate pin.
And Justice For All... except for that one book.
It’s too early for flawlessly executed puns sir
So good
@@PJF1981 That One* book
The worst part is that when you're a beginner you tend to assume the tabs are correct and that the problem is with you, even when they are so obviously off the mark. Even when the actual notes were right, sometimes the locations they wanted to you play them made them way harder than necessary!
That is exactly how I felt.
I never did that-then again, I tend to trust my own ears more than other people's words or their lazy tabs.
Whenever I found a tab that sounded wrong to me, and there are many, I threw it out and worked it out by ear instead.
The payoff is that one gets much better at figuring things out for oneself instead of being lazily dependent on a poor resource.
I sometimes changed the way I played it because the tabs told me so. Nowadays I don't even check tabs anymore but when I do I double-check by ear to make sure it's the right note.
Guitar Pro tabs are like that a lot. Like they are tabbed by a piano player or something. They use fingerings only a six fingered banjo player would think of doing.
@@aquilarossa5191
Yeah really weird stuff that is sort of right but the wrong octave or maybe a few notes are missing
A sad thought: Imagine how many kids who might've contributed something to the world of guitar who gave up because the horribly wrong transcriptions killed their love of the instrument.
Me... I had the book and I tried to learn one and blackened and shortest straw and especially dyers eve it just was so awful to play and my hands hurt all the time trying to play it I gave up playing guitar for like 2 years
Most people who would bring something special and new to the intrument wouldn't be discouraged and would keep pushing through.
@@ne10ne10 Did you get back into playing music ?
That's not a book's fault..... that's on other factors
Just saw this comment and video. Had this book growing up and all I wanted to do was learn some Metallica and man like wtf😂😂 I knew shit wasn't right and it wasn't ALL me.
So funny story. The first tab book I every bought when I was learning how to play was the death magnetic one, then a few months later I went into guitar center to get the AJFA one that I saw before and it wasn’t there anymore. I asked the guy if they had any more and he said “we pulled them off the shelves. Trust me little man, you don’t want to waste your money on that book” I thought he was being an ass and saying he hated Metallica or something which offended me so I was upset and asked him why would learning Metallica be a waste of money? And he said “no man, the book is so wrong you’ll actually be so upset you spent your money on it. Blackened is so unbelievably wrong, just that tab by itself makes the book a waste of money” then he gave me a copy of one he made himself which was spot on and perfect for free. Now he’s my hookup at guitar center to this day for things just released or out of stock things and employee discounts and such
Also I learned Dyers eve on my own before I got the book and I never thought it was 23232323. I honestly don’t hear it at all. I just hear some fast 2’s lol
@@TheJerseyNinja Do you know the video Mike referenced where he said James cleared that misconception up?
Hopefully there are good GC employees :p
@@TheJerseyNinja something I don’t think non metal players understand is how palm muting combined with fast picking can make notes sharp. The transcriber probably heard a little B quarter sharp in there and was like “fuck it, it must be a trill” which would be right if you were trying to get that sound out of a cello or a piano.
Thats ACTUALLY a super cool story
When James and Lars purposefully tab out the songs wrong so nobody will steal their music.
While making money on selling the garbage books.
Bands don't transcribe their own music.
@@creamwobbly I think you’re confusing two different guys with the same last name. John Marshall was the guy who was in Metal Church who roadied for James and filled in on guitar a couple times. Wolf Marshall is the guy who wrote the tabs book. He’s a dude who wrote a lot of tabs books and made guitar tutorial videos in the 80s. As far as I know they’re not the same dude.
People with perfect pitch: oh I don't think so
@Stew Daly ... it... its just a joke
This is what happens when people who only play piano try to transcribe guitar
haha sooooo true!
I don't think these guys play piano either. I've gotten some shitty piano music from them before. Once required me to have hands that even Rachmaninoff would be surprised of. (Rachmaninoff had huge hands, making many of his pieces hard to play because of the stretching)
Yeah ot remimds me of when I transcribed a tenor saxophone part to a song for a highschool project, and luckily I checked with my friend, because he said "Uh yeah we can't really play that."
Mannnn I've been playing piano for 11 years and I'm just starting guitar I promise if i ever make a tab book I'll do better than these lmaoooo
Anyone who tabs a G power chord as [3x00xx] is a cop.
LOL.
Or Paul Stanley.
I dont get it
I actually don’t mind doing it that way sometimes.
NE One From Here is a narc!!!
Wow, decades of exonerated frustration released with this video. The healing begins.
Haha! Hilarious!
lol
YES!
I remember 17 years ago my guitar teacher was trying to walk me through the To Live Is To Die intro out of my copy of this tab book and he kept saying "what? they're crazy" and making corrections with a pen. I had only been playing guitar for a few years at that point so I thought it was a strange concept that a book could be wrong because I held it up as being this definitive thing, but I'm glad my teacher made those corrections. It's just too bad we didn't go through the rest of the songs because they did perplex me later when I tried to learn them on my own.
good teacher :) i dont get how they got it so wrong. i pretty much only play by ear and im way closer to the original than this book. not 100% for sure but pretty close. how can someone who works with transcribing be this bad? XD
The funny thing is that I’ve had this book for over 15 years. I started playing guitar at age 12 to rebuild the strength in my left hand after a horrible accident. Due to that accident I am unable to move my pinky and ring fingers separately so I had to adjust how I play some songs and take “shortcuts”. Due to this I never actually realized AJFA tabs were wrong. I just assumed I was playing them incorrectly due to my injury and inability to move all my fingers separately. I adjusted the song tabs accordingly to make the songs sound closer to how they are on the album. In doing so, I inadvertently taught myself how to play the songs closer to the right way than how the tabs said to play them.
I am your 69th like
That is ironic hilarious and awesome
LOL Incredible video, this is bringing back all sorts of painful memories from my early guitar playing... really fun to watch and I didn't even realize how bad it actually was!
Man, this book messed me up when I was a teenager. I still have it after all these years.
Me too. We suffer in silence
mine isnt as worn out as KEA, RTL, or MOP...
Im with ya , I look at it from time to time and say to myself what the Fuck was that guy thinking ! He's hiding in Dormant after all these years . Hoping Metallica fans won't find him. Lol
I have this book
I keep mine in the toilet in case of emergency
As a newbie guitar player, the Blackened tab in particular was incredibly frustrating for me. I remember going to the Sam Goody in the mall just to learn the riffs to that song and feeling like I sucked because I could never get it to sound right. It never even occured to me that the tab could be wrong because it was the "official" tab book as far as I knew at age 17. I just figured that I was doing something wrong. It was very discouraging.
I love hearing that you went to Sam Goody to learn the riffs! That is nostalgia from a GREAT time. We had to struggle just to HEAR songs back then! That brought back memories, thanks!
I’m also in the camp that would never think a book would have any mistakes much less this many. I would have quit playing guitar thinking I was bad.
Cheers, love this post!
Same. I'd assume "Official" meant they actually went to the band to get approval.
I remember pulling my hair out in frustration because of the “To Live Is To Die” tab from this book. The opening of the song is tabbed to be nearly impossible to play. Like the guy in the vid, I just gave up and chalked it up to “Jamez is a genius, I suck”.
I had hard time getting Blackened's riff the right way. The tab book was so horrible that you could say straight away that people who did this doesn't have a glue what he's doing. But the hard part for me to figure out even with slowing software was the ending of the riff at the start of the neck. It's very muddy in the recording.
I remember trying to learn Smells like Teen Spirit from a transcription in a guitar mag and it was arguably too accurate notating all the aspects of Kurt's loose style of playing where the main riff would be annotated every repetition because sometimes Kurt hits an extra string or causes an because left hand finger isn't fully depressed. I spent forever trying to learn it note for note, until a friend told me I needed to concentrate on getting that loose feel, playing along with the song that trying to recreate every one of Kurt's imperfections.
Usually once I get a song sounding near enough that's good enough for me. Usually isn't no perfect recreation but meh most of my family can't tell the difference anyway
@@toshiroyamada2443 my favorite thing about writing original music is I can butcher my own creation and everyone else is none the wiser
@@ChudchanningI saw you play one of you’re originals and I know that bend was out of tune.
This album mystified me being a drummer. Lars did so many different fills and beats it was just hard to wrap my head around it all.
My ear wasn't as trained as it is now though.
Nah they were edited cause lars had to do way too many takes
@@guyfauks2576 you're both right
The off time beats still confuse me. The drumming seems way too advanced to be Lars Ulrich though, this was definitely Metallica at their musical peak
I'll see your AJFA tab book and raise you Megadeth: Rust in Peace tab book
Call
Countdown to extinction the solos in the book
I'll see all that and raise you all first seven Maiden transcription books. They were AWFUL.
@@redwildrider I'll second that
Rust In Peace assumes you can riff with Marty's finger span...
Oh my ! all those years of grinding and grinding and grinding and thinking that I suck suck suck... I felt this video in my soul
It's very interesting how so many people have the cognitive bias to trust a book over their ears. Usually seems to be because they just haven't had the time to develop their ear enough and so we just don't think to question it because we don't hear it
@@OdaKa BINGO!
@@OdaKa fair enough, though I was 13 - 16 years old at the time I grinded out this songbook
You realise, of course that pre-1998 most “Guitar” books were actually written by keyboard players. In fact some of the worst books written had no tablature at all. I also recall that any Guitar books published with tablature were often rife with incorrect chord inversions and rhythm errors, because the limitations of the software being used “corrected” visual anomalies that occur with cross-string, cross-octave and extended voicing notation. Spare a thought for the guy who transcribed Metallica’s AJFA - his dreadful errors are enshrined for eternity!
Nah, he shouldn't have taken the job if he was woefully underqualified for it.
The moment he said it had strange timings in it, software limitations was strangely the first things that came to mind.
What's so significant about 1998? You know guitar music has existed for hundreds of years, right?
I don't play any musical instruments, understand zero of what you're talking about, but I love watching your videos!!
Two things two learn from Mike... How to play guitar, how to stop the aging process.
How old is he?
I would guess early-mid 30s
Dude doesn't look a day over 25
@@eduardozepol2000 I believe he's over 40... It's wild
Living in Minnesota, where the sun comes out only half the year, probably helps slow the aging process!
Just here to say, I'm a young guitarist and your videos are huge help to me, not only are they very informative but they're also very fun to watch.
I aspire to reach your level one day, hehe. Thank you, really. You taught me alot
Love your profile pic
Same here! Always learning everyday with his methods! \m/
@@brenomordidaThank you!
This was one of the first tab books I bought in the early 90s and it was a journey, to say the least. As a kid, I saw "Authentic Tab" and just assumed people sit down with the band and transcribed it that way. Spent the first year thinking it was my skill level (which was correct in a sense), then about 6 months chasing tone, then just figured they're gods and this mere mortal would never get it to sound right. The intro to To Live Is To Die had me rage quitting at many points.
Same thoughts here. The AJFA tab book states "note for note transcriptions" and "authorized edition". So it had to be 100% accurate. 😂
Watching these bad tab book videos makes me thankful that I didn't have as many of them as I wanted to, back in the early 90's when I was first learning. Most of my tab came from guitar magazines, which were still not 100% accurate. Seek & Destroy was the first song that I learned from Tab. I love your videos! Keep up the great work! \m/
The 'Extreme - Pornograffiti' Tab book is up there as well. The 'Get The Funk Out' tapping section is hilarious.
Absolutely! Why even print something that is so obviously unplayable?
The whole book is awful. Lil Jack Horny is in the completely wrong tuning. A huge waste of money. I think it's worse than AJFA.
@@spicy321 true, no way to learn from that book :)
This was the first tab book i bought in the early 90s and i made and i ended up playing things closer to the real thing out of sheer frustration. Glad to know after all these years that i wasn't insane
Yea it was my first one to and it I new a lot of things on it didn’t make since this young people these days don’t realize the days of buying these tab books in the early nineties
Ahhh, this is why I could never learn a full song from that damn book when I was new to tabs!! Finally, after all these years the mystery revealed, thank you so much!!!!
Edit:
I'm being serious... this book is one of the main reasons I just gave up trying to learning solos period. Now, 20 years later, I'm having to unlearn so many things to now learn how to solo correctly...
Excellent vid. Thanks for making it. That tail at the end of the first fast riff in Blackened always annoyed me.
OMG! This is pretty amazing. I remember giving up on the Blackened riff just because it didn't sound right using the tab book. I thought it was my fault back then because I just started out :) Thanks, great video - as usual
What a happy accident, I listened to this on the way to work today and I'm wearing the t shirt with the album on 🙂
Such an album!
Hello there Lady justice!
Lady Justice!!!
@@Pattinson1004 by Lady Justice do you mean me or the lady in the album cover art? 🤔
@@HannahCope88 you're Lady justice \m/
Haha, I will forever do the 2323 dyers eve riff. It was embeded in my fingers. I always did Blackened by ear & was closer than the book.
Lol, back in the 90s when I was learning this album and I actually thought that was the way James played it and thought he was some sorta alien hybrid human. I thought, no way a mortal man could play that. So I just played it the same way the guy in this video played it, thinking to myself, “meh, it sounds pretty much like the record.” Fast forward to now when I find out I was actually right that the tab book was junk.
I swore I was stupid trying to read / play Blackened with this damn book. I feel so validated to know the friggin book was wrong
6:55 I have been playing the chorus riff in One using an open string power chord my whole life, didn't know it was incorrect..
still sounds cool like that though even if it’s wrong
Same
Wrong tabs (and wrong equipments) cost me at least a decade, I gave up on playing for many years, I thought i didn't have any talent... Even some professional youtubers are still doing the same thing, they are playing differ from the tabs they show, sometimes I feel like they are doing it on purpose.... Thank you Pal, you mentioned something that everybody pretends it dosen't exist...
I quit bass for years because I couldn’t learn Tom Sawyer (the bass riff during the solo) due to incorrect tabs. Simply put, they made the riff WAY harder than it actually was. Really shitty honestly and killed my confidence
@@alexmurphy5289 Both of you guys quit because of a bad tab? lmao gtfo If you quit because the first tab kicked your ass, right or wrong, it wasn't the tabs fault. Don't use the video as a crutch.
@@that_robguy didn't quit, just wasted alot of time in wrong direction due to wrong road signs...
@@alexmurphy5289 yeah, I can kinda relate. Whenever I found hard tabs I always found easier ways to play the same notes. Helped me so much later on
@@alexmurphy5289 bad tabs can be a bad obstacle to developing your ear in the early days. Later on it can be incentive to develop it more lol
So good video, and so true.
I remember having a red marker pen to mark one of the guitars when both are transcribed on the same string. Many other corrections is done in mine. Sick after paying for a book like that.
Funny that they often printed "Play it like it is" on the cover of those books.
9:46 I struggled with this riff for so long. it always sounded strange but I just assumed the book was right. I think I bought this book in 1995 for about $50NZ from the Rockshop. Great spotting all the mistakes!
I’m glad I grew up in a time where every song can easily be found, in correct tabs online. Must of been real confusing to start learning guitar from a book like that.
elektrik2704 most of us back in the day would learn by ear. I am so glad I didn’t grow up in the 2000’s. I would take the 70’s, 80’s and 90’s any day over the 90’s
Can you point me in the right direction ? Im learning and don't want to get frustrated trying to figure it out by myself
@@_kcy033 Honestly, CZcams is your best resource. There's videos with people teaching pretty much any song you can think of, often with on-screen tabs so you can follow along and can actually see someone playing through it and playing through it slowly, giving technique tips etc
You can also just look up people actually playing it and set the speed really slow and try and figure it out if you want a bit more of a challenge
@@_kcy033 Songsterr is USUALLY right 8/10 times.
@@jaseshade6512 I agree that learning by ear is very important for improving your playing, but there is so much resources and affordable instruments available today that makes learning the guitar so much more accessible to alot of people. And isn't that supposed to be a good thing?
When you’re learning and you learn it wrong, you cement that mess into your brain and it becomes so much harder to learn it the right way. There’s a few horrible tab books in print. There’s an Iron Maiden book that makes Dave and Adrian seem like they’re guitarded and noobs if it were correct. Like back in the early 90s when you had websites like Ultimate Tab or A-Z Tabs.... just nothing but horrible shit written by 12 year olds who thought they figured it out
I disagree that learning wrong tabs makes a song harder when learning the correct one.
You simply learn a different way to play something so it sounds similar, which means that when you learn the correct version, if you struggle with any of it, you can easily adjust on the fly by mixing fingerings from the not so good one thus kinda adding your own flavour to it. Help a you improvise better.
Plus, if it doesn't sound exactly like what you intended, yet still sounds good, maybe you'll explore a little, get creative. There is no downside. If you're playing, you're learning.
This is so great and brings back so many bad memories. I started playing guitar at 15. My brother who’s older was into the metal scene and played as well. He owned a bunch of these tabs books. This book is one of the first books I really sat down and tried to learn. I remember still being confused on parts. Still to this day the middle of blackened I’ve been playing the way the book thought me. Seems like a lot of songs you wanted to learn I tried as well and got those same parts wrong as well. Thank god for CZcams now. I can go back and relearn all the songs I learned wrong. Coming across this video was such a flashback of me sitting in my old room learning tabs for the first time and giving up on parts of songs cause it just was to hard.
I was waiting from the beginning of the video, hoping you'd mention the Blackened part. I loved that part so much but it never sounded right playing it. I started playing in 2003 and this was the first tab book I bought and taught myself to play guitar with. This is the first time I'm seeing it played correctly. Thank you so much!
A lot of those I was able to figure out on my own. My beginner teacher taught me well. The 2323 on Dyer's Eve did mess me up and never learned that one though. You left out the unnecessary bar chords on the main riff on "To Live is to Die".
It is funny the most tabs are written harder than what is really played in reality...
I don't know how anyone ever perpetuated the 2 3 2 3 myth. It doesn't even sound like that.
Guitar world transcription of Scarified by Racer X. I still have the magazine. For the longest time I thought that song was the most difficult thing in the world.
Of course, it’s not an easy song but the tab In that magazine made it seem impossible and caused me to stay away from arpeggios because I thought I could never play them.
Most are not. Most Guitar players don't truly understand how to read tablature.
It's far more than numbers on strings .
The thing that always gets me is, why do so many people transcribe lower-string riffs up onto higher strings where the timbre is completely different? It's not even fun to play the riffs that way.
@@ICantStopMakingNoise different sound. Especially power chords. makes them more saturated and less bassy. Other times I think it's cause a PC programmed them that way. Guitar pro has a feature that moves the notes to higher strings for the sake of ease of play but it never makes it any easier. Low strings get muddy after the the 7th fret, doing any chords really.
What I have to highlight here is the humbuleness, to accept when you are wrong, is a brave thing, thats the best way to grow. Great comments in this video. I like it because it happened to me with this book also, but now a use the books as a reference only. For better results I search videos like yours to enhance. Great video, you play fantastic, congratulation.
I have that version of the book and most of the rhythm incorrectness I either figured out or strongly suspected. Thank you for this compilation and I'm definitely going to come back to this one day soon.
I had that book, it was brutal. I left it in the back of a girls jeep and lost it. I think that did me a favor. So many bad memories from using this book.
Good I was too poor to buy all those tab books!
Lucky one :)
@@stephenfrancis303 haha! sounds like something I would do
Same problems for me. I got the book back when it first came out. I thought it was me that what I was playing didn't sound right. I had a 20-something years long block on playing Blackened because of this book. Then I watched a Ben Eller video about Blackened and it completely unblocked me and now I play it loud every chance I get! Thanks for sharing your story of frustration. Good to know it wasn't just me.
One...
I remember ignoring so many of those tabs because they just didn't sound right. I also knew that some of those hand movements were not correct. Looking at your video is like taking a splinter out of my fingers. Awesome work man.
The Japanese band score books for Dream Theater When Dream and Day Unite and Anthrax State of Euphoria make And Justice For All look like it was transcribed by James Hetfield.
I got that tab book when it came out as my "big present" for my 15th birthday. I think it retailed for £29:99 in the sheet music shop. That was a lot of money back then, I bought the double vinyl brand spanking new for £9:99. I wouldn't change a thing tho and that tour/era was a total face melting experience.
Great video! Rewinding tape back in 1994 over and over to figure out what they play in the blackened opening riff was as frustrating as tunning the g string on stratocaster... and then you get the official tabs and decide to become an alcoholic
Oh my god. I had completely forgotten that! When you were showing the bad parts I remember trying to learn from that book years and years ago. Even as a beginner back then I remember thinking, “This can’t be right...” It almost made me give up, because it just wasn’t sounding the same. Thanks for clarifying so many years later. Haha.
Great video dude!
Just subscribed because I didn't do it earlier and I saw lots of your vids! Shame on me.
Blackened is also my favorite Metallica song, such a shame that kids got so discouraged reading this tab book. The transcription sounds more like a Primus song, lol
The stylophone guy? Greetings from brazil!
AJFA s my favorite album and Blackened s absolutely my #1 favorite from them. There’s something about the aggression of that tune, the changes and my favorite .....when the flip the opening riff after the solo. Same riff but caught my attention immediately. Never gets old..
I have that book and the frustrating part for me was the harmonies for both James and Kirk. They would just put in one tab line that sounded kind of like both. I would rather just give me at least one correct line! For example “to live is to die”. Great video, and so relatable!
Buddy i just wanna say that you are good making all your videos. Plus you are a good Guitar player. AND i love every single video of you. Good explaining everything AND good voice AND i have to say congratulations AND i wish you the Best of the success AND good Energy from Medellín Colombia
That Blackened riff, when i was a kid starting, used to confuse me! I knew it didn't sound right, but didn't have the experience and capacity to understand it myself. And i trusted to book as the "truth". Until the day (years later) i visited my uncle in LA ,and i saw this Metallica tutorial VHS in a guitar shop with a couple of songs, including Blackened. And then, this guy showed me the way... it was like the Ray of God. :-)
That’s funny I had never heard that book was wrong but that explains why I could never quite get some of it.
Same here, i gave up on some of the songs cos i "just couldn't play it right". Thankfully i learned to figure songs out by ear over the years and that changes everything
I totally forgot how incorrect this tab book was lol. Like you, it was my fav metal album and seeing that book brings all the good memories. But as I watched this video, I was like “oh yeah, that’s right! I hated those mistakes!”. Thanks for reminding me and also making me realize I wasn’t crazy lol😁👍
I feel bad i forgotten about your channel, i subbed again 🤘🤘🤘🤘 i learned alot from you back when your channel first came on.
It's probably hard to imagine a time when there was nothing else out there and you had to work it out for yourself.
I think that working it out for yourself really develops you as a player, especially when playing with other musicians, when some one shows a riff in a jam you can pick it up really quick.
Years ago when I was still in the early stages of learning, I bought tab books that were so badly transcribed that I had to work the chords out for myself. Like instead of an E flat power chord shown as an open E and a 2 on the A string, a D sharp box diagram, making it a damned sight harder than It should be. How the fuck these got approval from the bands I will never know.
No, no it's not....
I do remember buying the In Utero tab book back when, before the internet though
The Frayed Ends riff sounds really cool slowed down.
Man, so glad someone finally said something. I remember how puzzled I was by the "official" tab for Blackened. The opening riff in the book sounded nothing like the song. It's not even close, no matter how you slice it. I always wandered how this book passed QA. It was like "the earth is flat", but in Mettallica tab book terms.
I remember going to my local library and borrowing an old Ride The Lightning tab book which had same kind of notational mistakes as the AJFA book and it messed up me too as a kid. Also, love your guitar tone!
I had that tab book back when it first came out. The intro to "One" absolutely drove me nuts because it was completely wrong, and I couldn't figure out why I couldn't get it to sound right. I eventually gave up and just played it the way it sounded in the actual song.
I remember alot of tab books being incorrect back in the day,, even some Pantera pages. Disrespect
Dis-respect! Stand still! What didn't you say?
Mike, love the videos and especially the bad tab book ones especially as a lifelong diehard Metallica fan who had the same ones. Would love to see you tackle the old Pearl Jam Ten tab book!
I still have mine on the shelf. However, you are absolutely correct, and nowhere else is this demonstrated in that opening riff to "Blackened". I never could play it like the book said and make it sound like the album, so I thought it was me. This was 30 years ago, mind you, way before you could research it online. Even this guy in the neighborhood who could shred slayer solos and such couldn't make sense of the tab, and he had to slow the tape down to figure it out himself, lol. I never did get the hang of it completely, now I'm out of the game due to nerve damage in both hands, but at least I know it's official.
Oh my god. The sweet old times when you got back from high school, got that book and wanted someone to die horribly because of those nearly impossible and absurd tabs...
Ok... The blackened actually infuriated me, because, although i didn't use the book to learn the riffs and solos from Justice, i've learned most of it just from listening, and i didn't use slowdowns and shit, just launched the album and listened a bunch of times to get what james was doing, and blackened main riff was one of the easiests to figure it out (although i struggled a lot at the beginning to get the proper speed). The dyers eve is another that is just strange how the just thought "of course james is doing 2 - 3 and not the obvious thing that he did all his carrier that is 2 - 2"
Dude this is pleasantly hilarious. I remember these books when I was learning guitar. Despite not knowing anything about music theory, time signatures and such at the time I for sure knew some of these tabs were garbage, especially the Blackened tab that you referenced. Thanks for the laugh, tis good to see someone else discuss my frustrations as a teenager.
When I first started playing, for years I loved Metallica and had all these bad tab books and was so frustrated as to why so many parts felt and sounded incorrect. Now watching these videos showing me all this really pisses me off. That was when I was 19-22 years old. 54 years old now and I feel real bad for my younger self. I honestly gave up on trying to learn so much Metallica back then.
But now I play loads of this old stuff because there is YT videos galore showing the correct way. I detest whoever was responsible for such garbage getting produced and sold to us. Sad thing, these god awful tabs are STILL in guitar stores...
Imagine if Trujillo used those tabs to audition for Metallica. Oh wait, there’s no bass on that album 💀
You can search here... a guy re-recorded this album with a bass....it sound very good,AND JUSTICE FOR JASON...🤘🤘
I edit and fix guitar tabs once in a while, and if there's anything I've learned, it's that tab books are always inaccurate. They're good as a basic guideline, but they should never be treated as 100% correct.
[video starts] 'wait, don't i... [pauses video, runs to other room] yep. i totally do have this.'
this was one of the first music books i got, think it was a gift. even though i love this album, i was only adventurous enough to learn the intro to 'and justice' - rest looked too intimidating while i was still teaching myself to play. never noticed any of the stuff you brought up. funny to see it now, 20 or so years since i last looked at it. followed along in your video, and, yup, have the same edition.
Thanks for this! I gave up playing To live is to die because of that exact reason. Everything you pointed out is exactly what I struggled with when trying to play the songs using that damn tab book. I feel so much better now knowing it wasn't me, it was the book.
The open string version on ONE is correct. That's James style
Where did James talk about the Dyers Eve thing? Any link?
Really great series dude- I used to buy these books or see stuff in the early days online or in guitar world magazine and gave up too!
Dude! Awesome video. I bought this book right when it came out. 23232323 screwed me up for 30+ years! I think another part they screwed up in that book is in One for the 3+ acoustic guitar lines in that awesome part right before the first lyrics and then again a couple times after the heavy distorted chorus. The way they have that split up in the book is annoying and I think they have the track Hetfield plays live shown wrong. Hopefully you know what I’m talking about. I think one part was even on a separate page that the other two tracks. It made no sense.
Yeah, Jesus I remember I had this book - the only good thing is that it taught me to use my ears more!
Have you tried Blood Sugar Sex Magic? Don't think they even heard the album. Or they were at least in the next room over while it played.
Mother's Milk is pretty terrible too -- they somehow ended up tabbing the dance remix of "Higher Ground" rather than the song on the actual album.
This INCREDIBLY helpful brother! I'm starting to get into writing books myself with tabs chords and notation. Some of these moves these guys pulled are dastardly, I'd never put two harmonizing guitars on one lines with slashes in the tabs! And of course unnecessary time signature changes are ridiculous!. This all just looks lazy to me, blegh!!
Man, this was one of the first tab books i bought as a kid and it was always frustrating to learn from.
Back before smart phones and internet all i had was the books.
When i boxed up all my guitar world mags, i put them in the special backing and slip covers so some day i could show my son.
To Learn from your mistakes is to DIE!
Er.. wait, that's not right...
Great vid! that's what makes this channels so great, even as a teacher, you're still learning!
I cant lie, I thought the whole Dyers Eve 2323 debate was about the intro before it goes into the heavy E and F power chords
Wait it isnt?!?
I've finally gotten my ear to a level that I can now notice mistakes in tab fairly often and it was kind of world shattering to realize all the stuff I learned when I was first starting out, I learned completely wrong.
Great video!!! This should be a series ha
10:00 Metalica - Whitened
this really is frustrating, Pantera has a tab book that is just as bad as this, almost like they get classical guitarists who don't know anything about metal to make these books and the bands i guess don't even review or approve them.
Metallica in 1988 had way more pressing concerns than checking the accuracy of their tab books. I'd bet most bands never even knew these books were being made, the labels probably made the deals with Hal Leonard without the musicians being involved. Tabs written by the guitarists themselves is a relatively new development.
I was getting ready to complain that blackened wasn’t mentioned and then you hit it haha! Thanks dude!
aww man, your video on and justice for all got taken down! I was right in the middle of watching it lol.
We should start a class action law suit for damages!! I had all those tab books, but the worst one was the Ozzy Osbourne one!
Damage Inc?
Iwas a victim of this book 20 years ago..even being a noob i could tell there was full of errors.
And I had to defend my corrections to my friends but without having the speed to make it sound right so they took me as an arrogant.
I can't stand people who refuse to listen to anyone and not even consider what someone is saying. Truth is, your "friends" were the arrogant (and ignorant) ones. I'm all too familiar with that nonsense myself, so much that when I know the right answer to anything, I just keep it to myself and let everyone else figure it out on their own. 😂😂😂
That’s tough when you know you’re right but can’t play it perfectly so they don’t believe you.
I feel you on that one 👍
This makes me glad I don't lean so hard on tablature like I did when I first started. Somewhere along the way, I started forcing myself to try and learn stuff by ear and only when something doesn't sound or feel right when playing along to the songs will I look up the tabs. My musical ear is getting all together better with me learning this way.
Mike, the metal forensics guy!🤘I remember writing in metallic a tab to make corrections, and using a highlighter on those slashed harmony sections
Blackened is my favorite Metallica song too
That riff was written by Jason, incredible song and definitely one of my favorites by them as well
@@alexmurphy5289 Also the bass on it is fantastic
"If you were to ask me what my favorite metal album of all time is, I would say and justice for all."
Dude no homo, let's get married
6:50 I was taught you can fret the G note while simultaneously muting the A string with your thumb. Then you’re able to get to the A5 chord next without much of a shift.
Sometimes, when these books do drop tuning, they stupidly don't adjust the sheet music notes (that part I use, because I don't learn with tabs) if it's Dropped D for example, the note can be that open 6th string D, but on the sheet music it's written as the normal E. I guess they do this because technically it's the same "playing" (but not the same note) with them both being open 6ths but its more confusing than convenient and I think it's some of the stupidest general decisions they've made.