Interactive Tab Guide

Here at Guitar Club we pride ourselves on having the highest quality, most carefully planned and best produced lessons on the internet. Not only that, since we are all experienced tutors we understand the need for supporting material too, be that carefully written notes, chord and scale diagrams or tabs. In this blog post I want to give you an overview of Soundslice - the interactive tab player we use on the Club. It's packed with useful features that can really help you to nail those licks!

What do you get with the interactive tabs?

There are many features which set these interactive tabs apart, the headlines are:

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  The tab plays back along with a demo video

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  You can show and hide various aspects of the music to suit your learning style

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  You can adjust the speed to suit you

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  You can loop sections

These and the many other features allow you to really maximise your practice time and get the most out of your playing - something we're very passionate about!

Finding the tabs

First thing to note is that the tabs will only be visible if you're logged in with an active membership (or trial). If you need help with this please feel free to get in touch. Once you're on a lesson that includes a tab you will see it here:

Clicking on 'Interactive Tab' will open a slimline version of the tab allowing you to view it alongside the main lesson video. You can also click the fullscreen button if you want to see as much of the tab as possible.

General Layout

It's split between the playback and the notation, with all the player controls along the bottom. If you want to see the video in more detail you can drag the slider to adjust the size.

Customise the layout

You may have noticed that by default we show only the tab, and you can't see the rhythm at all. This is something you can easily change to suit your preference. Just click on the settings button on the bottom right to open the settings then choose which option works best for you. The best part - this setting will be saved for you across the entire site!

Player Controls

The majority of what you'll need is all on the player controls bar at the bottom of the screen. Let's looks at that in a bit more detail:

The key things you need right away here are the speed adjustment and the recordings selection. With those two options you'll be able to get practicing right away (but for the curious we will go into much greater detail later on!).

Adjust the speed

When you're learning a song it's very useful to be able to adjust the speed! Simply click the minus to drop the speed, or for more options click on '100%'.

If the recording is set to Audio or Video the speed will be shown as a percentage. If it's set to Synthetic you'll see a BPM. The Synthetic playback can be slowed right down without any degradation and audio can also be slowed down a lot and still sound good!

Choose the recording

For songs that have more than one part we have included different recordings to allow you to see the tab play along with each part. We have also included audio and a 'synthetic' version. Click Recordings in the player control bar to select the recording you need. What we consider to be the most useful recording for a lesson will be selected by default, but we like to keep the options open!

The recording will default to Video, but if you'd like more tab on screen you can select and audio track and just see the tab! The synthetic recording plays back a midi version of the track. It doesn't sound as good as the true audio, but is very useful for looping and slowing down.

Loop sections

To loop a section simply click (or tap) and drag to highlight the bars you would like to loop. This will select them and make the playback loop.

Practicing tips

This brings us nicely to our next video which runs through a few useful ideas on using the interactive tabs as a tool to help you practice.

Top tips

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  If you can't hum it don't expect to be able to play it - make sure you've listened to the part enough to internalise it.

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  Learn the notes and the techniques - particularly for faster runs the use of position shifts and legato can be the difference between being able to play a lick and not.

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  Aim to start with a slow but even tempo - don't slow down for the hard bits! Take the tempo of the whole thing down so you're always playing in time.

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  Use the speed builder to gradually increase tempo - keep your hands on the guitar and your eyes on the prize!

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  Stay focussed! Always have a goal in mind, be sure of what you're working on and try not to drift into other things

Deep dive

We've now covered everything you need to get up and running with the interactive tab, but there is a lot more you can do with it! For the curious, please check out this deep dive video...