Creating your own song book with youtube and tabs

I'm curious if anyone else has figured out a really good way to make their own song books from all the Youtube videos and TABs, PDF files floating around.

I keep hearing all these great tunes that I want to learn, so I have been printing out the tabs and just have them in a stack on my desk. Sometimes (a lot of times) I need to go rewatch the associated Youtube videos so I can get the right timing and feel to a song, but then I have to do a search in Youtube to find the video. It gets to be a hassle.

Thoughts?

I do the same thing minus the printing out. I had write the easier tabs into my notebook and the more difficult stuff I bring up on my tablet or my phone.

It gets easier though, when you practice a song for a while, you won't have to go look up the video. That's why it helps to keep a notebook. (my bassist keeps his notes in a Justin Bieber notebook... And I love making fun of him for it hehe)

julie said:

Sometimes (a lot of times) I need to go rewatch the associated Youtube videos so I can get the right timing and feel to a song, but then I have to do a search in Youtube to find the video. It gets to be a hassle.

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Can't you just put them in your youtube "favorites" or playlist or whatever they call it so you don't have to search for them?

mine are all on dropbox, even if I copy and paste into a text file.

Bill1, I wouldn't even know where to start with learning to convert regular music notation into a song I could play on my uke that wasn't just strumming chords (I prefer fingerstyle tunes). I can read music a little, but have always found it easier to use TAB. Really learning to read and understand musical notation would be wonderful, but seems like such a daunting and impossible task. Do you have any advice on how to start?

I copy and paste the tabs to whatever song I want to learn into a word document.

For uniformity, all the songs in my book are in the same font (I happened to choose Times New Roman) so the first thing I will do is to change the font. I like the song to be as big as possible while still fitting in the margins and whenever possible, kept to one page so I'll start by sizing the print to 12 and go from there. I'll make the title of the song the next font size larger and center it on the top of the page.

To save lines and space and for ease of reading, I like to incorporate the chords and chord changes within brackets within the lyrics. Ex. [C] lyric lyric lyric lyric [F] lyric lyric lyric [G7] lyric lyric lyric...etc. If the key isn't right, I'll play around with it until I find the best key for my voice. I'll then use the "find and replace" function to quickly change all the chord names throughout the document to the right key. At the end of the song I will copy and paste in labeled chord diagrams so that anyone who is new to the song can look at it and see all the chords used in a song and how they are fretted.

If I don't know the song very well, I'll pull up a YouTube performance or even multiple versions of the song and listen to them while I follow along on the song sheet. I'll listen to it as many times as necessary as I sing along and then proceed to start singing and playing it on my own from the song sheet. Once I'm confident that there are no errors, missing chords, wrong lyrics and it's written down the way I want to continue playing it in the right key, I'll print it out, put it in a page protector and put it in my 3-ring song binder.

I am trying to compile all of mine into separate PDF files. My plan later is to get a tablet and use it just for tabs so this format should work good. Also I can combine different PDF's latter and make a song book from it.

I'm using google drive for a most of my own arrangements. If I based them on a YouTube video then I will add a link to that video in the document. But, if i really don't want to lose a copy of that original video I will download and save it. I keep songbooks from other sources in Dropbox. I can keep local copies of those for offline use just as easily.

Some advantages for google drive, I can share or download any of them as a PDF with just a couple clicks. I like the version control features in drive as well.

Julie,
I'd agree with everything Bill1 said about learning "traditional" music notation and ABC. After strumming chords and fingerpicking the odd few tunes since the '60's I decided to learn pennywhistle about three years ago. Learning to read music (as opposed to tab) was almost mandatory if I didn't want to limit myself to those tunes that someone else had decided to write up in tab. After just a few weeks I was picking up a music book and deciding which tune I wanted to try next, without necessarily ever having heard it! Since then I've taken up flute, clarinet, mandolin and banjo ... all because I could now read music (at the age of 60+). I may not be (or ever be) of performance quality, but I really do enjoy myself
Learning to read for the ukulele is relatively easy because of the limited musical range of the instrument. Until you start to get a bit advanced you barely stray off the five lines of the staff, and there are whole tunebooks available for free with hundreds of tunes that can be played straight off the page on the ukulele ... check out http://www.campin.me.uk/Music/Chalumeau.abc for starters

Learn just a few scales to start with ... you can ignore the g string for the time being ... just get used to playing up and down an octave or so, starting on the open C string, and say the notes out loud to yourself as you go. Next try a scale in D (two sharps). After a couple of hours (not necessarily all at once) you should have an idea of where all the notes are on the fingerboard. Now go to some simple tunes, "Baa Baa Black Sheep", "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star" etc., read the notes out loud and find them on the instrument ... a couple more hours and you'll be away (honestly, if you REALLY want to do it, it's not difficult

Good luck

Although it's easy to just stick with TAB because there's little thinking involved, I do know that I get frustrated when I don't know how a passage is really supposed to sound without hearing someone play it first. And then I have to hear how the person is playing the exact TAB that I'm trying to learn because otherwise, it won't make sense. Learning ABC really does sound intriguing. Looks like I have a lot of "work" ahead of me Thank you for all the advice and food for thought!

I am not sure if there is a compiler with ukulele TAB output yet,

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... TablEdit will do it. It's not foolproof as ABC has no way (I know of) of indicating which string one should be using for which note, so sometimes TablEdit will suggest the fourth string open (for instance) when it's preferable to play the second string, third fret (or vice versa), but it's a fine start

I've had adults ask me to teach them to read music and they get so frustrated if they already know tab. It takes patience, and I believe you are utilizing a different part of the brain when you are actually reading musical notes on a staff as opposed to tab.

Fred Sokolow's Fingerstyle Ukulele method book is a good place to start. He uses standard musical notation right above each tab. So, it all lines up as you are learning. You only need to take a little time to label the notes on the musical staff. Lines, from bottom to top, are EGBDF and the spaces, from bottom to top, are FACE.

As said above, slowing playing scales and thinking of the note names while you see them on a musical staff helps in memorizing the note names on the lines and spaces. Here's a good visual example of a C scale, http://ukuleleadventure.wikispaces.com/Scales