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Feedback:
First of all let me say I love the layout. Nice and simplistic. Very user friendly. Can’t wait for the population of more songs!
Suggestions:
It would be nice to have a “back” link on the bottom or top of the Privacy and Terms page. (not that many people will be looking at this anyway, nut hey if they do it just makes it easier to get back to the site.
Also, when you hit the print option, same as above, a re-link to the tab you printed from would be nice.
Clicked a couple of ads, most worked, some did not. Want to make sure your getting paid when someone clicks through. Could just be a scripting error from the Ad Server.
That’s it for now…Great jobs guys…thanks for letting me be a part of it.
I love the layout , everything is easy to find!
Hey, so far I believe the layout is really well planned out and is easy to navigate through. The only thing I see as being a problem is the size of the font when you click on a letter of a band to browse. I clicked on the letter A and my scroll bar turned into a small dot on the side, and I think this may be frustrating for some people to find a band when it may take a while to find it at the bottom. It may just be because I’m used to the old site, but I’m just throwing it out there.
So far however, I think all is going well and there are only a small amount of bugs here and there that are getting ironed out.
something i noticed was that not all the tabs had an artist name on them, just lettin you know
Okay, so I’m looking through the site right now, and I’m pretty much just planning on putting in my two cents on whatever I see. So I apologize right now for rambling. :-P
The first thing I noticed when I opened up the site is the ad placement. The ad placement seems very nice. Mostly kept out of the way so that you can still do what you’re trying to do…except for the one. The one ad that is right in the middle of the screen (directly below the ‘band letters’)is a big shut down for me. Maybe you could move it down a little more just so it’s not the first thing you see, but I just don’t like where it is.
I really like the classic search box. Now, with the new and updated site, would we be able to add may an “album” choice in the drop down box? Maybe we could even add an “advanced search” link to make things a little bit easier.
Another thing I was wondering is if there would be any easier way to search through songs under an artist. Maybe it would help to have them order by album, song (links to the starting letter), year, etc. Just something so we’re not trying to scroll forever to find a certain song.
Come to think of it, on the very first page where that ad is, maybe it would be a little more useful to have a “News” or a “Blog” kind of thing to invite visitors when they first come to the site.
I noticed that all the “More XXX” links lead you straight back to the home page. I’m assuming that’s temporary until you get more of it figured out.
I’m also guessing that with the user profiles, you’re planning on making links from the tab so that viewers can easily looking at the information about the person who posted the tab in the first place.
Well, I think I’ve rambled enough. These are just the few things I noticed after about 20 minutes of scouring. It is looking GREAT and I can’t wait to watch this progress. You guys are doing a great job, and if there’s anything more or specific that you’d like me to do, just let me know.
I’m PSYCHED!!!!…and thanks for choosing me to help you out. :-)
til next time,
drummer7475
Hey as I was reading about the new licenses situations and you guys needing to buy them, I was also thinking it would be nice if you could place a link/box somewhere on the site where you could be redirected to songs that were recently…bought? (I don’t really know the best way to describe it) I think this will help people find when their favorite song/artist is now available on the site.
all good! all there needs to be is more songs…like stuff from no dought! :D ♥
Ok…a little more feedback or wishlist if you may.
It would be nice to be shown only the drum tabs if you choose DRUM from the search box (guitar for guitar, bass for bass). They ay it is resulting now is to give you all the tabs and you have to scroll down to whichever instrument you want. Again, this is not that big of a deal but would be a nice touch.
Doing great guys…thanks a lot!
I have to say I like the way all this looks. Sorry I’m late on giving you my feedback but I just got the email this morning when I looked and saw it in my “Spam” Folder.
I haven’t got a chance to really get deep into the site. But so far I like what I see. The color scheme is very well done. However, for some reason I feel like everything is too big? For some reason I get a feeling I have to sit back an extra foot to get a grasp of the whole page.
Maybe adding some extra boarders might help that problem? Also help define where certain areas are at?
I’ll go Bug Hunting and brainstorm some more ideas tomorrow when I get more time.
Oh, and is there going to be a Forum or Request area for songs that you would like someone to help you figure out?
But so far, well done indeed.
You guys are doing a lot of work, and we appreciate that it’s free. However, maybe you should have a donation area where we can help you out ourselves of our “own free will.” It’s just an idea.
til next time,
drummer7475
Personal Opinion: Those fucking bastards!
Professional Opinion: As they say, the show MUST go on.
[More feedback later. Just doing my morning website patrol.]
I went through the site and thought of a few ideas.
1. Have links to the guitar/bass/drums on the band block instead of having to go into it and go through 2 more pages. I think it’d be easier if you could click the “(3 Guitar Tabs)” and then go straight to the list of Guitar Tabs. Instead of having to click through extra pages. (More opinions requested)
2. Perhaps adding an “Acoustic” Section along with it. Some songs in the Acoustic Variations are not always the same. But that’s not a big one.
3. Adding a Numerical/Symbol selection for occasional bands that have #’s or symbols at the start of their names. However this isn’t big either since there’s few of them.
4. In the Band Selection Screen, instead of having two rows different colors, I would think it’d be best if they were checkered. It’d make it a lot easier to go through and try and find your band.
5. The Size Problem that I have said before, maybe cutting some of the margins off the boarders. Ex: Off the songs you can select after you pick your desired band. Maybe make them a little smaller so the pages aren’t excessively long.
6. Dividing the bands into separate pages so you don’t have one MASSIVE long page.
I have two examples. 1st one I like the most.
ex. 1) [B.B.King - Badfinger] — [Badly Drawn Boy - Bayside] (and so on)
ex. 2) [B-Bi] — [Bj - Br] (and so on).
Just a few quick thoughts but I got to go to work. Let me know what you think of my ideas.
Thanks.
Hey, just a thought. I personally think it would be really awesome if you had the Guitar, Bass, and Drum sections in slightly different colors. Keep the layouts the same, but maybe have Guitar have the red primary color as it is, have Bass be blue, and Drums be green, or something like that. That way it’d be easy to tell which part you’re in, and it’d just be kind of cool. :)
One thought I just had, would it be possible to have the tabs listed according to their star ranking instead of some random order? That is to say, when a song has multiple tabs.
In addition to Michael’s idea:
Yes I think that’d be a great idea. But I think we should keep the Red/White layout color scheme. I think throwing Green and Blue in there would throw it off.
Perhaps different shades of red?
I second Ghstman’s idea.
As to my number 4 in my 2nd previous post:
Maybe you can have it go back and forth fading from Dark Gray to Light Gray left to right, then the next line, right to left.
Kind of a Zig-Zag of fading gray. I think that would look real cool.
Looks good as of now guys.
Just wondering if you have considered doing an RSS feed for new and updated tabs. People could subscribe to a certain band and get updates for new tabs or updated tabs. There might be too much information and too many feeds though, I don’t know just an idea.
Maybe instead of a different color scheme have a background picture of a drum set for the drum tabs, guitar for guitar tabs, etc.
May I say i really like the web site and honestly am in love with it. I think it would make it quite a bit more convinient if when you searched for a song, they had an option to sort by rating.
I saw that the comment i posted above was already mentioned. I am not sure if this to be possible, but for those of us that own Vox amps, they have a website for the settings for the songs. Like maybe if it had at least a link to the preset for the song. I understand that probably isnt possible but it would make the website that much more awesome
@Andy
Basic style changes are coming in a couple of days for guitar/bass/drum. To start, it will just be the main black/gray image of the guitar that will change – later, we may change how some other things are displayed.
I also mentioned recently that it’s possible in the future we’ll have a few different themes that users can choose. I’d rather do this than force a color scheme for each instrument.
@Andy
RSS feeds for several different parts of the site will definitely be a feature to be added in the near future. Thanks for the reminder.
Love the site, but I have one small problem with the layout. Whenever I search for a song/band, I have to scroll down before I see anything because of the giant block of the background graphic for the most popular songs. Could this be moved to the side maybe? Or just taken out except for on the home page? Just my $.02
Don’t like to double post but I can’t edit so bleh. Anyways I double checked and it’s not actually the background graphic for most popular songs, it just looks like it should be a background graphic for something, but there’s nothing there.
Hey guys really nice job on the new site. I really like it. I know I am probably looking further ahead in the sites development, but is there going to be a request function for artists that are not listed? Don’t know how that would work with the new licensing system, but I was just curious. As far as the site, it’s great and I can’t wait to see what other updates to the site you guys come up with.
Hey, I hadn’t noticed any so was wondering, are you planning on adding any Guitar Pro or Powertab song downloads. I prefer to use those rather than reading the tabs off an internet page and find them generally more accurate.
First, thanks to everybody over at MXTabs for bringing back this wonderful resource for musicians everywhere. The last few years have been tough without you :).
I like the new interface very much, but I have one major problem with it. Since the artists are not listed as standard text, one cannot use Ctrl-F to find a phrase. This makes it much harder to find particular artists quickly. For instance, to find guitar tabs for Sublime, I was used to simply clicking on S, then hitting Ctrl-F, and typing “Sublime” and I could see the tabs in a matter of seconds. The interface would be much better if we could still do this.
That would be nice to choose our own scheme.
Another idea came to me while looking at a tab that had chords in it. On ultimate-guitar.com (sorry to compare UG to MX) when there are chords on a tab you can mouse over them and there is a little box that shows the fingerings on the guitar neck. I don’t know if that’s exclusive to UG but I thought it would be a nice add-on for later when everything important works.
Personally I think that we should support the Tabber to explain their variation for that chord. Since a G to me may be [320033] and only [320003] to you.
Or better yet, we should have a section for basic help for other guitar players. Maybe have a basic guide for different chords and such.
I know I would appreciate a big list of tabbed out chord fingerings. Then I could just go down the list and practice each chord to help me memorize and expand my guitar playing skills. A lot of songs re-use the same old chords. But adding different ones in there with their different variations would be extremely helpful to any guitar player that doesn’t have all of them memorized.
Since MxTabs has been coined the best and most helpful guitar tab site for the beginner and intermediate guitar players, why not really give them some help?
Which opens the door for MxTabs to be the most friendly and helpful Tab Site on the net. Which thus would create ultimate support for musicians to progress their abilities and go further in their playing lives. Thus increasing the sales of CDs, Guitars, and other various instrumental and musical needs.
Which we could use to our advantage to help the stubborn Publishers from keeping the rights to their songs.
I think we should definitely have a Basic Help section, maybe a tab if that for easier access and making it well known. Which would have a Q&A Section which more skillful players could give helpful tips and everything else.
Even know I say “we” as it’s you and me, but I mean “we” as in the whole group and community. I think it would be best for everyone.
What I’ve seen so far I’ve liked, the layout is snazzy and appealing.
I noticed someone mentioned the long band lists when just searching by letter and I dont think that having the sub-section lettering is the best idea.
Maybe having it as an option, as in going initially to the first full list and then being able to break it down into the sub-sections.
The only reason I think the full list should be kept though is because I’ve always been a proponent of the Ctrl-F function. Seems to work in finding things on long lists.
One other suggestion, (I mentioned this on another blog post before I saw this “thread”) perhaps a running list of Labels that have given permission to publish their tabs would be a good idea. I know most people dont pay attention to who their favorite band signs with but it would also let the community know how the legal battle for “free” tablature is going.
You do have a good point about that, Bill.
But I think something is better than nothing. We could also inform the reader that this is just a guideline, and not something to be dependent upon.
Even though with all the different variations, practice will eventually lead them to change the chord themselves to fit the song that they’re attempting to learn.
first i’d like to thank you guys for letting me help out. I’ll try to repay you by being as helpful as possible.
1. I like the layout of the front page. very easy to use, and the tab (pardon the pun) idea so you can immediately get to guitar, bass or drum tabs is pure genius.
2. I see there will be a spot for “recent tab comments.” Personally, I wouldn’t get any use out of this feature. If I’m getting, say a Rolling Stones tab, I’m just gonna go right to it, and not bother to see what someone recently said about a Metallica tab.
3. I saw this mentioned already, but I think it would be a good idea to divide the artist pages even further. Instead of just having “B” divide it into “Ba-Bc, Bd-Bf” etc.
4. Reduce the text size of the artist pages! the spacing is good, but I’ don’t really like the size.
5. Like the “related tabs” and the “tag this tab” buttons. A quick question though. With the “tag this tab” feature, does it add to something like a favorites list, or is it like on amazon.com, where tags are just random words that relate to the tab?
If its the former, brilliant idea.
If it’s the latter, I’m not really sure how useful that is. And you’re gonna have people writing inappropriate things in there. Just sayin.
6. Finally, I personally find it awkward to have to scroll down the page while attempting to play at the same time. Maybe expand the tab to the entire width of the page, and move the “rate, tag, might also like” boxes to the top or bottom of the page?
Whew…That’s all I’ve got for now. Overall great job. Really most of my complaints are pretty minor, and I’m not sure if they’re even fixable without re-writing a bunch of stuff.
For some reason your website got really slow on me. It started getting slow early Wed AM Dec 5 soon after I started using it. I am using a T1 line. Thanks for allowing me to be an early alpha tester. Do you really want my comments or are you just going to monitor our usage?
I don’t know if it’s already arranged to work out, or if somebody mentioned it already, but I think that there if you are under a certain instrument tab and click on a letter to browse by, you should only get the instrument that you’re under, or able to sort by instrument and letter of band name. does that make sense?!?!?! thanks for working so hard to get the site to be working and free again, by the way
you know while this site was down i have been looking for drum tabs for a long time and i realized that this was the only good tab site all the otherone you have to subcribe to a fourm….. this you get the songs for free and you can pritty much find any song on the site once it gets up and running again…. h ope you can open it soon
-jake thanks for letting me test it :)
Hi, I forgot my password and had to reset it. Now I have a password composed of random numbers and letters. Is there anyway I can change it to a different password? E-mail me please.
Yes, that is what I was just about to post actually, pretty much. As far as I have been able to find, there’s no section for my account to change password, email address, or any other information. Aside from that, everything looks really nice!
I HATE the new layout in the fact that I can only see 20 or so bands per page. I liked before how I could see the whole list on one page. I don’t want to have to guess how many pages away a song is going to be. I want to scroll down to it and click it. At worst, do something like yahoo music, where I can select a scroll down that gives the range of the page and let me click on that.
hey guys
i really like the new look
just a quick question…..
are we going to have profiles to view
like a myspace sorta thing but not as crazy, maybe something like bassmasta had where we can upload songs
When are we going to be able to test out posting our own Guitar Tabs?
I am going to start tabbing out some songs, so I can be prepared to test out the posting/rating/feedback features of it.
When searching for a band’s tabs, I liked on the old version of mxtabs how all the songs would show up on one window. It is a pain to keep clicking the next page number in search of the song. I used to go to mxtabs instead of ultimateguitar because of this fact. On UG you have to keep going through the pages just to look at the different songs available.
Other than that, good work guys! Your website has been a big part of developing and nurturing my love for music.
We could definitely do that, except that I have to do more research on how they do this as if it is just chord names there are many different ways you could play a chord… and if we displayed random ways to play a chord it might cause for really confusing chord progression fingering.
really good job so far, but there are two things i would like improved.
1) Categorizing bands that start with “the” under the letter for the second part of their name. For example, placing “The Beatles” under “B” instead of under “T”
2) more drum tabs please! i really was hoping for drum tabs for some more underground bands (like The Fall of Troy and Chiodos).
Other than that, i love it! easy layout, simple to navigate and browse around. etc.
great job
~nivedan
The display of only 20 bands is an upgrade from the previous setup on this version of MX. It is however, a downgrade from the old MX. I loved the small font and layout of the old website, but any MX is better than every other tab site. Period. People will just have to use the search function more.
The site is well layed out and the minimal adverts are good…. make sure to include the “did you mean” incase u misspell ur search it was very usefull.. Overall great layout and simple navigations. cant wait for it to come out for reall
first off, great job. Everything looks good.
I just want to add in that (and I’m sure I might be the only one bothered by this) the band/song menu by the search bar.
Would it be possible to change it to stay on the last choice?
(ie i pick “song” from the menu, and if i go back to the search bar to look for another song, the “song” choice is still picked)
Also, and i think this might have already been said, the advertisement in the top middle of the page is a bit glaring. would it be possible to move it to say, the bottom?
thanks again :)
Very happy about the site coming back. It’s been a rough time without it. I did notice that browsing through songs and bands gets a little tiring with the huge boxes for the links(i’m lazy). Besides that, I love it all.
I’ll look into if we can display a list of all the publishers / copyright holders who have signed on so far. There are several thousand, but I don’t know if our contract with Harry Fox allows us to display all of these due to privacy issues. I can reiterate that we currently have deals with BMG, Famous, and peermusic and do not yet have licenses from Sony/ATV, EMI or Universal. Warner/Chappell and everything else administered by Alfred Music Publishing should also be signed on soon, but we’re waiting for the final contract to be signed.
Again, for reasons why others are not signing on yet, see this post: http://www.mxtabs.net/blog/2007/05/08/response-to-hal-leonard-e-mail-to-the-music-publishing-community/
When I am browsing the site, half the time I have my feet up on my desk, guitar across my lap, left hand on the neck, and right hand alternating between the mouse and the strings on my guitar. I often cannot use the search function to look for a tab that I want to learn. Yes, I know it would make sense to put the guitar down to look for a tab, but that ain’t gonna happen. The thing that I loved about the old site was that all the bands were on one page and I didn’t have to guess what page a band was on in order to find a song.
Anyway, I think what I am trying to get at is that I’d either like to see the old format make a come back or replace the page numbers at the bottom of the screen with a letter index (ex. bands begining with E: Ea-Eg Eh-Em En-Er…. and so on). I think, if this were even possible, that it would make it much easier to find a band without having to play guess-a-page.
Once you have submitted information for a song, is there any way to go back to the artists’s list of songs other than hitting back a few times?
The one suggestion that I have is that, instead of having to dig through a list of sons by an artist by going through numerous pages, I’d like to see it go back to how it was before where there’d only be a one-page list of songs. It’d just be easier to find. It looks nice and all right now, but I know I’m going to get frustrated later on by having to search through more and more pages, especially when more songs get put up. Thanks.
Guys, the site looks amazing and thanks for letting me be a part.
I started to read the comments but realized after about ten minutes that i wasn’t even halfway so I was oh well, if someone has already said something, I guess I’ll say it again. Well, here are my suggestions and questions.
I really like the layout and colors, very user-friendly.
I like the idea of different colors or something for guitar, bass and drums. I also liked the idea of the chord chart. I really like this site as it is one of the few, if not the only, good quality tab site. I mean, so many others out there are just trash. Thanks for that. It would be nice to search by album or record company as well, if that’s possible. That would be really nice, that way if I liked a band I could see what other bands that record company came out with. I mean, just a suggestion though if it’s possible. That’s pretty much it and thanks guys.
One quick question though, any idea when you guys will be signing a deal with EMI?
Thanks again
Oh and one more thing, it would be really amazing if there was a separate tab just for lyrics. Like
Guitar, Bass, Drums, Lyrics
that would be freakin sweet
Also, you guys have a right-click lock on the page and my assumption is that this is so that people cannot copy and paste, am I correct? Well the hot-keys still work on this, i.e. Ctrl+c for copying. Just letting you know.
@ Eric J:
The right-click restriction is being removed. We aren’t quite sure why it was there in the first place.
Hey, so will the \ becoming \\ problem in tabs be fixed? Because I was looking at a tab, and from the seems of it, it got the original \\ when it was first posted, and now it has \\\\, which I’m guessing is from being reposted on here. So yeah, a continuing problem then?
I’m personally a bigger fan of the old layout; all songs from a band on one page. Haven’t been able to find another site that does this, always made it convenient for me.
Just sayin
It seems that everyone wants the songs all on one page. It was a great thing on the old site, because you could also check the tabs to make sure that the person who tabbed it spelled it right. Usually the ones that were spelled correctly had a much better tab.
I think that it is a good idea to toggle the whole list or limited list in the user-themed layout?
Making this very personal will get very tedious though….
I couldn’t care either way….I just want some tabs….
Will the profile pages for members of MxTabs be similar to the old profile pages? I myself never was much of a tabber, but I was always willing to offer my feedback and rate and comment.
When will the Lessons section be back?
Just wanted to ask…
What happens to flagged comments?
Can the process be explained?
Ok. So we can’t right click for copyright laws right? If we decide to print and give a tab to a friend it’s copyright infringement? Is this why we can’t right click?…
First off, right click is useless, I could still print the tabs out ….with some magic keyboard buttons (Ctrl + C, and then Ctrl + V).
So why ban the right click anyways? No right click for pictures and videos and what not works, but for text it really doesn’t matter as long as I can highlight with my mouse.
Just a thought.
The right click exclusion was supposed to be removed. I’ll forward this comment to our programmer to make sure that it gets fixed (we don’t really know why it’s there in the first place).
As for flagged comments, they are reviewed by moderators and then we determine if we should remove the comment from the site, ban the user making the comment (or even ban a person who might be abusing the flag button).
Yeah I saw that it was supposed to be removed after i posted …sorry. heh.
Neat-o on the flagged comments. I’ve already seen some stupid comments on the alpha site and wondered how the process worked.
No need to belittle someone if you think they got a tab wrong, just say that you never learned it that way and explain the way you play it. right?
Didn’t know where to post it. So I just decided to put it here under the Comment Section.
I just received the MxTabs shirt and it’s freaking awesome. I love the idea of it, and how it says “legalize it.”
Very well done, if I may say so myself.
Perhaps having a tab of the “Star Spangled Banner” on the front of a black TShirt right under the MxTabs logo and have it say, “The Freedom Of Tablature.”
Or something like that. I’ll post my idea again in the TShirt section if I can find it.
Thanks again!
@Dan
I am waiting to receive my shirt, got the email and immediately replied with my address. Can’t wait to get it, will wear it immediately.
That’s an awesome idea for the freedom of tab thing. I really like that. I think a better tagline would be “The Freedom of Music.” but I do like the “Freedom of Tablature”
@Conor
I do like your idea for the tagline but I was more aiming for the whole:
“Freedom of Speech” and “Freedom of Tablature” type ordeal. Tablature being a form of expressing yourself (speech) and I figured I’d jot that in there.
The shirt is real nice. You’ll very much enjoy it. :)
I received my shirt the other day. I have been playing with some music programs on my computer, looking to get back into music full time and have some real fun with instruments and my computer. So here’s what I think of the shirt.
I really like the shirt. And I do believe that mine and/or Dan’s ideas for a second shirt would be excellent. The shirt is comfy and everything.
But I do have a question.
If there is an MX store, I do remember something about a merchandise store for the members of the site, to endorse the site, couldn’t this shirt contest that has gone on, have some extra winners just in case one isn’t going to cut it?
Will there be other things to order like MX guitar picks, hats and maybe other musical equipment ( nothing like strings or drumsticks, but something small to add to your gear)? That would be awesome.
I don’t like the huge ad in the middle of the page. You even seem to be drawing the reader in on the ads which I think is not a good idea. This really makes me distrust the future model of the site and its possibility of it being overtaken by ads.
A screenshot of the ad.
I like the layout alot, it’s very nice and smooth and clear when i look for things on it. But of course, the only computer that i have access to when i have my bass or drums or guitar etc. is my moms laptop, which she is always using. So with the advent of the ipod touch and the iphone, (of which i got a ipod touch for christmas, as did many i know) it would be great if there was a cutdown version of the site in the form of a web app, which i believe you can design through apple. Facebook did it, and it makes loading and everything more convienant, because chances are, a musician who uses tabs, will use their ipod touch to get tabs because it has the music on it anyway. But other than that the site is great!
I have a question about filling in the information for songs. In my case, the song was “Thick as a Brick” by Jethro Tull. The album (same as songtitle) has been remastered since its original 1972 release. Which should I put, the new CD info or the old CD info?
I think if you are so in need of CORRECT information, you should require the person that puts in the info to have the CD in their hands when they update the info. It may seem like a burden, but it will be correct.
I have one HUGE complaint (no pun intended). In my opinion, the design of the site is great, but the size is WAY too large. I have a 19″ monitor set at 1280 x 1024 and a 22″ set at 1600 x 1280 and it’s HUGE. I understand the world doesn’t operate at 640 x 480 anymore, but it still seems ridiculous.
Another complaint that I have is the ads. Its not the fact that they are there that bothers me, it’s the content of them. I understand that this is in an alpha stage. I just hope that ads like “Britney’s Nipple Slip” are not in the final release. I want to see that just as much as the next guy. It’s just that it’s not very professional.
Thanks and good work!
I just realized something else. You have tabs (I’m referring to content tabs, not music tablature) that are labelled Guitar, Bass, and Drums; yet, when you go to a section and select a song it always displays all three instruments in accordion panes with Guitar shown as the default (regardless of which instrument you chose).
I was always really upset when the site was shut down, It was the best tab site ever. When I found out that they were remaking it I couldn’t help but really hope that I could be a beta tester and I’m extremely happy you guys let me do it, and I’m extremely happy you guys are remaking it too, so good luck and I wish the best to you guys and if I can help let me know =). But the new layout looks great and I like how everything’s set up so far.
As the site is now opened to more people, I believe it would be wise to compile a list of common complaints and suggestions that the alpha testers had already voiced, so that the beta testers wouldn’t have to read all of these comments. ( I do get a kick out of some of it though.)
For instance, the big ad in the middle of the page had been discussed and it may turn into a user-interface (sort-of) image, most likely a pic of the last instrument you looked a tab for, or what you mostly are looking for based on your history and tab views through your profile. As of now, it is just a filler, but it may stay there.
The ad content had been fine. Vacuums and iPods and things of that nature, but I have yet to pay attention to the Brit Nip Slip thing, seeing as I pay as much attention to internet ads as I do to the pop starlets’ news.
If you all are willing to let a list be displayed, then I would gladly come up with it when I have ample time, (some late night with no sleep of course). I have no problems with sifting through the comments and making a list to help the new help out.
I just think it’s pointless to have them complain about something when it’s already been complained about, (no offense to them, I understand they’ve just gotten here.), but we could let them see what ideas have been circulated and what complaints have been voiced and make it all the easier for them to get to.
@J.R.
Regarding the content tabs and selection of tablatures. As you search for more tabs, the default comes to the instrument of what you most search for. I’m a bass player and that’s about the only tabs I’ve looked at (except on first acceptance to the site), and when I select a tab it displays the bass tabs while the Drum and Guitar sections are closed.
They are accordianed this way to provide quick and easy access if you are in a band and would like to learn or practice a whole song as a group.
The site does log your account’s processes and choices, though.
@Brospo
I actually really like that idea, despite my loathing for all things Apple (don’t ask, just a stern belief I have).
I’m sure there will be other devices like the iPod Touch, and it would be very beneficial to have that feature.
when searching for bands by letter, the number of pages to “turn” is too little. for example, in bands under “B”, if i wanted to go to “BL”, i’d have to flip from pg 1 to pg 3, to pg 5, and so on before reaching pg 17.
so i believe something should be made to make it faster when searching for bands.
i agree with the dude above, its like hide and go seek for a band.
you could just use the search bar to find your band of course
but some people might want to look through all the bands under a certain letter or something
When I search for a band at the top and click on drums, it comes up with the band name which shows how many of each type of tabs it has (guitar,bass or drums). When I click on the band link, it gives me a list of all the tabs that exist. It would be great if there was some way to filter out the songs so that it would just give us the songs that include drum tabs. It takes a while right now to scan through 6 pages lookin to see which songs have drum tabs or not. thanks
Hey Guys,
Another request: add a search box to this blog.
Joe
Hi Guys,
A random thought. Someone suggested using different shades of red in the search results. What about people who are color blind? Do web designers take into account color-blindedness when choosing colors for a website? I find this topic fascinating.
Anyway, to my eyes, the current website is gorgeous (except for the grainy pics of Jessica Simpson).
Joe
This website is really great, and is the best tab website, however it would be nice to have an “edit profile” setting where one can change their settings for their account, such as his or her password or a default instrument so those of us who do not play the guitar can automatically view drum or bass tabs without switching. Additionally, it would be very nice to have to have the option to “save a tab” to one’s profile so that way one can view his or her saved tabs on any computer without having to search for them. Additionally it would be helpful if one could “subscribe” to a tabber, and whenever this person adds a subscribers would be notified or the tab could be added to one’s saved tabs, or another section called “subscriptions.” Perhaps adopting a youtube like layout where one can have a custom page with tabs, ideas and videos would also be a very interesting thing to see. I understand that many of these things would be difficult to develop especially in the early stages where you are trying to get licensing for all the music however, I hope my feedback has helped. Additionally it would be nice if you could email me with a method to change my password to something other than random numbers and digits.
Hey Guys,
Great work so Far!
On a different note, I was thinking a nice feature might be to have a “TAB COUNTER” for each instrument (Bass, Drum, Guitar) and then some sort of link to just that instrument. That way people can choose say drums and get every song / artist that there are actually tabs for. Know what I mean? Somttimes we may not think of a band / song and if we can see everything there is it would be cool. Justa thought and would love your opinion.
Anthony
So while I know you guys are busy with this website licensing and programming and whatnot, but I just had an incredibly interesting idea.
I recently signed up for Pandora Radio, which is based off The Music Genome Project. I was thinking that it would be very cool, if MxTabs could be endorsed by TMGP.
It would almost turn it into the official tab website of music. I have talked to many people all over the place about tab websites, and many mention that it sucked when this site went down.
I understand that tab websites including this one have tons of stuff that might not even be apart of TMGP, but I just thought that this idea would be incredibly cool if it were to happen. I don’t want other tab sites to go down, because I’ve always believed in checking all possible sources, and I highly recommend it.
I just wanted to know other people’s thoughts on this.
There are a lot of comments here, I haven’t read them, so sorry if I’m repeating things. Here are my thoughts, I apologize that they are mainly negative, don’t think I don’t like the site, I just think it still needs a bit of work:
- You have to scroll too much to get to the page content. The bit immediately below the Bands bit (The black box with the ad, and the top rated tabs) is far too big, on my 1024×768 moniter, I can’t see ANY of the actual site content, i.e. nothing below the navigation bit and an ad.
- A-Z Pages – not enough bands on the page. Nowhere near enough. The set-up here is all wrong – if I’m in the Drum Tabs section, I should only see bands with drum tabs submitted. It should just be a simple 2 or 3 column list saying “Band Name (No. of Tabs)”. And if you have columns then you can also scrap pages, so you have all bands of that letter on one page.
- Same goes for the band pages. As a Drummer, why should I be seeing songs that only have 1 guitar tab. Again, it should be a simple 2 or 3 column list saying “Song Name (No. of Tabs”. And all songs on one page.
- The text for the Search bit is too big – “Search Tabs”, “Search” and the Drop Down box. I would also say the “Bands: 0-9 A B…” is too big.
- The NewTabs/PopularTabs/PopularBands bit does not need the Guitar/Bass/Drums selection on the Guitar, Bass and Drum pages. On the Home Page yes, but on the others it is another waste of space.
- Tab Explained is only for Guitar atm, Drum Tabs should have their own.
- Top Tabs should be instument specific.
In total after only a brief time of using the site, I like where you’re trying to go. However, usability needs to be improved a lot, as an amateur website designer and maker, I know that a couple of the issues above are basics! Therefore using the site is atm frustrating. However, in the grand scheme of things, these changes aren’t much work so you’re not far off.
@ Matt:
A lot of this has been address in the following blog post. Thank you for submitting it though, as there are a few things that we missed (like drum tab explained).
Check this blog post for the latest news:
http://blog.mxtabs.net/2008/02/27/welcome-to-the-public-alpha-of-mxtabs/
I used to use mxtabs all the time years ago and someone said it was back so i just decided to check. So i tried to look at a few songs and im being rejected because im in the UK, whats up with that?
Thanks Anthony – these back links are now on my list.
Thanks Alex. It’s planned for the search pages, band and song lists, etc. to be paginated soon!
Unfortunately there won’t be anything from No Doubt or any other Universal artist for about a year, as they are currently in an exclusive contract with Hal Leonard for any sort of sheet music, guitar tab or other printed music. We aren’t even allowed to SELL their sheet music or tablature on our sister site, Musicnotes.com, at this point. As you could probably tell from the letter we posted on the old MX Blog, Hal Leonard thus far has refused to license any of the music they have exclusive rights to on MXTabs. According to them, the 5,000 songs they currently offer tab for for sale is enough.
That said, in a year (it might be less by now) their contract is up so we’re keeping our fingers crossed. As the site continues to grow we should be able to continue to secure content from additional publishers.
@ hardhead73
We’re going to get a solution put in place for this. We still want to limit results on a page by default as it makes a huge query on the server… but we’re going to add a link that says “show me everything” (or something like that).
We’re also going to put a comment on each page of browsing that displays what you are looking at. For example: Artist/Band Results for: C (C Note Stained Boat – California Guitar Trio)
@ Dasdude:
The big ad and its placement has been brought up by some other users as well. We are planning on utilizing this space for more than just advertisements (recent site activity, features, etc) in the future, so it isn’t just planned to be a big ad. It just so happens that right now it is. We’ll take care of this sometime in the future, but we need to get some other things done first.
@Matt
If you’re looking at a tab page, you’ll see under the main logo a breadcrumb you can click on to get to instrument/letter/artist/song.
@ Heath:
I believe that the way our licensing contracts are done we do not have rights to display lyrics alone – they must be part of a tab. Therefore we cannot add a lyrics only section to the site at this time.
@ Heath
I have no idea when we’ll get a deal with EMI. We’re trying our best, but they have been in the middle of being bought and sold quite a bit lately so it’s been hard to become a priority for them. Rest assured we are working on it though.
@ J.R.
The ad content is pretty bad – we agree. We’re switching ad providers (today I hope) and that should hopefully make the ads at least more respectable. What’s there now is ridiculous and we’ll be talking with our ad team to get deal with this.
Bobby – it is supposed to work the way you are requesting. We will get back to working on the search soon to take care of issues like this. Thank you for pointing it out to us.
@ ac:
Pretty much everything you mentioned is coming to the site soon. There is a lot that isn’t live yet – some of it is done, but not currently available and some of it is still in the programming stages. It will pretty much all be coming though.
@ Brandon:
Read this: http://blog.mxtabs.net/2008/02/27/welcome-to-the-public-alpha-of-mxtabs/