Within the past few months alone, MXTabs.net has signed licensing agreements with three new music publishers: Razor & Tie Music Publishing, Ardent Music, and Tokecko Tunes. These new deals now allow us display everything from Southern Rock Drive-By Truckers tabs and Christian Rock Skillet tabs, to Contemporary Country Toby Keith tabs. Just a few of the other artists represented include All That Remains, Sherwood, We Shot the Moon, and Todd Agnew. Feel free to peruse the publisher links above to view their complete artist rosters.

We will let you know when more music publishers hop on the MXTabs.net bandwagon, but in the meantime, if you see any bands/artists listed above that you’re uber excited about then let us know in the comments below. Because the process of adding these new tabs to our site is ongoing, if you’re interested in a specific band, we’ll focus our efforts on your suggestions first. Thanks!

MXTabs.net Tab Editing

As promised, now it’s possible for anyone who has previously submitted a tab to MXTabs.net to login and edit their guitar, bass or drum tabs. If logged in, simply look for the Edit This Tab button on the tab page itself, or look for the Edit This Tab link in the “submitted tabs” area of your MXTabs.net profile page.

Both will bring you to the tab revisions submission page, which is divided into 4 easy steps. The first step allows you to add additional details to your tab if you wish (see Tab Details below!), the second step involves the actual editing of your guitar, bass or drum tab body, and the third step requires you to list the major revisions you’ve made to your tab. Finally, the fourth step asks if you would like to keep the current rating of your tab or clear the rating and start over. This is particularly useful, for instance, if you are just adding a few missing slides to your otherwise 5-Star guitar tab, for you would probably want to keep your current rating. However, if you were completely revamping a tab that had a low rating, maybe you would choose to clear the rating and have members vote on the new version? The choice is yours!

Once you hit the Submit Tab Revisions button, your revised tab will enter a moderation queue – where it will be verified by select members of the MXTabs.net community – and will begin displaying on the site within a few short days.

MXTabs.net Tab Details

As mentioned above, the first step of the Tab Editing process allows you to add additional details to your tab. These optional Tab Details (which now also appear when submitting a tab to MXTabs.net) are mostly instrument-specific and ask you questions such as: Which effects pedals are needed to play your guitar tab? Does your bass tab require a 4-string or 5-string bass? And what drum kit components are used in your drum tab? Some of the other options include the ability to add user tags, indicate what tempo the piece is in, and assign a difficulty rating to your tab. Soon we will begin displaying these tab details on all tab display pages, and we plan on incorporating the data into song searches in the future as well. Pretty cool, no?

Although it’s optional, we hope you will consider editing any tabs you may have already submitted to MXTabs.net to include these extra tab details. Think of it as a good karma exercise – just a few minutes of your time will provide other musicians with a TON of valuable information when learning a new tab, information they won’t find on any other tab site. Who knows, maybe you’ll win the lottery someday in return!

Either way, we hope you enjoy the ability to edit your MXTabs.net guitar, bass & drum tabs. It’s just the next step in our grand scheme to rule the world… er, I mean provide the serious musician with serious tabs. Rock on!

Although there have been several versions of this iPhone app to date, the most recent version is the first to offer free and legal guitar and bass tab downloads from MXTabs.net, and we’re pretty excited about it.

But that is definitely not the only reason you’ll want to give the iTab Songbook and Tuner a try, because included among the many cool features of this iPhone app is a chromatic guitar tuner, the ability to transpose tab chords, the ability to play a song from your iTunes library along with a corresponding tab, and the ability to customize your tab data by specifying the instrument type, number of strings, and tuning of a particular tab.

For more info about this indispensable aid for guitar and bass players, visit the iTab Songbook and Tuner page in the iTunes App Store.

Get Your Free Copy of the iTab Songbook and Tuner iPhone App!

From now until September 23, 2009 MXTabs.net is giving away a limited number of free copies of the iTab Songbook and Tuner. To get your free copy, simply leave a comment below. We will then email you a unique promo code. Enter that code at the iTunes Store Redeem and download away!

It should be noted that Apple has restricted promo codes to be redeemable only in the US iTunes Store. The good news is that an app obtained through a promo code is exactly the same as if you bought it, meaning that you will be able to use it for as long as you want AND upgrade for free when a new version is released.

Again, this offer expires on September 23, 2009 and supplies are limited, so act now to get your free copy of the iTab Songbook and Tuner iPhone App.

Enjoy!

The first, a New Tabs feed, is (you guessed it!) a feed of all newly added song tabs available at MXTabs.net. We thought you might find this useful, especially as we’re currently adding hundreds of new tabs per week. You can also receive a feed of new tabs specific to your instrument. Check them out – New Guitar Tabs, New Bass Tabs, and New Drum Tabs. Pretty sweet, huh?

The second RSS feed we’ve added concerns Limbo, our community tab moderation system that allows MXTabs.net members to vote on which tabs should (or should not) become part of our permanent collection. The Limbo Tabs feed will keep you updated of all tabs currently waiting for your vote in Limbo. Similar to the New Tabs feed, you may also choose to receive a Limbo feed specific to your instrument (Limbo Guitar Tabs feed, Limbo Bass Tabs feed, and Limbo Drum Tabs feed).

So, subscribe away! Along with our existing RSS user feeds – User Activity, Forum Posts, Blog Updates, and Tab Comments – the new RSS song tab feeds mentioned above are a great way to stay plugged in to the MXTabs.net community and our ever-growing collection of guitar, bass & drum tabs.

Enjoy!

Inspired by the “My Tab Folder” within the My Account area of MXTabs.net, the MXTabs.net Facebook App for Song Tabs allows you to share what guitar, bass & drum tabs 1) you are learning, 2) you want to learn, and 3) you have learned.

Once you have the MXTabs.net Facebook App for Song Tabs installed, you can use Facebook Connect to interact with your friends on MXTabs.net, while also sharing your “Tab Folder” on Facebook through your Wall and friends’ News Feeds, including an option to automatically post to your activity feed. Be sure to check out the full help section within the app for more info.

When you add the app to your Facebook profile, you may add it to either your Wall & Info Tab or your Boxes Tab – the choice is all yours. Once you’ve done so, all of your Facebook friends will be able to view your MXTabs.net profile, check on your learning progress, find tabs that they might want to learn themselves, or even offer some tips on how to play a particularly difficult passage.

We hope you enjoy this new way to interact with MXTabs.net and share your love of guitar & drum playing. Please let us know what you think. Your feedback invaluable.

First off, our collection of guitar, bass & drum tabs has grown dramatically. Fueled in large part by new licensing agreements (with Universal Music Publishing Group, Domino Publishing, and Notting Hill Music Group just to name a few), MXTabs.net has added over 25,000 tabs to our database in the past year. Yep, you heard me right, over 25,000 new guitar, bass & drum tabs!

As far as usability and new features go, just a few of the more noticeable changes of the past year include the addition of the MXTab Auto-Scroll, notification of when a Guitar Guru session of a particular song is available, and the offering of ringtones of your favorite song tabs. Additionally, our search pages and user profile pages have undergone minor face lifts to help improve your MXTabs.net experience.

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, the MXTabs.net community itself has continued to grow and become a source of shared knowledge for other musicians. Be it the Taboo Drum Tab Editor, MXTabs Forum Music Competition, or the Legend of MXTabs RPG, our users seem more than happy to help each other out in their pursuit of musical knowledge and good times, which is why we’re here in the first place!

So, to help commemorate our one year anniversary, MXTabs.net would like to give away some free t-shirts, stickers & keychain bottle openers. We regret that we don’t have any Taylor Guitars to give away, such as when we launched, but free MXTabs.net merchandise is still pretty cool, no? To get your free MXTabs.net merchandise, simply leave a comment below and let us know your thoughts on year one of our existence.

Here’s to a successful 1st year, and looking forward to an even more successful 2nd!

1. On MXTabs.net user profile pages we’ve added a scroll bar to The Stall and Bandmates sections. For many of our users, this area was simply becoming too large and unruly for easy use. Simple fix for a simple problem.
2. MXTabs.net search pages have undergone a minor face lift. We’ve removed the large ad that appeared at the top of the page and moved the Top Available Tabs and Tabs Waiting For Your Vote to the bottom of the page. The goal here was to allow users to more readily view their search results without having to scroll down first. Similarly, we’ve started displaying 40 song titles per page, rather than 20, thus reducing the amount of time needed to find the song you’re looking for.
3. We’ve partnered with thumbplay.com to offer relevant ringtones to our users in the US. You’ll now see a “ringtone button” in the black header directly above any tab with a corresponding ringtone available, as in this Stairway To Heaven Guitar Tab by Led Zeppelin.
4. Finally, on the programming front we’ve optimized and compressed many of the external JavaScript and style sheets on the site. End result: a speedier version of MXTabs.net!

We’ll have more site updates for you soon. In the meantime, we hope you enjoy the changes we’ve recently made. Let us know what you think of them, and by all means, feel free to make new suggestions. After all, this is your tab site!

Some of the highlights of Universal’s catalog include Metallica, U2, Jack Johnson, Jimi Hendrix, The Killers, and Franz Ferdinand, just to name a few. If you’re interested in learning more about Universal’s massive catalog, visit the UMPG Artists & Writers page on their website. We’ve already started displaying guitar, bass & drum tab for several of these artists, and you can expect to see MUCH more to come in the weeks and months ahead.

It should be noted that, due to an exclusive deal Universal has with Hal Leonard Corporation (who have opted not to allow MXTabs.net to display their catalog), our current contract only allows us to display Universal tabs outside of the United States and Canada. We are aware of the frustration this may cause some of our North American users, but MXTabs.net remains hopeful that we will soon be able to share the impressive Universal Music Publishing Group catalog with ALL of our members and guests, regardless of where you live.

If you have any questions or comments, feel free to post them below. And stay tuned for more new publisher updates, because we aren’t finished yet!

The first enhancement, the MXTab Scroll, is available on all guitar, bass & drum tabs on our site, and allows you to keep your hands off your computer keyboard and on your guitar while the site automatically scrolls the tab for you. Choose from six different speeds, and let ‘er rip! You can find this feature on the top, right hand corner of all tab display pages. Give it a try with this Guitar Tab of Love Story by Taylor Swift.

We partnered with our sister site, Musicnotes.com, to bring you our second new feature: notification of when a Guitar Guru session of a particular song is available. While Musicnotes.com does charge for Guitar Guru sessions, the software is free to download and we thought our users might enjoy yet one more way to learn their favorite tabs. Some of the cool features you’ll get with your Guitar Guru purchase are detailed, note-by-note instructions, real-time finger positions, adjustable playback tempo, voice command, MIDI or CD-synched/MP3/WMA-synched audio, and a printable guitar tab. The Guitar Guru logo will appear on any MXTabs.net song search page if there is a corresponding Guitar Guru session of that tab, as is the case with this Guitar Tab of Wake Me Up When September Ends by Green Day.

We have a LOT of other plans in the works and will share them with you when they’re ready. In the meantime, we’d love to hear some feedback about the two new features mentioned above.

Yesterday we deployed several small, but valuable updates that we hope will make voting on guitar, bass & drum tabs within MXTabs.net Limbo even easier than it was before.

(If you’re new to our site and are wondering, “What the h*#! is Limbo?,” then I’ll fill you in: it’s a community-based tab moderation system that allows MXTabs.net users to vote whether to “Accept” or “Deny” a submitted song tab, thus ensuring that only the highest quality tabs are added to our database. To learn more, please read our earlier post, MXTabs.net Song Tab Submissions and Limbo, or check out MXTabs.net Limbo and begin voting right away!)

But now, back to the updates. First off, if you’re on the homepage (and logged in) you will notice that the “Tabs Waiting For Your Vote” feed now displays only tabs that you have yet to vote on, whereas before it simply displayed a random sampling of Limbo tabs. And in Limbo itself we’ve added a red check mark to the left of all tabs that you have already voted on. Both of these updates are meant to give members a more quick and useful “snapshot” of their Limbo activity, so that they can get to the fun part… viewing & voting on new song tabs!

We have LOTS of exciting things planned for the near future, so stay tuned for more site updates. Until then, happy practicing.