Top Tablatures:
What Guitarists Want to Play
Guest Commentator: Aaron SchatzOne of the most popular searches on Lycos is for guitar tablatures.
For those unfamiliar with the term, guitar tablatures (or tabs) show how to play a song with a chart based on the guitar fretboard rather than using conventional music notation.
Aspiring guitarists search not only for guitar tabs but for specific tabs for individual artists. We were curious what music was being played in the garages and basements of America, so here's a list of the top twenty band-specific guitar tab searches on Lycos over the last five weeks:
1. Green Day
2. Blink 182
3. Nirvana
4. Creed
5. Sublime
6. Incubus
7. Metallica
8. Papa Roach
9. Dave Matthews Band
10. Red Hot Chili Peppers
11. Beatles
12. Jimi Hendrix
13. Pearl Jam
14. Pantera
15. Foo Fighters
16. Phish
17. Deftones
18. Marilyn Manson
19. Fuel
20. Led Zeppelin
The list is a pretty broad mixture of classic rock bands, early nineties alternative acts, and current hard rockers. Green Day and Blink 182 are pretty clear one-two, and Nirvana and Sublime get more than twice as many tab searches compared to other non-active bands. It's interesting to see the Beatles still have so much popularity after thirty years apart.
The unexpected entry is Fuel, a hard rock band which had a minor hit, "Shimmer," in 1998. Their new album Something Like Human, is only #38 on the current Billboard Top 200 Albums, but perhaps the group is very popular with garage bands.
The most surprising omission from this list is Limp Bizkit. Apparently, while the Bizkit is one of the most popular rock bands around, their songs are just not that popular with musicians. They got less tab searches than all twenty of the bands on this list, as well as lesser-known acts like Weezer and NoFX.
Of course, if you want to figure out how to play songs yourself instead of searching for tablature, you can always check out the song downloads at Lycos Music.
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