Songs for Steel Guitar in Tablature Format

Brad's Page of Steel

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I'm no longer taking requests for tablature, as this page has grown larger than my ability to maintain it. I highly recommend TablEdit, a program for Windows and Macintosh computers, as a good program to use for creating tablature. The author has gone out of his way to work with steel guitarists.

Roy Thompson has an excellent collection of non-pedal tablature (with accompanying sound files) on his web site.

Here's an excellent source for some tablature for various slide guitar artists, including Ry Cooder and Johnny Winter among others.

Tab Tabscott has a good collection of resophonic tablature on his web site. Another source of tablature with varying degrees of difficulty may be found on Howard Parker's resoguit web site. Folk of the Wood has a series of pages on How to Read & Understand Tablature for DOBRO®. The Dobro® Players Anonymous web site has a pretty good collection of tablature. Jay Buckey's web site has some tablature for Dobro® and other instruments in Adobe Acrobat (PDF) format. Strum Hollow has a few tunes for resophonic guitars in MIDI, Tab and TablEdit format.

If you don't know what tablature is or have other questions, look at the OnLine Guitar Archive (OLGA).

Open E or open D tuning (bass to treble, E B E G# B E or D A D F# A D)

• I'll Fly Away, a traditional song arranged by Pete Grant
• Blackbird by Paul McCartney and John Lennon, also arranged by Pete Grant
• Steel Guitar Rag by Leon McAuliffe arranged by me
• Ashokan Farewell by Jay Unger arranged by Andy Volk

Open G tuning (bass to treble, G B D G B D)

• Bill Cheatham transcribed by Gregory Tucker-Kellogg
• Swallow Tail Jig arranged by Mark Panfil

C6/Am7 tuning (bass to treble, C E G A C E)

• Warmth Of The Sun, a Beach Boys tune arranged by Andy Volk. (here's a MIDI file of the same song)
• Back At The Chicken Shack, a Jimmy Smith tune arranged by Andy Volk.
• Sleepwalk, my interpretation of the Santo and Johnny classic steel guitar song.
• Steelin Home, an instrumental originally done by Noel Boggs and His Daysleepers, arranged by Andy Volk.
• Aloha Oe, arranged by John Tipka
• Surf Medley, (Walk Don't Run/Pipeline) arranged by Andy Volk.

A7/C6 tuning (bass to treble, C# E G A C E)

• A Teardrop On A Rose, by Hank Williams, arranged by John Tipka

G6 tuning (bass to treble, G B E G B D)

• Sleepwalk, another version of the Santo and Johnny classic steel guitar song.

B11 tuning (bass to treble, C# D# F# A C# E)

• Nani Waimea, a classic Hawaiian tune arranged by Andy Volk.

C tuning (bass to treble, C G C E G C)

• How Can You Keep Moving (Unless You Migrate Too), a tune originally written by Agnes Cunningham, covered by Ry Cooder. This version transcribed by Tim Tweedale.

Thanks to Pete Grant, Andy Volk, Tim Tweedale, Mark Panfil, John Tipka, Keith Saturn, and Gregory Tucker-Kellogg for taking the time to contribute to this page.