TAB - Another You – Karl Cromok

The History

As mentioned in my previous post, in 2002, as soon as I was introduced to Guitar Pro 3, I went online to the then go-to portal for GP tabs, mysongbook.com searching for some tabs. I came across existing tabs for Karl Cromok song called Another You and I thought I should check them out. I was not too happy with the quality of those tabs. There are completely wrong notes here and there, and most of them were not written correctly, musically speaking. And I cannot stand GP tabs that don’t sound good when you let the computer play it. (However, I do praise DiN’KaPoK and cimakan for their effort. It’s not that easy to make tabs, people! And cimakan was a prolific Malay songs tabber in mysongbook).

So I decided to make my own. In 2002 I released my first version (GP3) to mysongbook.com, followed by a revision (GP4) some time in Summer of 2003 (my first year in America) under the nickname BeanKanan.

Original Upload

Since mysongbook got into legal trouble, they blocked the download of the tabs of many artists. Since then my tab got scattered around the web by others.

The download count quickly surpassed other versions of the tab. It was quite a hit. I’ve received many emails from people telling me how much they loved it to this day.

I wasn’t too surprised. It was, and maybe still is the best tab of the song you could find out there (despite GuitarPro limitations). I’m very proud of my work on it. It’s my Magnum Opus if you will. I know that many people on the website just copied the tabs of popular songs from Metallica and others from Hal Leonard songbooks, but I did not have such luxury. I had to listen to every single note and transcribed it.

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The Tab Itself

General note

The song was written in the key of E minor as apparently shown by the first chord of the acoustic guitar part (but remember, the first chord usually but not always the key of a song). And starting the first bar of the acoustic guitar part until the end, the average speed is around 105 bpm.

The Introduction Solo

Prior to releasing the tab, I had been playing this solo for a while. Again, the scale is simply E minor. My tab may not be exactly as how Karl played it, but I think it’s pretty close. I wrote down this part the same what I played it. I use a lot of legato, since it makes it simpler for me to play it. But the tough part of transcribing this part is that it has no specific beat. There’s no drum or any other instrument in the background of the recording, so there’s no beat. There was plenty of trial and error to tab it such that it’s simple to read (not messy), and still plays back correctly. That’s why I had to reduce the tempo for that section to around 70bpm. It made it slightly easier to write it.

I added a keyboard line throughout the solo intro, playing E minor chord continuously. My only problem with it is that since the notes of the chord are tied all the way to bar 18, if you stop the playback and play it again starting from somewhere between bar 1 and 18, you won’t hear the chord. That’s another GP limitation. You can’t really add layers to any given track. You have to create a separate track for that. I chose not to add 18 tracks just for that part. That would be just silly.

Use the tab for the intro as a guide only. I don’t suggest you to copy it note-by-note. Express yourself a little. Take your own time. When I play it, I did not play along with the GP tab. I want the freedom of the no-beat section to allow myself to convey my “feeling” freely.

The Acoustic Guitars Section

If you listen to the original recording closely, you will find that it’s virtually impossible to play the acoustic parts on one guitar. So I had to split it into two. There’s a lot that went into deciding what to put as the first and the second guitars. But my plan was to let the First Acoustic Guitar be featured for the most part, while the Second Acoustic Guitar plays the fills.

If you look carefully at the tab, you will notice that I manually adjusted the dynamic (mp, mf, f, ff etc) of every note for better playback. And every section of the song may repeat, but they are not always exactly the same. Everything that I could catch with my ears I transcribed.

Despite releasing this tab for a number of years, only recently did I actually try to play the entire song. Now I think that there are a few minor things that I should have written differently to make it easier to play while maintaining the same notes.

Although the Second Acoustic Guitar mostly plays the fills, on bars 67-82 I decided to have it “solo” a little bit. The First Acoustic Guitar still plays pretty much the same thing, while the Second Acoustic Guitar take the lead. And since I thought Guitar Pro could not playback the section correctly (at least the GP4 version), I decided to post a supplemental video to demonstrate how it should be played. I posted it on my university website account, but since I’m no longer in college, I reposted the video here. (I know I looked horrible at the time).

My favorite section of the song is bars 83-92. Why? Each section of the song start with Em chord. Minor chord, sad chord. But this one section starts with G major chord. Suddenly, after going through the sadness of the song, comes the happy part (although bar 87 pull the song back to the somber mood).

The Ending Solo

Again, it doesn’t go out of E minor and E harmonic minor scale. I have to admit, that when I play this myself, I still cannot play bar 104 exactly as I tabbed it. I simplify it a bit when I play it. But what I wrote in the tab was what I could catch with my ears from the recording. When you see my tabs, don’t assume that I can play whatever I write. But how I write it I suppose is the easiest way to play it, if you can play it exactly like that.

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Closing Note

Needless to say, I spent countless hours making this tab. When I released it, I really could not think of how else it could be better (of course today I think there’s some room for improvement).

Looking back at my “Incomplete Work” folder in my computer, there are many incomplete tabs that I had created since then, but never released to anyone. Unfortunately, this Another You tab had set the bar too high for myself. I got discouraged by the amount of work involved in producing the tabs that meet the standard that I have for my work. So I never released anything anymore after that.

But now I’m back. I’m gonna make more tabs after this. I will take my time, I will not be too obsessed about the details (although you can still expect some good stuff). I will not attempt to transcribe every single thing I could hear. This particular tab is my best work, but i will no longer feel the false need of producing something better every time.

I hope you enjoy it. And as usual, if you learn from it, please credit me in your videos or whatever. That’s all I ask. I don’t want money, I just want some moral support to keep me doing this. :)

I do not own the copyright of the original recording nor the music itself. The tablature that I transcribe and the backing track that I make are for educational purposes only.