I have seen lessons for this on youtube and no matter how professional the presentation the ones I found are not accurate to any of the several different ways Mason Williams has recorded this over the years. Some are not even close. . , The most popular series of lessons has over a million views, and is a nice beginner's version. but really its just the melody line with a few half chords. It really oversimplifies it. Some want you to pay for it and their version is not like anything Williams ever played. . So I thought why not present it note for note the way the man plays it. Mason Williams has played this differently on every record and I found that even Mason William's book and all of the tab I could find has major errors and discrepancies in them and I found that all of the sheet music and all of the tab has been transcribed differently from one another.
I found that there is no perfect tab on the web for this and no sheet music that you can buy is right but there is one tab that is close enough to use for a start. The book is also good enough to use for a start. Though the book has discrepancies it is well worth it for the history and story of Classical Gas and the CD that comes with it. In it he plays the intro differently than in any of of his other records. There is lots of great music in the book.
Ultimate-Guitar.com adds to their song list from time to time and moves the right one in the list so to get to the closest to right tab at Ultimate Guitar.com skip all the Guitar Pro versions, all of those miscrediting this to Eric Clapton and all the tab until you come to the series labeled Mason Williams, Open each until you come to the one that matches the Power Tab I have uploaded. It's labeled Version 4. It is a PT or Power Tab.When printed it will say its from "The Mason Williams Phonograph Record" This is the best I could find anywhere but still wrong in many places. Many of its errors are the same as the book's. but its as close as I could find to his release "Handmade".Like I said Ultimate guitar changes all the time but the following link gets you right to the download button at the bottom of the page at this link. http://tabs.ultimate-guitar.com/m/mason_williams/classical_gas_ver4_power_tab.htm
He has released it several times.
ONE GOOD THING IS THAT AFTER THE INTRO THERE WILL BE VERY FEW ERRORS.
This is an amazing piece. After 40 years this is still the most famous, most aired, played, covered, learned and attempted instrumental guitar solo of all time. It is still the Holy Grail of guitar instrumentals. Kind of a rite of passage more or less. Though it is not the most difficult guitar instrumental it requires time to get it "under your hands". Not many people can play it and few play it well or all the way through, However it is well worth the effort. Once you have it "under your hands" you've got it forever if you play it once in awhile. All the chord shapes are simple and common and easily learned. No big fret spreads or tricky effects. It just takes patience and practice. One tip is to get his playing it from the album on youtube at isaacleo. Thats the site that has it. Download the free program "Audacity". Its an audio recording and editing program that you will not want to be without. Get a mic. Record your playing with Audacity and add effects but mostly hear yourself playing. It is the best learning tool. You can play and loop individual sections of it. and use the speed function there to slow it down so that there is separation between the notes without lowering the pitch.. I don't play it perfectly, or as well as I did when I was young but it still gets to me like it did 40 years ago. I am going to do this (if there is a good response) in about 10 or so 9 minute lessons over the next couple of months or so.
GEAR- This was done with a Sony DSC-H20. digital still camera with a 4 gig scan disk pro-duo card. Takes an hour of video. I now use A Shure SM57 mic, an M-Audio 2 track interface, Audacity and PowerDirector9 video editor. When I want to add tab to a video I take snapshots of each line with AV video Editor. (the trial version that never runs out of time. I only use the snapshot feature because it overlays the tab like a camera lens). I drag the video, the audio and the tab snapshots to PD9 and start editing.etc. I no longer use 720x1080 HD because it takes hours for PD( to render and upload to YT. 480x640 renders and loads fast.
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