Contributing a Request

COWPIE primarily focuses on providing guitar tab and chord progressions for guitar players. We do take lyric submissions, but prefer tabs or chords. If you understand that and you want to send in a request for how to play a song on guitar, just compose an e-mail directed to the COWPIE Newsletter subscribers and send it to cowpie@roughstock.com. We'll include your e-mail in the newsletter request section. If somebody knows the song, perhaps they'll type it up and send it in, but there are no guarantees since we are bound by the generosity of the readers.

Other Types of Questions

If you want to ask some sort of broader question that falls outside of COWPIE's guitar playing scope, but is still about Country and Western music, please see the main Roughstock site.

If you have some question concerning the Web site or accessing the song files here, please be sure to read the COWPIE FAQ page first.

Contributing a Song

If you can educate others in how to play a song, then type up the chords and/or tab and/or playing tips so that you can give back to the Internet guitar playing community, from which you have probably learned a few things. Here's some steps to go through that should ease the process.

Step 1: Preparation of Material

• That you have included the song name, artist's name and your own name (and if different, the transciber's name).
• If you can, include other information such as the name of the album from which the track comes, the name of the author of the words and music, details of the publisher and catalog number, and notes on what effects are used and on how to play the music.
• Make sure that the file is 'all your own work'. If you use copyrighted material, it won't be included in the newsletter or archived. This goes from the most obvious breaches, such as scanning in pages, to minor uses, such as simply checking your work. Such minor uses are probably not copyright infringements, but to be on the safe side, you are better off not using printed material at all, and for our part, we will not knowingly include a song in our newsletter or archive of anything that makes use of copyrighted material.
• You should also check the archive to ensure that you are not duplicating material already there. If a chord or tab file already exists for the song, take it down and incorporate your material with it. Always credit the original author and mention what each of you has done, as they own the copyright to that work. If the file is anonymous at the archive, you should nonetheless state that you used material from the archive, or if practicable, disclaim credit for the portions used.

Step 2: Submission of Material

The simplest method of submitting for all concerned is to simply e-mail it to cowpie@roughstock.com.

Use a subject line of the form "songname" by "artist name" and then include the song in the body of the mail. Please send the song as plain text in the body of the e-mail. Do not send word processor attachments or HTML-encoded e-mail. Please include only a single song in each e-mail message to speed up processing. If you have additional comments and/or requests please send them in a separate e-mail message also.

Step 3: Follow Up

If the song you submitted was either a chord or tab file then expect to see it in the next issue of the newsletter. If it was a lyric file or contained minor corrections to a song, then it may or may not be included in the newsletter depending on the amount of other material received. If, after the next newsletter is released, you do not find the file in the archives, then contact cowpie@roughstock.com concerning the status of the file. We could have made a mistake, filed the song in a different place than you expected, or just not received your e-mail.