Tabs and sheet music versus ear and feel

[Bruce]

There are so many things humans have invented to save time, and tabs are one of them. They're simply a way of notating how music is played, but only for guitar. I see nothing wrong with not being able to read standard notation, as long as tabs exist.

It's like, in my field, the old argument of whether a carpenter should know how to read a framing square in order to cut rafters. The goal is getting the roof framed in as short a time as possible, and if that means using a calculator to provide the necessary info to get the job done, I'm fine with that. Plus, it moves a tradesman through the ranks faster. Granted, if your calculator breaks, you can't do the job, but that argument applies to so many things these days, of which there's always a temporary work-around, so it really isn't a good one.

At the end of the day, it's just a communication tool, of which, imo, we have better ones for guitar. EVH couldn't read music, and we all see how that turned out.

No doubt. Agree with all of the above. We know how many people dropped out of college and went on to become multi billionaires too. I use tab. It’s the fastest way for ME to get what I need. Im in a bar band or my country band where no one is really critically listening whether or not Im playing forte or fortissimo. When Im in an ensemble of 20+ and there is a conductor, it matters. Thats where Standard notation matters and in my experience style, finesse, you being you or anything of the like is not appreciated. I was taught to play exactly what’s written in these situations. Ive seen folks deviate from that at their peril. I was nearly decapitated with a conductors wand thrown at me for (far) too much vibrato on a trumpet solo that was written out. “Just when you’re doing good, you kill us with that Lawrence Welch shit”. I can still hear his voice and see his beet red face. Victor Pratts. One of the best teachers I ever had.

As for EVH no doubt. You can have someone who is illiterate become a great orator. Doesn’t change the fact they need help reading the menu in the diner. I seriously doubt he didnt read music as I think I remember him having years of piano lessons as well.

 

[Bruce]

That's because tab is generally used to learn songs for which the original recording is readily available for the listener to learn those other nuances. I guarantee you if SN suddenly didn't exist, it would be quite easy for tab-creators to add in all the "missing" info, like dynamics. Just put f, p, ritard, and the like beneath the staff.

Tab is just specifically for guitar, whereas SN is like a language that can be used by any instrumentalist. Tab cuts the learning curve however, even though it may leave the player with a few less tools in his arsenal. But a real good argument could be made as to just how much not having those extra tools will distract from what the player can attain. I say it's very little these days.

Oh, and why would you need key information if you're just going to be playing the notated music?

Right. So the player in this case is learning by ear as well as the tab. I have the guitar 1 book for Shrek. I have not yet heard the recordings as Im working out of the book. I have no idea really what the complete songs sound like, only what I think the guitar sounds like. Sure this may be the long way around but for me its fun and Im not particularly pressed for time as tech week isnt for another 3 or 4 months.

 

[the-trooper]

Guitar players are a funny bunch. Find me a tuba player or a French horn player that cant read standard notation. It does not exist. Guitarists look at illiteracy like some kind of badge of honor. It isnt. What it is is limiting. There are certain gigs you will not be able to take. If you’re ok with that, enjoy your life!

Gatekeeping is another type of badges of honor.
I read sheet music. I read tabs. I learn by ear. I don't care, as long as I get it right.

Btw. you seem to think tabs are still written in notepad. There is nothing that can be written in sheet music that can't be written on tabs. Nothing. Whether it is or not, is not the tabs fault but the one who writes it, and the same applies to notation. Besides, learning what pitch which note on the staff represents is the easiest part, children learn it in an hour with a simple rhyme.
Rhythm is where people fail, and that part can be written completely the same on tabs as it is on sheet music (yes you can add stems and flags to tabs).
If you ask me combination of the two is best.

 

[TSJMajesty]

Right. So the player in this case is learning by ear as well as the tab. I have the guitar 1 book for Shrek. I have not yet heard the recordings as Im working out of the book. I have no idea really what the complete songs sound like, only what I think the guitar sounds like. Sure this may be the long way around but for me its fun and Im not particularly pressed for time as tech week isnt for another 3 or 4 months.

Yeah, and when you show up to rehearsal, that conductor will be the one to direct certain players to give him more, or less, dynamics in certain parts of the song, among other things. Like, he/she will be the one to determine at what rate a part should slow down. Even SN can't provide all the details, or conductors wouldn't be necessary.

(Although I've played in some awesome bands where he literally could walk off the stage if he wanted, and the band wouldn't have sounded any different!)

 

[TSJMajesty]

I lost my ability to read a long time ago, and I never applied it to guitar. Sure, there have been a few 32 Etudes for Clarinet that I attempted to learn on guitar, so it would've been nice if I was a good enough reader at that time. But I wanted to play, not spend my time transferring my reading abilities to guitar. So I just pulled up some Paganini tabs instead! (Why is he left-handed? The emoji, not Paganini!)

There is a bit of a dichotomy for me with this, as I hate reading grammatical and spelling mistakes on the internet. Something that has grown due to the use of "other tools" that have become available. I can't even spell as well as I used to. But I do proofread. And thankfully that little red squiggly line appears under words. (Even though it marks words like earworms as misspelled!)

 

[Bruce]

Gatekeeping is another type of badges of honor.
I read sheet music. I read tabs. I learn by ear. I don't care, as long as I get it right.

Btw. you seem to think tabs are still written in notepad. There is nothing that can be written in sheet music that can't be written on tabs. Nothing. Whether it is or not, is not the tabs fault but the one who writes it, and the same applies to notation. Besides, learning what pitch which note on the staff represents is the easiest part, children learn it in an hour with a simple rhyme.
Rhythm is where people fail, and that part can be written completely the same on tabs as it is on sheet music (yes you can add stems and flags to tabs).
If you ask me combination of the two is best.

Most tabs I see (and use) are written in notepad or similar And missing required info to be able to solely use the tab alone. Outside of the ones in magazines anyway.

 

[TSJMajesty]

Most tabs I see (and use) are written in notepad or similar And missing required info to be able to solely use the tab alone. Outside of the ones in magazines anyway.

Whew. Those are ancient compared to Songsterr, e.g.

 

[GuitarDave]

I know how to read music on the clarinet and saxophone. Only one fingering for each note (not entirely true, but it is compared to guitar) and it's always only one note at a time. So reading is actually incredibly simple in comparison to guitar.

Piano is polyphony but each note only has one possible place to play it.

Then we come to the subject of repertoire and most popular music involving guitar doesn't have ensembles reading from sheet music. Real books for jazz, blues, pop etc. are only a map of basic chord structure with a basic melody line at most. If you don't know the style/musical vocabulary for that style you will be lost.

All that to say that learning by ear is invaluable for a guitarist in most popular styles. Reading skill applies to a very small set of professional environments. If your goal is to be a well rounded player then it's better to know it than not.

 

[the-trooper]

Piano is polyphony but each note only has one possible place to play it.

Yeah, there was a short period in my life when I thought I had time for too much things at the same time, so I started leaning piano. Even though it's several voices at once and two hands, I struggled less reading music for piano than I do reading it for guitar.

 

[Bruce]

I know how to read music on the clarinet and saxophone. Only one fingering for each note (not entirely true, but it is compared to guitar) and it's always only one note at a time. So reading is actually incredibly simple in comparison to guitar.

Piano is polyphony but each note only has one possible place to play it.

Then we come to the subject of repertoire and most popular music involving guitar doesn't have ensembles reading from sheet music. Real books for jazz, blues, pop etc. are only a map of basic chord structure with a basic melody line at most. If you don't know the style/musical vocabulary for that style you will be lost.

All that to say that learning by ear is invaluable for a guitarist in most popular styles. Reading skill applies to a very small set of professional environments. If your goal is to be a well rounded player then it's better to know it than not.

All true

 

[TSJMajesty]

I know how to read music on the clarinet and saxophone. Only one fingering for each note (not entirely true, but it is compared to guitar) and it's always only one note at a time. So reading is actually incredibly simple in comparison to guitar.

Piano is polyphony but each note only has one possible place to play it.

Then we come to the subject of repertoire and most popular music involving guitar doesn't have ensembles reading from sheet music. Real books for jazz, blues, pop etc. are only a map of basic chord structure with a basic melody line at most. If you don't know the style/musical vocabulary for that style you will be lost.

All that to say that learning by ear is invaluable for a guitarist in most popular styles. Reading skill applies to a very small set of professional environments. If your goal is to be a well rounded player then it's better to know it than not.

Good points. Especially the bold.
Which made me think..., how does SN denote bends, dives, pick-scrapes, and other things unique to guitar? Seems to me this is an area where tabs excel.

 

[the-trooper]

how does SN denote bends, dives, pick-scrapes, and other things unique to guitar?

Bends are notated with a weird, unintuitive "broken" line which connects the note you start the bend and the one where you need to bend to.
Other things, you just write it down. With words.

 

[Bruce]

Good points. Especially the bold.
Which made me think..., how does SN denote bends, dives, pick-scrapes, and other things unique to guitar? Seems to me this is an area where tabs excel.

I’ve seen that kind of stuff written in. I’ll look thru the book I’m reading thru now and post a pic or 2 but you’re right: tab is tailored to this.

 

[TSJMajesty]

I’ve seen that kind of stuff written in. I’ll look thru the book I’m reading thru now and post a pic or 2 but you’re right: tab is tailored to this.

One thing I've never seen in tab is a 'turn', I think it's called. Looks like an S turned on its side, and it means: play the note shown, the note above, the note, then the note below, in the notated time. I.e, if it's an 8th note, those 4 notes become 32nd notes. And if the S is a mirror image, you go to the note below first, then the note above.
In tabs, the notes are simply shown.

 

[Bruce]

One thing I've never seen in tab is a 'turn', I think it's called. Looks like an S turned on its side, and it means: play the note shown, the note above, the note, then the note below, in the notated time. I.e, if it's an 8th note, those 4 notes become 32nd notes. And if the S is a mirror image, you go to the note below first, then the note above.
In tabs, the notes are simply shown.

I’ve never seen this in notation either but am going to google it. Did you see this written for a specific instrument? For instance standard notation for guitar will often have a Roman numeral to denote position which is obviously never going to appear on trumpet parts. So even standard notation isnt really perfectly standard. Going to look that up now.

 

[TSJMajesty]

I’ve never seen this in notation either but am going to google it. Did you see this written for a specific instrument? For instance standard notation for guitar will often have a Roman numeral to denote position which is obviously never going to appear on trumpet parts. So even standard notation isnt really perfectly standard. Going to look that up now.

Google "turn musical symbol." I actually had the notes wrong. It starts with a note above.
I've seen it in concert music.

 

[TSJMajesty]

Weiterleitungshinweis

 

[jay mitchell]

There are so many things humans have invented to save time, and tabs are one of them.

That was perhaps the intent, but it is not the result. For me, SN wins over tab every time.

They're simply a way of notating how music is played, but only for guitar. I see nothing wrong with not being able to read standard notation, as long as tabs exist.

That's like saying, "I see nothing wrong with not being able to read written language, as long as line-drawn symbols exist." I try not to judge someone for illiteracy, but I have no patience with anyone who defends it as somehow as good as being able to read and write.

It's like, in my field, the old argument of whether a carpenter should know how to read a framing square in order to cut rafters.

That's still a requirement in my definition of a good carpenter. The carpenters who work for me have to do work that's a bit more demanding than framing a house, but I insist that they know how to do several things, including how to use a framing and a carpenter's square, as well as how to read a tape measure. Using a calculator is fine with me, but it's a good idea to check your results with actual gauges and measuring tools.

The goal is getting the roof framed in as short a time as possible,

Maybe. If you don't take the time to do it right, you'll find the time to do it again.

and if that means using a calculator to provide the necessary info to get the job done, I'm fine with that. Plus, it moves a tradesman through the ranks faster.

Over the past three+ decades, I've had occasion to observe the general quality of commercial and residential construction, including on eight-figure+ projects. One thing I have never seen is evidence that any good comes from "moving a tradesman through the ranks faster." That's admittedly only a small set of anecdotal data points, but it's my experience.

At the end of the day, it's just a communication tool, of which, imo, we have better ones for guitar.

YO and MO are different.

EVH couldn't read music, and we all see how that turned out.

Uhh, you mean that he never got a pit orchestra or big band gig?

 

[Lopp]

How to confuse a rock guitarist: Put sheet music in front of him.

How to confuse a classical musician: Take his sheet music away.

 

[DrewJD82]

I suppose I don’t think anything of it, like others, it’s how I learned in the 90’s before the internet existed. It also took me years to even bother looking at tab and learning how to use it. I used to be able to read music when I was in high school but the second I stopped doing it regularly I completely lost all the information and now I’d be like “Every…..Good…..Boy…..Deser…..D! Ok….oh but wait, there’s a # back there, is that on the D or?“

The rare times I learn a cover song, I don’t really want to invest a lot of time into it, so I’ll start by ear but use the tabs for reference or to point me in the right direction, once I have the starting note I do prefer to take a little time figuring out the interval changes from there. I’m terrible about picking out the notes in a chord unless it’s a really clean guitar, so it’s generally more for chord stuff than leads.

Hahaha the only time I actually think about it is when my buddy Nacho tells me he learned something by ear, because I KNOW it’s going to be so damn wrong that I’ll have to teach him the right way to play it. Last week he was trying to show me how he learned a Killswitch Engage song in standard tuning and I kept telling him, “Man, I’m 99.9% sure that song is in drop C”, “Well whatever it is, I figured out how to play it in standard tuning.”, “No you didn’t.”, “Yes I did.”……or when he tried telling me how to play AIC’s “Nutshell” and kept telling me there was no C chord in it. Dude, there’s f*cking two of them in it! One right after the other!!!