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I don't think I've ever used TAB but I can see how someone who doesn't read music could at least get something from it. Better than nothing.
It's all very well for those of us who can do notation to say 'Learn to read music!' but actually that's asking a lot. It's not something one acquires overnight.
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03-07-2023 09:40 AM
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I don't think there is anything wrong with using tab, it works well learning stuff as you listen to it.
As long as you understand what you are playing from the tab ( e.g. you recognise the notes and can say e.g. its a minor7th arpeggio in X key ) instead of playing it by rote.
The same point though can be said about using notation.
The argument about being able to share music with other instrument players is valid, but I still reckon a tab only guitarist could survive in a non professional environment pretty well, just dig out the tab if u need to.
Sight reading tab, yeh u don't wanna get into that. If you were playing with people that liked to try out new stuff and expected u to be able to sight read then tab ain't gonna cut it.
But if you were in a group that played standards and had a day or 2 to prepare for meet ups, I don't see the need for being able to read notation. Isn't that how the majority of jazz outfits work?
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Most guitarist who rely on tabs also don't know the the notes on the fretboard cold. I think that distinction is important.
A guitarist may know the notes on the fretboard well but may not be very fluent in sight reading. That would not stunt their development as a jazz guitarist much especially if they aren't competing for paid gigs. But not knowing the notes is a different story.
I think most people who know their fretboard do not have a reason to prefer tabs over the standard notation.
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In terms of knowing all the notes, it depends on how you view the fretboard. There's 2 ways of 'knowing' the notes I think.
Originally Posted by Tal_175
1. That fret X on string Y is e.g. a C#
2. Knowing that fret X on string Y is e.g. the 5th in Key of A, position X. Or the 3rd in the key of F, position Y.
My guess is a lot of people see it both ways at the same time, but i think you can also be good just knowing 2.
Personally ( I don't claim to be a great jazz player btw, am on a learning journey) I go by 2, but I can name any fret's note not instantly, but within a second or so from working it out. That's ok I think if e.g. a sax man said 'what's that note you are playing', and I had to tell him.
What are the main reasons / situations where you think knowing the notes cold is good? Is it basically a communication thing?
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Not a communication thing, it helps you spend your practice time more efficiently. Originally Posted by KingKong
Knowing the fretboard involves knowing:
- The notes on the fretboard.
- The intervallic relationships on the fretboard (instantly seeing your 3ths, 5ths, b9th's etch in relation to a chord).
- How the musical structures mapped on the fretboard (arpeggios, scale and chord tones etc.).
These skills come in very, very handy in the practice room.The less you are held back by the fretboard knowledge, the more effectively you can develop your soloing, comping, rhythmic and technical skills. The faster you can put new pieces of language, ideas and concepts in harmonically correct places, the faster you internalize these sounds and develop your ears as well. You can integrate new elements into your playing faster and quickly work on applying them in different keys, in different harmonic contexts or different areas of the fretboard.
Most of the time when the learners are playing or comping out of time it is because they are too focused on finding things on the fretboard and that makes them not be present in the music. That was my experience early on. So it helps with your time feel as well. I can go on and on and on.
Yes, you can be very slow with regards to the fretboard and technically do all these things but it'll hurt your brain and be very slow. The time and effort that one puts towards knowing the instrument better pays off generously down the line in my opinion.Last edited by Tal_175; 03-07-2023 at 08:43 PM.
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Ok, well given as you sell it so well, maybe I'll actually sit down and learn them all 'cold' , see if it helps. Originally Posted by Tal_175
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I think the intervallic relationships are relied upon in the practice room more than the note names but they support each other. For some people, the note names are the primary reference, intervallic relationships are secondary. For others, it is the other way around. I think the first group are a minority. Originally Posted by KingKong
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In the folk/blues world that was my original guitar home, I don't recall ever encountering a player who tried to sight-read tab in a playing situation--it was always a how-to-play-X tool, and the goal was to learn not just a tune but a particular way of playing it. It is, to use Tal's phrase, a practice room thing. (FWIW, my standard in-performance aide-memoire is a well-laid-out chart with chords and, where needed, a fingering or position indication.)
Despite repeated attempts (and for reasons too tedious to go into here), I do not learn tunes or arrangements via standard notation. Nor can I locate any given note on the fingerboard without stopping to figure it out (though, like many jumped-up folkies, I know the two E strings, thanks to CAGED). What I do have is a good memory for melodies and arrangements and patterns. (Also, to my enduring puzzlement, the lyrics to novelty songs I haven't heard since 1956.)
But, as I keep pointing out, I am not a soloing jazz player--I'm a mostly-unschooled, ear-led, swing-centric picker who gets to sit in with actual jazz guys once a week. Maybe I'm a mascot. But schooled players do need to recognize the variety of ways that ordinary amateur musicians come to the music. (And FWIW, I've watched schooled players struggle to "get off the page" and use their ears. Something is going on there that conventional academic music programs don't address effectively.)
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I think it’s not so much whether or not tab is frowned on so much as it any use in general
playing life?
Rletson is right imo tab is for lessons and so on. It’s not much used as a resource for learning music by anyone beyond the early levels.
Some working jazz guitar players I know don’t read great if at all and learn tunes by ears - usually but not always standards.
Some are serious reading types and mostly do that. Often they don’t know many tunes.
I think most working players fall between these two stools they can read a bit but they aren’t necessarily infallible at it. But they have a repertoire appropriate to the gigs they do.
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I beg to differ. I see tab used often by proficient guitarists to convey information, simply and directly. Tab is specific to guitar and unambiguous. To discuss a riff or a progression, it is far more useful than notation. Originally Posted by Christian Miller
I remember reading, many years ago, the winning entry in the Melody Maker Essay Competition. It was about drum patterns and their use in rock music. The author included several bars of notation to illustrate his thesis, which no doubt would be very interesting for drummers who read music, or readers who know about drum kits. But the majority would just need to know what drums to hit. A diagram would have told them all they needed to know. Guitarists are fortunate in having a diagrammatic system to convey ideas.
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Fair enough. I basically never come into contact with tab outside teaching where I happily use it as a means to an end. Originally Posted by Litterick
Outside of that most of the musicians trying to communicate music to me (and sometimes succeeding) are not guitarists.
Probably in Djent metal bands tab is essential…
im actually a bit deskilled with tab. Sometimes rock oriented students send me tab of some shred or fusion stuff they are working on and I am pathetic at reading it.
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It seems to me that jazz guitarists who improvise need to master #1 above cold. At least all the notes on the first 12 frets. IMO it should not be that difficult to do this, particularly when comparing it to mastering the other aspects of jazz guitar like chord forms. IMO, if someone doesn't have this mastered, they should spend a few minutes a day on working on this. It really shouldn't take all that long to master it. Originally Posted by KingKong
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Learning the notes on the fretboard is not hard. It also is a process that bootstraps itself once one learns the notes at a basic level. After that, you start using this skill and the more you use it the more you get fluent at it. The bad news is, knowing the notes is only a small part of the overall fretboard internalization in my experience. Originally Posted by Marc Grossman
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Originally Posted by Marc Grossman
The first 12 frets provide 78 non-unique pitches which take 134 non-unique names awaiting the context of a key. Originally Posted by Tal_175
The finger board of the guitar does not have notes before a key context is present; it has pitches whose multiple pitch class names (note name plus accidental) are assigned dependent on the key.
If you want to know the pitches names so you may construct (or analyse) things like melodies and harmonies using basic music theory, you would need to know which of the pitches' multiple names are correct with respect to the key - each pitch has three names if you limit to the keys without double accidentals.Last edited by pauln; 03-08-2023 at 08:59 PM.
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The challenge with this tune is the tempo. My approach, would be to play it starting on middle C (G string, fret 5) I'd play, as you pointed out, in third position. I'd be moving a little more in the bridge.
But, on a gig, I'd play it an octave higher. The range of middle C down to the lowest Ab is too low to my ear. One of the things to practice when learning to read is to be able to play anything in any octave. Comes in very handy.
At that point the issue is to get the picking arranged to where I can play the tune up to tempo, which I think is about 220.
The details are too dense to get into, but the gist is to avoid picking movements that I can't execute. That's done, usually, by putting notes on the same string, where possible.Last edited by rpjazzguitar; 03-11-2023 at 07:31 PM.
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Why bother? It is so difficult. Instead, why not learn to work the saxophone? Originally Posted by pauln
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I know notes well and I can use guitar tablature... eg Guitar Pro soft.
Just reading tablature is not enough.
If you play in a band, no one will write guitar tablature for you ... you just play from notes.
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On the guitar mine is a world of only direct unambiguous pitch, but it's Originally Posted by Litterick
funny you mention the sax. Just a few hours ago I was looking at some
clarinet music and was inspired to get out my 60 year old Bb horn only
to discover the pad for the register key is blown, so I will be taking it for
repair tomorrow. Now I'm looking forward to play'n some sheet music.
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What a pleasure it must be to have an instrument you carry with one hand.
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Isn't TAB somewhat obsolete these days? It's usefulness as a 'put this finger here, and that finger there' method to learn a song seems to have been taken over by Youtube tutorials where you can watch them actually play the song..
PK
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Many of the youtube videos display the TAB somewhere in the video, scrolling by as the person is playing. That way, you can pause the video and work on a section of TAB and back up a bit to play with the video over that section. So TAB is as popular as it has been in recent history.
Also, many of the creators sell TAB versions of the tune to make extra income.
Tony
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It's all aimed at amateurs and fans... Originally Posted by tbeltrans
Professionals just watch it and wait to see what comes of it...
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Well, youtube has a lot of content and it is aimed at a wide variety of people. Anybody with an opinion, something to sell, something to teach, can put up videos and somebody will watch it. As with anything, it is up to the consumer to separate the wheat from the chaff.
Personally, if I want to learn some guitar-oriented material from a video, I will go to a site with known quality material such as mikesmasterclasses.com, mymusicmasterclass.com, barrygreene.com, robertconti.com, jakereichbart.com, or similar.
To me, one can get lost in youtube and spend hours, only to come up with little or nothing of worthwhile content. Why bother with youtube when there are so many quality sites around? I suppose because youtube costs nothing but time - if one has the time to waste. I don't doubt that youtube has SOME quality content, but it is crowded out by everything else so finding it is like searching for the proverbial needle in a haystack.
The sites I mentioned, all (or most, anyway) have sample videos on youtube so that is one way to get an idea of the content before investing in the site.
Tony
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That is a bit of a leap Tal! I learnt to read when I was in my teens and took up clarinet. Since then I have played guitar exclusively and use my ears a lot. Tab makes you do that. And I do know the names of all the notes on the fretboard. Originally Posted by Tal_175
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Sorry, what was the leap? Originally Posted by blackcat
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