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Hey everyone!
I'm brand new to jazz guitar, but I've been playing classical guitar for 15 years. Which is to say, I'm no stranger to reading standard notation!
I notice most of the examples on this website and others are given in both tab and standard notation.
I'm sure the answer is "it depends" and "it's a personal choice" but which one do you find yourself using more? Do you use one style notation for learning and another for playing? Is one your "main" one, and the other just "informational"? Is there one that you completely ?
Just curious how people approach it, as I'm getting my feet wet in "Autumn Leaves", I find myself bouncing back and forth between the two, which makes my brain hurt!
-evan
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02-07-2024 12:53 PM
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Nevermind, as I figured, this has been discussed to death! How frowned upon is using guitar tablature?
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Tab can be helpful when you want to know exactly how something was fingered. Sometimes, it's really not obvious from standard notation. So, it has some value. Even when somebody writes in string, fret and finger onto standard notation, tab can be easier to deal with. That's much more likely to happen in genres other than jazz. In fact, it almost never comes up in the world of jazz guitar, IME.
So, for the most part standard notation is the way to go.
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Jazz is an aural music. Content is created for sound, which is closely associated with shape, or a linear orientation (ascending line, ornaments which are centred on chord tones, leaps to chord tones, shifting tonal centres for different chords, etc). While you can get the "correct notes" by many means, TAB reduces it to fingering in a specific way and these pivitol points of aural reference are not apparent. Standard notation, on the other hand gives you, at a glance, the shape of the phrase, the arc of a line, the directions of a figure, a virtual graph of chord tones involved, intervals, note density, ornamentation and even the shape of the phrase should you choose to play it in a different part of the fingerboard.
In short, it mimics the "shapes" of phrases and the development of a constructed composition (solo) a lot closer to a visual model of the music than merely indicating the placement of the fingers.
Tab tells you where the fingers go. Standard indicates what the music is doing.
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Jazz is an aural music. Play by ear.
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That would explain why Beethoven didn't play jazz.
Originally Posted by Litterick
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Elephants would play jazz, if they had fingers. Originally Posted by Jimmy blue note
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Because they swing their trunks when they walk? Originally Posted by Litterick
Hippos for sure, They're very hip.
Raccoons don't have opposable thumbs so they only play smooth jazz, nothing opposing there.
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Jackrabbits play jazz, they have big ears. And all they seem to care about is being fast.
Termites are natural jazz guitarists because they have no idea what space means.
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Notation far and away for jazz above TAB. Much of the music we need to access is not guitar music so is written in this form. Originally Posted by evanbenoit
TBH I find TAB quite slow to read now just because I don’t use it much except for writing teaching materials.
EDIT: although reading is not a prerequisite, unlike using your ears is as others have commented here.
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Hippos are terrifying. I don’t want to meet any of those at a jam session. Originally Posted by Jimmy blue note
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There are players I've met on the bandstand who have the proximal sensitivity of a hungry hippo. Just step out of the way. Originally Posted by Christian Miller
I wouldn't want to meet THEM on the banks of the Nile.
But as a professional jazz musician, I suppose it's a prerequisite that we all pay our dues living in denial.
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I can't even read tab. I suppose I could if I tried, but I've never seen the point. I don't much care about how someone else fingers a line. I also don't care if someone else uses, or prefers, tab. Whatever gets the job done is fine, I just find it easier with standard notation. Also, I am not a professional jazz musician.
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The "main" one in the jazz tradition (IMHO) is to learn by ear. Originally Posted by evanbenoit
Paper is for learning/teaching material, faking it through tunes you haven't learnt properly and playing arrangements.
When there is standard notation and another "staff" with tabs below I tend to read the tabs (probibly because I learnt it first), especially block chords, but I can read both. Most of the time I just use ireal pro to fake it, it shows chords only but it is rarely my role to play the melody if someone else calls a tune I don't know well enough.
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Well, I suppose I can no longer call myself just a beginner at guitar...more like a regular scumbag who hauls that box up on my knee every once in a while.
Yes, I can read flyshit off a page when it comes to a normal instrument, but for every single tune I learn on guitar, yes, it takes me a bit of effort. It's not exactly difficult to play it in different fingerings (one string, goes up or down five or four frets), and I've come to know each fret and string and where to place it in the tranposed (8va) and concert notation.
That in itself is a mild PITA, using a tranposed instrument, but on guitar it's not so bad. Actually, it's kind of worse at times than, say, reading a trumpet chart and just knocking it off a whole step...rarely sure if a phrase is in concert or guitar, which, believe it or not, matters.
I'd rather read tab for a various line or whatever for playing at a glance....knowing I'd probably change it to some other fingering...but I'd want the notes in standard notation for clarity above all other. It's more confusing to me when guitarists try to explain things in terms of "positions" or cowboy chord "ideas" like "E-shape" or whatever. I don't speak "guitar" in terms of positions, and while I know what CAGED is and all the rest of those jive "systems," I don't really care what some cornshucking cracker is trying to tell me about "use an A position." Or some honk telling me about "first position," "second position," &c. I already know how to read, so I'd rather not hear or see a bunch of made-up jargon based on grips.
And, yes, I'm learning a bunch of James Burton finger-picking stuff now, or trying to, so it's not snobbery. Just practicality. I come from the country myself, is how I learned to pick piano at first, so is merely friendly jibe, but also true. I know what an E triad is, but also understand the concept of inversions, can read and write figured bass, and all that: it ain't no "position" to me at all! Show me the notes, mofo!
Give me the notes on paper and let me figure it out, I'd say. Takes me longer than using tab, but at least I can see and hear what the music is at one glance, and the rest is my problem.Last edited by jackalGreen; 02-12-2024 at 07:47 AM.
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All you need is ears like Dumbo.
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Might I interject that one of the great pleasures of teaching jazz is appreciating how my students ears improve over time as they learn more tunes and solos by ear. You may feel you have no ear at the start but everyone can 100% improve their ear with work.
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I subbed in a big band and had to read the guitar lick on Reeling In The Years. I managed, but I knew I didn't nail the sound.
Later, I found Tab for it, which made it clear how to use open strings to make the lick sound right. Sure, it could have been written out with tiny numbers in and out of tiny circles, but Tab was easier for that particular task.
Of course, the big band chart didn't include Tab. They never do.
It's a situation in which I find Tab can be helpful. It's no substitue for reading standard notation.
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Standard notation for me - I've done a lot of musical theater over the years and those scores don't come in TAB and I wouldn't know what to do with it if they did (Imagine Andrew Lloyd Webber's "Evita" written in TAB). Outside theater, for pop and country, it's mostly ear with the occasional glance at a lead sheet when learning a tune. Over the past few years, I've developed an interest in Celtic acoustic fingerstyle but discovered it's mostly in DADGAD tuning and written in TAB and that's the way it's played and, if you're not VERY familiar with the tuning, it's impossible to stray outside the written TAB arrangement. I'm not willing to immerse myself in a whole new tuning to be able to play the dozen or so songs I like - granted they can be played in standard tuning but the open string effects are missing. I've been reading notes since I was about 8 yrs old and I'm 78 now so I think I'll stick to what I know.
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What's the difference between a hippo and a zippo? One's really heavy and the other's a little lighter. Originally Posted by Christian Miller
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I think from what ive heard a lot of Irish trad players etc go through a DADGAD phase and end up going back to standard but trying to adapt what they learned into standard, such as overringing scale fingerings etc. Originally Posted by Skip Ellis
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And then there's Pierre Bensusan who plays everything in DADGAD! Originally Posted by Christian Miller
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