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Hello all,
I’ve been playing playing classical guitar for 40 years. I have studied for 11 years in the conservatory. I have bern playing early plucked instruments and I’m very used to play from tabs. Now starting to learn some jazz and improvise. I’m left handed (and this is an relevant question in this reflection).
I have some good books for my instruction but the books with tabs and fretboards diagrams have two issues to my opinion:
1) You don’t know as clearly as the score the notes you play.
2) The diagrams are written for right handed players. I’m “traslating” all the visual concepts for a left handed guitar player. This is time consumer.
But the visual approach in this books is good for quick memorizing and start to improvising easily.
The score based stuff has pros and cons too:
You know better the notes you play. Then you increase your music theory training, your ear training and the fretboard knowlement.
But you loose the visual facility and memorization
I’m working with Bobby Fisher method (visual and tab oriented) and with Aebersold (score oriented). And this is my daily war. Just a reflection. Thank you for reading.
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04-28-2023 01:35 AM
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Interesting. I’m not sure I have any direct advice regarding this. I learned very much as a ‘shapes’ player and got into reading later, and I’m thinking a classical player going into jazz may have a different way of looking at things.
I do feel traditional bop jazz guitar is quite a lot about moveable figures and ideas you can move up and down the fretboard and across the strings.
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Does that mean lute family instruments and other stringed instruments in different tunings? If you frequently change between tunings, then tablature makes a lot of sense to me, compared to standard notation.early plucked instruments and I’m very used to play from tabs
I've often wondered how playing in different tunings affects your intuition to put your fingers on the note you're hearing in your head?
My impression is that almost all advanced instrumentalists have the ability to play musical phrases they hear in their head, even though they've never practised it or played that phase. Kind of like singing. Your fingers just go to the correct spot, without any conscious effort or analysis(of course there are various levels of this ability).
But I've wondered how this work for lutists (or players of other plucked instruments) who play in a wide variety of tunings?
Do they practise scales in different tunings and can they play phrases on their instruments in different tunings. (I assume they can of course do it on a single string, I could do that on a lute I am not familiar with).
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To read notes you need notation. Everything else is an aid.
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You might be stumbling into a culture clash area between classical guitar and jazz guitar.
Classical guitarists are interested in going from the notation (tab or standard) to music in the particular way that a piece was arranged for guitar. They want to get the memorization out of the way so that they can work on the technical and expressive elements of the performance.
In jazz, it's not very often that you memorize something as it's arranged for guitar. You are the arranger and even the composer for the most part. Chord-melody arrangements are perhaps an exception but most experienced jazz guitarists either come up with their own chord-melody arrangements or improvise them.
Almost everything you learn in jazz, even licks or specific comping phrases, have very little use unless you work on them in a way that you can play them in different parts of the instrument in a variety of ways. You want to understand the concept behind the idea, and then explore and experiment with it until it's truly "stolen" from the source.
Ideally you learn something by ear, then you figure out various harmonic applications for it, and rely on your fretboard knowledge and references of the concepts involved in the idea to apply it to tunes. Gradually you start "pre-hearing" similar ideas.
I'm saying these because it seems like you're interested in learning jazz (based on the thread title) and "scores vs tabs" indicates a certain classical cultural bias in how you might be looking at this.
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Lutes (and Spanish vihuela) are tuned very similar to the guitar (imagine a guitar with capo on 3rd fret and 3rd string a semitone down). So chords and scales are memorized and all the same. In modal Early Music some modes where barely used, so a few scales are sufficient for play. Some tabs represent the first string above and other the first string down, fret represente with numbers.
Originally Posted by orri
Baroque lute is other world (a very difficult world). Open tuned in D minor and 11 to 13 courses, so 1 flat in the notation = tuning down two strings. Happily keys like Gb maj was not frequently used!!!! The visual chord vocabulary is different to all the things, but a minor chord is a one finger barré, this is the only good thing (apart from the wonderful sound). Repertoire in French tablature: frets represented in letters.
My reflection is about the impact on the visual vs the score. The visual has a great impact in the memory, and hence in the practice development of the learned directly in the playing. The score has the background of music theory like a support, a guide that is fundamental un some musical styles, like jazz. Both are positive factors. I’ve the inconvenience of to be a left handed player. Lefty players can usually “translate” the visual stuff to convenience (I imagine the paper transparent or turned), but in some visual based books the representation is not left handed friendly and is necessary to write the scales, etc, apart adapted to the lefty player. This is time consuming, while the score is universal. Just reflextions.
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No, just the contrary. I’m learning all the new things from memory and opening my mind to the fingerboard. I memorice all my arrangements and just use the books for learn the vocabulary. Originally Posted by Tal_175
My reflection is about the font of information, the system that represent the music for learning. Also about the time consuming of the different options and the contribution to the fingerboard knowlement of the visual (tab included) vs the score.
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Although you find complaints that many classical guitar students dont read music - the stuff they play is so over-fingered it might as well be tab
certainly did this myself when I was learning CG years ago
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Lol, this actually drives me up the wall. I can't use CG music to practice reading. Depends on editions of course, some are better than others. And tbf some of the fingerings ARE really nice. Originally Posted by BWV
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have you looked at older editions on IMSLP? Some fingering, but not nearly as much as in modern editions Originally Posted by Christian Miller
https://vmirror.imslp.org/files/imglnks/usimg/f/fa/IMSLP470283-PMLP492621-Sor_op.31.pdf
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no I haven’t, but I will…. Originally Posted by BWV
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