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Tab on guitar is also able to convey things standard notation can't. For many things it is more appropriate than notes, since it shows exactly how to play something on the fretboard.
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05-15-2022 03:53 AM
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Tab plus rhythms is legit.
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Originally Posted by EastwoodMike
+1 for Mike's recommendation. I'd not seen that website before ('Music Theory for the 21st Century Classroom') and from a quick read of the first few chapters, it looks really thorough and should support a few years of serious theory study.
I'd also repeat what Mr Beaumont recommended, early on in this thread, that writing notes is important alongside reading music. Keep it simple, at first, but it's good to get the feeling for putting notes on paper, just as we once practiced putting words on paper at school in parallel to learning to read.
Reading & writing music isn't essential and there's a long list of great non-reading players in jazz, but it can become pleasurable (and a great help towards better playing, for most of us) once you've navigated the steepest part of the learning curve at the start. Good luck with the journey!
Maybe a few of the more experienced readers on this thread could add tips on the subject 'What I wish they'd told me when I started learning to read music.'
e.g. "On guitar, all notes are written an octave higher than they would sound on piano, flute, violin etc."
"Begin reading & writing simple lines: use lead sheet melodies and single line solos. Chordal and fingerstyle guitar notation is a highly advanced form of music notation (these often use multiple 'voices' using various rhythms written, confusingly, on the same stave). This very condensed notation style requires considerable work to get familiar with, particularly when beginning to write it down. If you want to get good at this sort of 'guitar chord-melody' reading & writing, it would be worth checking out some classical guitar tutor books such as Frederick Noad's Solo Guitar Playing or with a jazz approach, Howard Morgen's Fingerstyle Jazz Series Concepts."
And, "Don't be shy! People are generous with information - they will usually help if you ask questions - it's good to share knowledge. You're just doing what they once did."
All the best, Mick W
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Originally Posted by starjasmine
Originally Posted by Litterick
Originally Posted by Alter
Sadly I didn't keep the reference but a while back I came across an argument why being able to read only tab is limiting because the notation cannot convey the same richness of information. (I didn't bookmark it because I was in total agreement...)
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Originally Posted by RJVB
Originally Posted by Alter
This vid from JK illustrates playfully and succinctly that the idea of "exactly how to play something on the fretboard" is a bit of a misnomer.
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For a player as advanced as Kreisberg it makes sense to find his own way on the fretboard. But for less advanced players still learning the language of an idiom, it's important to play some things the right way, or you never get the sound and phrasing down. It really depends on what you want to play.
I was very passionately self taught for a number of years, then eventually studied with a lot of people too. I personally don't see a clash in learning the rules and in breaking them, but rather see usefulness in both approaches.
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Originally Posted by starjasmine
Of course I didn't have to know how to sight-read figured bass scores, and still don't.
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I read standard notation, but there are situations in which I like tab.
Some things only sound right (usually, this means like the recording) if you play them the same way as the original.
It's possible to convey the specifics in standard notation with string and finger numbers, but, frankly, it's easier in tab.
In jazz guitar, this is probably most common with chord melody and specific comping approaches.
In lick based rock music, you see it often in melody.
Here's an example. This Could Be The Last Time, by the Rolling Stones. There's a basic guitar lick. Imagine what the standard notation would look like and see if you can nail the sound. In fact, the way Brian Jones played it was very clever and not obvious. I don't think you can get it to sound right any other way.
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Originally Posted by RJVB
By "unified these skills" I mean that if you hear something, you know what it is in theory, can play it, and can write it in standard notation; if you see notation you can "hear it in your head" or analyze it well enough to understand its sound without playing it and that you can sight-sing it or play it on your instrument; if you play something, you understand its theoretical underpinnings and can write it out in standard notation. A tall order, yes, but it is the skillset that the typical four-year university music education promotes. Now, I do not want to veer off into a discussion about music pedagogy or how colleges "teach jazz" because that debate has gone on endlessly on JGB already. This is my opinion, borne out of my experiences as someone who learned to read as a kid, on trumpet, with no theory background and then learned to read on guitar as a university music major. You don't have to agree.
Cheers
SJ
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I kind of agree with the original post but in a different way.
I'm OK reading the score, e.g. if it says e,a,g,f or what ever and generally ok with the riddim, but its putting that on the guitar that I find hard. I don't see the fretboard as notes but as musical degrees, root, 3rd, 5th etc based around which ever of the CAGED positions I'm on at any given point in time.
So e.g. if a tune is in c and the notes are d,c,e,g...... to me thats 2, root, 3rd, 5th if u get what I mean?
This is just how I have come about to understand music, probably cos I'm self taught and have managed to figure it out myself, admittedly over quite a long period of time.
Dunno if anyone else feels the same?
Another question ill ask if I may is how important is being a fluid reader really? So say u get together with ur mates and agree to play a set of 10 tunes.... I'd just go off before the session and handle the pain of slogging through the ( to me) tedious exercise of working out how to play the melodies and translate them into the 'intervals base approach i describe above. I can't imagine a situation where ud need to sight read a tune, unless you were involved at a pretty professional level. And even then, would u even need to know the melody of every tune in the set? Playing the melody ensemble at the start and end is quite rare no? So u could get away with skipping quite a lot of the tunes in the set and just getting ur head round the chords I reckon.
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I can’t sight read. The idea of looking at the score, not knowing a tune, and play it at tempo, is like running a marathon in under two hours. I know it is physically possible, but not for me.
I can read score to learn a new tune. Beyond learning, when I played classical I still had to memorize the passages. The score served more as guidepost to remind me what phrase or passage came next. I wasn’t reading it note for note as I played so much as reminding myself of what came next.
So, my reading has a limited purpose, but for that purpose standard notation is definitely my preference. I can’t count the number of times I’ve realized I didn’t understand the rhythm of a melody until I read the score. It’s amazing how nailing the rhythm versus approximating it affects how well people respond to your playing. I may stray from how it was written when performing, but it’s a knowing change.
I suppose there are ways to indicate rhythm in tab, but most tab just skips it. So, for those reasons, knowing how to read score has been very useful.
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Pro
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Getting good at sight reading needs lots of practice and maintenance.
At the moment I’m prioritising it because I think I’m not totally terrible at reading and I’d like it to be a strength for the kind of gigs I’d like to do (depping in projects etc) beyond the standards gig (for which a large memorised repertoire a big plus.)
As Mike Moreno says you can make a career out of playing Stella by Starlight. Which is a shame because I could play that tune all day.
Once you understand how reading works it is just a matter of putting on the metronome and forcing yourself to do it.
But after a while it becomes fun, you end up enjoying discovering a new piece of music every time you do it. Once you get to that point it becomes rather addictive and I’m pleased to say this is where I am with it.
I like to open the real book at random, record the chords on my phone and read the head. Or vice versa.
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So one thing I did recently was get an app called 'complete music reading trainer' on my phone and do some training on it.
I actually surprised myself last night , went off and did some stuff from a book I have that is just score, no tab and read it quite well.... so I recommend that app as a bit of a short cut.
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Originally Posted by starjasmine
By "unified these skills" I mean that if you hear something, you know what it is in theory, can play it, and can write it in standard notation; if you see notation you can "hear it in your head" or analyze it well enough to understand its sound without playing it and that you can sight-sing it or play it on your instrument; if you play something, you understand its theoretical underpinnings and can write it out in standard notation. A tall order, yes, but it is the skillset that the typical four-year university music education promotes.
I can also fully imagine that you can end up with a mental map of your instrument that's based on scales and how you finger them (there's a recent thread about that, I think). What I don't see is why you'd associate fingerings with scales, beyond knowing which fingers to skip/extend/retract for intervals that aren't semitones. That's why I have a hard time with the "everyone plays like that" claim.
Maybe everyone who plays jazz and "learned it the right way"? I can see how that would fit with the "let's play some lightning fast scales and call it a solo" bit when you're not doing the "let's play some more or less random chords around the notes of the melody and maybe one that fits with the harmony" thing. That's tongue-in-cheek, but it is what so much jazz sounds like to me, esp. on guitar.
Originally Posted by KingKong
Originally Posted by rlrhett
Originally Posted by rlrhett
I think I learned my simple scores by heart from practising them as a starting violinist and then gradually evolved to the point where this was no longer really the case (ending up in that state where you hardly look at the score, essentially play by heart, but get lost if the score is taken away). On guitar I must still be in that first stage. I'm trying not to, but in practice the process of learning to play the right notes/chords in the right way commits them to memory. And once they are I find it hard to keep looking at my score.
Probably it doesn't help that on guitar you can actually control what your hands are (supposed to be) doing visually. It also doesn't help that with my current need for sight correction it's tiresome to be able to see clearly at both distances, and to switch between them quickly.
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Originally Posted by Christian Miller
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There still seems to be this odd belief that ANYONE masters a deeply embodied musical skill set like reading music or playing jazz in four years of college. Sight reading is a skill that professional level classical string players and pianists start in early childhood for instance and use every day for the rest of their playing lives.
You can teach stuff at college, and learn a lot in four years (eps if young) but the time scales for acquiring these kinds massive skills are longer. Be kind to yourself and keep the pan bubbling on the back burner and run a distance race… marathon is a good metaphor for these types of things.
the other thing that strikes me is that if someone says they are an ‘Ok’ or ‘decent’ reader’ they are amazing and if they say they are ‘a great reader’ they are almost certainly not what they say. Ability at reading - at least for the musician reading - is measured by failures, not successes and therefore teaches humility, it seems to me.
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Originally Posted by RJVB
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Originally Posted by RJVB
I don't know if anyone sees the fretboard differently, to me this is the only way that makes sense. Ask me what note I'm on at a point in time and I'll need to think for a second before saying it is e.g a B Flat, but ask me what 'number' it is and I'll tell u in a flash.
@RJVB, u and others mention limitations of the CAGED system, can u clarify what you think they are? To me each one of them is almost like its own instrument if you get what I mean? Play a bit in one position and there are various natural finger movements, hammer on's, pull offs that fall out of it. Switch to another and you get a different set of these.
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Originally Posted by Christian Miller
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Originally Posted by KingKong
@RJVB, u and others mention limitations of the CAGED system, can u clarify what you think they are?
A pun comes to mind, the different between a rock and a jazz guitarist ... the former plays 3 chords for 10000 people, the latter 10000 chords for 3 people.
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The other two scale positions are awkward/redundant or otherwise un-useful.
In other words, you can waste your time learning them, but you’ll never use them. Kind of like the locrian mode.
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It does the job for me anyway, but I have heard people say NOO there are 7 positions not 5, always do 3 notes per string etc, maybe I'm missing out but I'm happy and like the stuff I come up with, not fussed about being a 'complete guitarist', just about playing nice stuff that has decent variation.
Whats also interesting that I've found with it is that u can use CAGED positions for comping.
- you can find 3-4 note chord voicings for all of the 7 7th chords in a key in each of the CAGED positions, so you can comp an entire tune without hardly moving your arm up and down the neck.
- then u can shift to doing this in different positions to get variation.
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There’s a lot of people who swear by whatever system they were taught and can’t imagine someone doing things another way. It’s all just basics really, learning the notes. I’d question an approach that placed to much importance on what fingers to play the notes with tbh.
One things for sure - position playing is often the weakest way to finger a music idea. To finger a musical idea well requires an understanding of that idea. Good readers can do this because they have seen most things. Until you get to that position, caged, 7 positions, 3pms, who cares? just make sure you stick to whatever system you choose and learn it full
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Originally Posted by Christian Miller
To finger a musical idea well requires an understanding of that idea. Good readers can do this because they have seen most things.
It's been absent from the discussion until now, but that context also helps to understand what's better for the right hand. And IMHO you can still do all that without understanding the musical idea, and thus give a technically perfect but utterly dead interpretation (if one can call it an interpretation). Understanding of the musical idea helps determining what picking fingers should be used, or whether up or down picking strokes are called for.
YMMV but for me understanding the musical idea is a lot easier when I sing the score (in my head, my actual singing capabilities would make it a lot more difficult ). That's maybe because it's the approach taught in the classical approach (violin & guitar). But just experimenting with different RH techniques can also help understand the idea (I just experienced that again with 2 Sor Op. 35 études where -shock, horror - in 2 occasions a note with an upward stave turns out best played with the thumb).
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Originally Posted by Christian Miller
But at any point in time, any note you play is always in one of the positions for the key, so they still serve as the reference map.
As an aside, is there any other instrument where there are so many different ways to play the same notes? Violin style instruments maybe but any others? Trumpet , sax , piano all only have one instance of a given note available no? Those guys have it easy!
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