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Tab is great to show fingering and what notes to play on what strings. Things like a Billy Sheehan tapping solo are better in tab than notation. But if you want to be serious about music, you need to learn to read notation. You also need to be able to follow chord charts. The reason that stringed instrument players even think about tab is that we can play a C1 at multiple places on different strings. Notation will not tell you what string to play a particular note on. Bass has it pretty easy since we're only playing one note at a time mostly. But on guitar, it becomes really difficult to play something with notation when you have to follow four or five notes that can be played each at different places on different strings and you have to calculate the best position where your fingers can reach and then move to the next position. Much easier to follow tabs / chord charts.
Keyboard has it easy. There is only one place to play a C3 or any other note written. So standard notation is easy for them. Wind instruments, same thing.
Keyboard has it easy. There is only one place to play a C3 or any other note written. So standard notation is easy for them. Wind instruments, same thing.
s0c9
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Sigh.. You took my comment out of context... "Very little stuff is fully noted/tabbed for bass anyway, <snip>"
was referencing tabs.. not sheet music.
I never said "you never have to read". READ the freakin post first Carl..,please!!
I have no issues, concerns or problems with folks expecting sheet music, using or reading it. I'd like to, but I've never been handed it.. I'm not a professional musician. If I get anything it's nashville. Obviously YMMV!
Bassist4Eris
Frat-Pack Sympathizer
As a writer who works with both keyboardists and guitarists, I sure am glad I learned both standard and tab.
Not true. You can do all that with just TAB notation if you want to. The simplified TAB notation you see on the TAB sites is a very stripped down version of that form of notation.
There's noting sacred or intrinsically better about modern staff music notation. It's one of literally dozens of equally good notation systems for music. And it has its own shortcomings as well. Many composers complain about lack of notations needed to convey what they're shooting for in their compositions. Many modern pieces of music have additional symbols and private notations invented by the composer to cover things in their compositions standard notation doesn't cover. About all standard notation really has going for it is it's commonality. It's a standard because it's whats most commonly used. (At least in the western world.) And any standard - even a half-assed standard - is better than nothing when multiple players need to work together.
Since the same note can be found on several different places of the neck, and the timbre and the envelope of a note changes depending upon which string you play it on (and where) TAB is the only genuinely accurate way to notate the actual performance of a piece of music played on a stringed instrument. If you just want to convey simple pitch, volume, approximate dynamics, and duration, then standard notation is all you need. But standard notation is still only like a detailed outline of a novel whereas a full TAB notation is like reading the actual text.
And staff notation isn't 100% accurate with regard to pitch for every instrument. There are transposing instruments that are notated in a certain way but actually sound different that what the notes indicate they are playing. Guitar for example is usually notated for the G clef but it actually sounds an octave lower than the notation would lead you to believe if you didn't know that. And some woodwinds and brass instruments sound completely different notes than what the written score suggests. For example, a B♭ clarinet will often play off a score notated in C, but will sound a B♭ when playing the note on the staff written as a C.
Both notational systems are worth learning. But one is not "better" than the other. The two systems exist for two different reasons despite the amount of overlap between them.
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While there aren't as many note repetitions on wind instruments as on string instruments it isn't the case that there are no note repetitions.
For example on trombone F3 can be played in 1st position or 6th position, and there are several other repetitions, especially up in the higher partials.
The part about wind instruments isn't quite true. I played clarinet growing up. There are alternate fingerings for many pitches, and you often end up using the one that works best based on the fingering you were just using or are going to be using next. There were some tonal and pitch differences for some also, so you would prefer one fingering over another based on if it were a fast run or slow melodic line, for example.
You run into that with flute and especially recorder. There are more than a few alternate fingerings for many notes depending on what you need to accomplish. Ornaments in particular, that mainstay of Baroque music, often require special fingerings to make them work.
There's also stylistic assumptions in genres like Baroque where you're expected to know when to put in "ornaments" (e.g. cadence trills and appoggiaturas) - so the composers of that period often didn't bother to write them out in full. Musicians of the period were just expected to know enough to put them in.
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In addition to alternate fingerings (on clarinet here) there are resonance fingerings as well as different pitched clarinets that must be accommodated. There is plenty of C clarinet music out there, as well as Eb, A and Bb - which are the big 3 of professional clarinets. Learning to transpose on sight adds further layers of complexity to the evil beasts. Most folks don't have a C clarinet, or an Eb or A for that matter so being educated about transposition on the fly is a fairly big deal.
And these are standard notation issues bassists will never have to deal with. Bassists have it pretty good when it comes to notation.
And these are standard notation issues bassists will never have to deal with. Bassists have it pretty good when it comes to notation.
What you do is not worse than standard sheet music. Only one line prior, you admit you consult standard sheet music to discover note length.
All the "cons" of tablature listed by others I'm with 100%!! However, one good use I've found is for tricky passages and using tab to help remember one ideal fingering for said passage like this whole tone lick(example1)
I have many options on how to get where I'm going, but I also will memorize and be able to transpose it easier with one ideal fingering use slides and pull off 's....so tab *can* be a good time saver, but I always discouraged my students from relying on it!!
I have many options on how to get where I'm going, but I also will memorize and be able to transpose it easier with one ideal fingering use slides and pull off 's....so tab *can* be a good time saver, but I always discouraged my students from relying on it!!
Well, sorta - on a brass instrument there are two ways to play lots of notes since some of the valve combinations are pretty close to enharmonic, although one of them will be a touch out of tune and you have to "lip it" a bit or pull a tuning slide to correct the pitch (e.g., valves 1+3 are sharp vs. valve 4 alone). Higher up on the staff there is a little more flexibility. Woodwinds have some similar ways of doing things.
Back to the subject at hand, I much prefer reading standard notation because I've been doing it for decades and it's second nature to me at this point. However, if tab gets the job done, then so be it. I'm not dogmatic about it, and feel people should do whatever gets them acceptable results, but I do believe that standard notation can cram a lot more information in the same amount of space. I guess it's like a carpenter and power tools vs. hand tools - you can get decent results both ways, but the extra knowledge is always a valuable thing to have and occasionally necessary.
okcrum
in your chest
Something like this, if I were learning it as opposed to reading it, I might mark the fingers used over the notes, and any open strings (helpful for otherwise "impossible" position changes). It's a good habit to scan for the highest and lowest notes since you've got to get to those anyway. Both of these sound like they'd help transitioning from tab, since you'd be used to using finger numbers. They also come in handy the first few times reading a chart, since there's usually time to mark the opens and the fingerings at the extremes - just not every note!
sorry ... read 0 posts ...
i think it comes down to whatever you learned first ..! i started reading music at age 6 ... so tabs seem rather silly to me ... kinda like 'paint by number' ..!
but across all instruments , reading 'real' music is the gold standard for communicating ..
i think it comes down to whatever you learned first ..! i started reading music at age 6 ... so tabs seem rather silly to me ... kinda like 'paint by number' ..!
but across all instruments , reading 'real' music is the gold standard for communicating ..
Learn to play songs the easiest way for you, if you can read notation that's great, if you can't use tab, just do what works for you, I personally listen to a song and figure it out but when I get stuck I use the tab, it's works for me, I wish I could read notation but don't have the patience, I already tried and got bored...I was a part time musician for over 30 + years and I got away with it, but honestly if I was a Pro or a session player I would of took the time to learn the prefered way...
To me it's an extra step of abstraction that also obscures information--standard notation represents the music, whereas tablature shows part of one way to play it.
IMO it's also not really needed--once I decided to learn how to read music it really only took a month to get to the point where I found myself saying "I wish this was just given in standard notation."
One thing I've seen in tab that drives me nuts is fingerings and position shifts that say to me that the person who created the tab just learned it by rote. You know, things like playing a I/IV/V by shifting position on one string three times when the whole thing could be played without changing position once. It's not that tab automatically makes people do this, but there is a 'learning without understanding' phase that it makes it easy to slip into.
Anyway, I'm not really against it, but I encourage people to learn to read standard music notation, too. Tab is a useful tool, but it's only one approach.
More concisely: "Have you ever heard anyone say 'I wish I couldn't read standard notation?'"
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Having zero experience in music I use tabs. My instructor will also write some out for riffs and scales.
I've seen a lot of them posted online that are off though.
I've seen a lot of them posted online that are off though.
