Reading Music: Does it help guitar players?

I've heard several interviews over the years (WRT to, for example, Paul McCartney) where the interviewer is totally amazed that a particular pop/rock artist can't read music.

My question is why a guitar player needs to read music. For a piano player (like Macca), I think you'd need to read music, but how important is it really for guitarists?

I'm not talking about knowing theory, but specifically reading music.

My totally uninformed opinion is that traditional musical notation has lots of limitations when representing guitar playing, which is why Tab is so useful in many cases.

Am I totally wrong?

It doesn't hurt and if your a full time working musician it can help you get jobs.

My totally uninformed opinion is that traditional musical notation has lots of limitations when representing guitar playing...
Am I totally wrong?

Yes. Learn to read.

Actually it's TAB that's limited ...
It assumes that all guitarists want to play the part or song or lick, etc. in the same place on the neck. The intrinsic benefit and inherent beauty of all stringed instruments is that you have position options most of the time that can result in ...
1) more comfort for a specific player.
2) a different timbral texture ('C' at the 1st fret, 2nd string is way different timbrally than 'C' at the 10th fret, 4th string - though they are still the same octave).
3) standard notation makes it much easier to see the lick or melody's relationship to the rest of the music - which will lead to much more efficient position playing and ultimately transposition when your singer wants to do 'Honky Tonk Woman' in Db.
4) if you understand "standard notation", you can actually communicate with musicians OTHER than guitar players.
5) there's a ton more music written in 'standard notation' than is available in TAB. Pretty much the entire western canon "other than" lead and modern guitar music. Your question now has to be - 'how limited do you want to be?' (No judgment, just fact.)

Now, does one need to be a decent reader to be a great player/writer?

Absolutely not.

But for us mortals who are NOT Paul McCartney, Ray Charles, Dylan, Albert King or Mozart - it definitely comes in handy.

klasaine nailed the critical points in my opinion. Plus, tabs are often not correct in WHERE they tell you to play a line, chord, etc. It is better to have the raw material (standard notation) and figure out where it makes sense to you to play the phrase.

Plus there is just gaggles of material not yet 'tabbed', including some of the best books I have seen (Ted Greene and Andrew Green's books, for example).

Plus, reading music ISN'T hard--something that isn't often discussed. It is just the alphabet and counting, when you boil it down. Heck, guitarist don't even really have to learn bass clef, just treble. Sightreading might require dedicated study, but just reading at a relaxed pace w/ the goal of learning new ideas is fairly easy.

So, give it a pop and see for yourself.

It can open up a lot of possibilities. I really enjoy playing in pit orchestras, big bands, and other situations that require reading. It also seems that every time I do a new show, I learn something from the score that I can apply to my playing.

people who don't learn to read music miss out on a lot, IMHO.

I've heard several interviews over the years (WRT to, for example, Paul McCartney) where the interviewer is totally amazed that a particular pop/rock artist can't read music.

My question is why a guitar player needs to read music. For a piano player (like Macca), I think you'd need to read music, but how important is it really for guitarists?

I'm not talking about knowing theory, but specifically reading music.

My totally uninformed opinion is that traditional musical notation has lots of limitations when representing guitar playing, which is why Tab is so useful in many cases.

Am I totally wrong?

I for one don't think you're totally wrong. When I was about 7 or 8 years old, I started playing guitar...used a Mel Bay book. For the next 2 or 3 years, I successfully learned to sight read YANKEE DOODLE DANDEE. I was frustrated because what I wanted to learn was RocknRoll. Then I found a book called Improvising Lead Guitar. It taught me SO MUCH usefull stuff and IT WAS FUN! Learned the pent positions, well known licks, bends, hammer-ons, pull-offs, etc. After that, I never once went back to the Mel Bay book. 40 years later, I still have not come into a situation where I needed to read music. And I still don't know anyone who does.

Yes. Learn to read.

Not trying to be a *****, but that's not a helpful comment.

How has knowing to read music helped you?

well, i'll answer the same question posed to joe-bob, assuming his answers would be similar...

my feelings reflect a lot of what klasaine said too...

1. being able to read has allowed me to play different kinds of music that TAB's just don't exist for.

this includes everything from classical pieces, jazz charts, and music written for different instruments (boy did i have fun arranging a bach cello prelude for guitar for a wedding ceremony i played recently)

2. reading music allows me to communicate with other musicians who aren't guitarists.

power chord, seventh fret, doesn't mean much to a piano player. musical notation is a common language which allows me to share ideas with people who have very different backgrounds, and very different instruments, than myself.

3. Music is about rhythm, not just notes.

reading music, i can play stuff i've never actually heard before. how cool is that? notes have values that TAB doesn't capture.

this is my take on it. As a guitar teacher, I agree that TAB has it's place, and i will admit to using it with some students, especially those who need a little more "instant gratification" to stay motivated. But at one point or another, I always work in some real music reading as well.

If you had told me at sixteen that I'd be playing jazz and sight reading classical music pieces, i'd have told you "you're crazy." but the path my tastes travelled are not unique, and when i arrived at the juncture of wanting to learn the head to "blue bossa" or play a fernando sor study, i was glad my teacher had pushed me to learn how to read.

Thanks for the replies, and I'm really not trying to be argumentative.

In the interest of full disclosure, I can read music a little, enough to stay ahead of my 10 year old son's piano lessons (although he's doing Joplin now, and that is some crazy stuff). I'm no sight reader, but I can do it.

I've never really applied it to guitar, and I don't really intend to. I've got too many other things to learn first (how to get some decent recordings down, how to play rockabilly better, etc.). This is really just an issue I'm interested in.

a question for you, jazztele:

1. Can you point me to a good jazz guitar book which would "require" me to read music? I'm interested in the Kenny Burrell/Wes Montgomery jazzy blues/ bluesy jazz neighborhood in particular, and I'm not sure I'd go that route, but I'm interested in checking something out.

Not trying to be a *****, but that's not a helpful comment.

How has knowing to read music helped you?
I answered your question, what's wrong with that? :confused:

=======


Reading has allowed me to play and study classical guitar at the college level. It allows me to play in a big band jazz band; from which I've been able to get other paying gigs playing jazz. I've also been able to meet and play with professional musicians who I never would have met had I remained closed-minded to reading and expanding my musical knowledge. It also allows me to teach my students how to read music on guitar, so that they can also enjoy music of their choice.

I compose in a modern classical music kind of situation, so of course I am reading and writing music all day long. When I play guitar, it is strictly blues improvising that I am interested in. I keep a notebook filled with licks that I work with for a period of time. I might practice 15 - 20 licks in different positions, keys, rhythms and even pitch variations for a period of 2 -3 weeks. Long enough to ingrain these ideas as reflexes. I don't consciously pull out these licks when I improvise. They just inform my brain and finger reactions to musical impulses. I usually create these licks to address something that I want to incorporate into my vocabulary. In this kind of situation, reading music is a very useful tool for writing and remembering things. I could use a tape recorder in exactly the same way.

Along with reading, I have developed an understanding of chords and scales (called theory in forums like this, but really are just fundamentals of music). This let's me generalize what I hear. For example, if I hear a certain kind of mood in a blues guitar solo, I will know that the 6th scale degree is present. By knowing about chord tones and passing tone, etc. I can very often write down what I hear on, say, Youtube. I'll write this down as soon as I hear it, then later take it upstairs and play it to see if I want to incorporate it into my practice routine. By being able to write it down, I can capture the idea on paper as soon as I hear and then play it days later. I wouldn't be able to remember the details of a lick that long without playing it on the guitar.

Finally, when I was younger, I used to play in jazz ensembles and different kinds of shows around town. Reading was a prerequisite for that. That put me in contact with players who I normally wouldn't have known from my rock and country gigs. Through them, I learned more about the kind of music that they were interested in, and was able to incorporate that knowledge into my studies and playing.

The thing about reading that many guitarists find difficult, is that they very often are able to play music of a higher degree of complexity, especially rhythmic complexity, than they are able to read. It is much easier to learn a rhythmically complex guitar part by ear than it is to read it if guitarist hasn't read before. There are many examples of this, where a conductor or other musician will sing the part to the guitarist during a rehearsal. This is fine, but it of course slows things down and puts the burden on other musicians to teach the guitarist the part.

I think a good goal is to be able to sight read the melodies and chords of the Real Book. Those tunes can be realized in many different positions to produce interesting colors in the part. I think this is a more realistic goal than sight-reading classical guitar music, which is geared toward playing things in certain positions and playing in counterpoint and chord-melody style. That kind of stuff often needs to be worked out for the best sound, as opposed to the Real Book which kind be read on the spot.

Fiddle tunes are also good for learning to read. They are usually not very complex rhythmically, since they are so often in straight 8ths or 16ths.

That's a big point. Learning to read will improve your sense of rhythm and meter because you'll see how quarter notes, eighth notes, triplets, etc. fit together in a measure and relate to the downbeat. Otherwise you'll be relying mostly on your instinctive sense of rhythm, which isn't always that great.

And it's an efficient method of transmission - particularly once you get away from simple chords and melodies.

My son plays in a death metal band where the music, which is original and quite complex, is transmitted to new members aurally - by playing it to them. I've observed that it takes the band quite a while to get a song down.

On the other hand, my class at the Con made a very reasonable fist of Chick Corea's "Desert Air", after only a couple of attempts working off the chart in the Real Book - and we didn't have to spend time working out what was being played.

Can you point me to a good jazz guitar book which would "require" me to read music? I'm interested in the Kenny Burrell/Wes Montgomery jazzy blues/ bluesy jazz neighborhood in particular, and I'm not sure I'd go that route, but I'm interested in checking something out.

i don't know of any books that have full transcriptions from those players without TAB, but I say get a real book and start learning some tunes. reading the heads is great practice, because they're usually monophonic. and there's lot's of good blues tunes in volume 1 and 2.

I'm not going to say that reading music is essential to guitar playing, but it helps if you want to play pieces written for other instruments or music not in TAB. You also need knowledge of theory and the fretboard too so your not just reading notes, you understand the relationship between them.

Hands down the best Wes Montgomery book is "the Wes Montgomery Guitar Folio" by none other than great jazz and session guitarist himself, Steve Khan.

The chords are right, the lines are right. It was done by a great guitar player. It doesn't get better than this. * NO TAB *

He also has one for "Pat Martino - the Early Years"

My totally uninformed opinion is that traditional musical notation has lots of limitations when representing guitar playing, which is why Tab is so useful in many cases.

Am I totally wrong?

Yup. Tab is more limited. Plus, 90% of the tab out there is just plain wrong.

with Sheet music there's far less doubt about notes and chords, and you can use it as a base to re-harmonize melodies and/or shift key as needed.

I play in a situation where the music is written in Ab and the keyboard player and vocalists want to play in F. I wouldn't even know where to begin doing that with TAB. In fact, is it even possible to sight-read (at tempo) in TAB?

I can't really read TAB, though so there's that.

As a bassist life would have been alot easier if I was a site reader. I can muddle through on my own. But I agree, learn to read and a whole new world opens up!

MHO from the bottom end,

kc

You need what you need.

a question for you, jazztele:

1. Can you point me to a good jazz guitar book which would "require" me to read music? I'm interested in the Kenny Burrell/Wes Montgomery jazzy blues/ bluesy jazz neighborhood in particular, and I'm not sure I'd go that route, but I'm interested in checking something out.


I'm not jazztele, but Micky Baker's Complete Course in Jazz Guitar, book 1, is often cited as the best first Jazz book. The reading is straightforeward, and no tab to distract you. If you don't play any Jazz, it is a great introduction. Cool chords, riffs, vamps and rhythm changes. First published in 1955; still in print.

When I attended G.I.T. (Musician's Institute) in the 80's, they pretty much forced you to learn to read music.. but also used some tab and alot of chord diagrams along with it.. I couldn't read music for squat when I arrived, and in the beginning had to ask people to hum the melodies for me so I could play things back by ear... but I eventually learned to read halfway decently in a short amount of time by practicing everyday for just 15-20 minutes.. and I learned ALOT about music along the way, which came in handy when I started picking up and playing other instruments like sax and keyboards..

I think the most important thing about being able to read music is that when learning standards or other pieces, is you get to learn about the relationships between melody and harmonies which helps when improvising, and makes modal playing more accessible..

That being said, when in doubt, you could always take the SRV approach, dig in and just play a blues scale over everything.. but you're limiting yourself..

I think the most important thing about being able to read music is that when learning standards or other pieces, is you get to learn about the relationships between melody and harmonies which helps when improvising, and makes modal playing more accessible..



Right on. There is a lot to be learned by comparing melody with the underlying harmony. A good first question to ask is how is the harmony projected through the melody? If you took the chords away and had only the melody, could you reconstruct the chords? Undoubtedly true with the classical greats and probably with most jazz. Non-tonal classical music and outside jazz is another story, since that music is not based on traditional harmony.

Maybe it's just me, but the question I'd ask is:

Reading music: Does it help musicians?


Certainly, you can blaze through a Friday night at Wagon Willie's Western Saloon or similar venue without being able to read. And you can play loads of cool music without reading a note.

Speaking strictly for myself, I truly believe that the ability to read music offers one a deeper understanding of music. Some say that harmony and theory is a separate discipline and study, and maybe it is, but my feeling is that the two not only go hand in hand, but nurture and cultivate each other.

I'll put it in another light, one that most anybody can relate to: reading music has allowed me to earn more money as a musician. And I'm not even a great reader. However, there have been casuals/society gigs and sessions along the way where I simply would've had no choice but to throw in the towel, sans the ability to read. And I surely wouldn't be comfortable in teaching music to 35 clients a week if I didn't read and speak the language.


Academics, sessions, and casuals aside, a few real world examples of why I'll never ease up in this regard:


* My duo partner and I have worked together off and on for decades. Our conversations about making harmonic and arrangement alterations used to be like pulling teeth, just absolutely painful ("no, put your finger *here*..."). However, about 6-7 years ago, he started taking weekly piano lessons, which he continues to this day. He's learned the language. Now, our musical conversations are concise, pragmatic, painless. It's about communication.

* I've endured every bonehead count and trainwreck start to tunes on the bandstand over the years that is imaginable, and I've contributed to such before I got hip. Tunes that start with pickup notes and incomplete measures in particular are disasters waiting to happen. I feel that reading music, more than anything else, creates confidence in this regard. I think it's actually important to know whether a tune is in common or cut time, whether it's in 3/4, 6/8, or 12/8, or something unusual like 5 or 7, and if there's a single bar of 2/4 within an otherwise common time (4/4) signature. I guess I'm just not a fan of bonehead counts and trainwrecks.

* Song forms. Reading from (seeing) a variety of musics teaches you loads about songforms. Whether it's cross referencing between Scottish reels and bluegrass, or between Gershwin and jazz, the differences and similarities between song forms jump out more readily when you see the formats on a regular basis. Anybody that has ever been hired to play a show with a bunch of unfamiliar material, with no rehearsals, and very little time to pull it all together, knows what a stressfest this can be. Having been in this situation many times, I'll say that the ability to write a proper chart with repeats, first and second endings, codas, etc. has saved me from being the idiot more than once. I see all sorts of bizarre "shorthand" charts - and while this can work for the individual that writes it, it's rarely the sort of thing that can practically be shared with other musicians (see "communication" above).

I taught myself to read music to a degree . Understanding time lengths and Italian phrasing etc was a little harder .

Was it helpful ?

Not in the least ( to me ) :mrgreen:

I find it hard to see for starters , and tab even harder . YES I NEED GLASSES LOL :lol:

But seriously , if you want to use notation , you have to basically relearn how to play guitar regarding how you approach the instrument .

The average guitarist tends to not think too much about the notes that he is playing on the guitar , and generally speaking knows the root notes , and (some of ) the 3rds , 7ths , 9ths etc , but rarely thinks about what those notes are called .

Biggest bad habit there is in my opinion .

Most guitarists know every note of the E strings , and probably the A string , but the other strings tend to be a weak point .

If you are self taught , the chances of you reading music are greatly reduced , but it's really quite easy to learn . It's just not so easy to apply , unless you readdress your approach to playing , as previously stated .

I'm fairly sure that if we all were to take a month out from our general practise routine , and learn the notes of the guitar whilst reading music , we'd all benefit .

As to whether reading music ( or even tab ) is then useful :

It won't play the guitar for you ; That's for sure :wink:
It won't develop your improvisational skills , though may help you to learn more riffs ( imho )
It won't develop your ear ( imho )
It won't tell you where to play the notes as tab does .
It won't get you a band / session job on it's own merits .
There are more .......

It will focus your knowledge of the fret board .
It will help you to play a piece of unknown music .
It will give you a better understanding of how a piece is constructed
It will improve your knowledge of theory
There are more ........

Would I say it makes you a better musician ? NO / YES

For me , it's similar to a guy reading an instruction manual in order to do a job v a guy who has done the job a hundred times and no longer needs the manual .
The only difference is , is that when the job description changes , the music reader has another instruction manual , where the non reader is left having to having to figure it out .

However , take away the instruction manual from the reader , and the majority of them will take longer to do the job than the non reader .

The key is to be able to do both , which many of the better players can .

"It won't get you a band / session job on it's own merits."

Yeah it will if you're a good reader.
Really! If you read well, play in tune and in time and have decent tone you will absolutely work in this business. There are many opportunities for guys to "just read the part down" and not make too many audible mistakes.

"However , take away the instruction manual from the reader , and the majority of them will take longer to do the job than the non reader."

In my experience, which is vast - almost totally a falsehood. Most guys and gals that read really well are also great improvisers and part 'maker-uppers', rhythm players, arrangers, etc., et al.

Reading music will also absolutely help your improvisation and will definitely help your ear - ever hear of solfege?

Do I know how to read music? Yeah, a little. I can make out the notes and get the gist rhythms and all, though reading chords is difficult at times.

Do I need it? Not really. I've been playing for a while, and I know where all the notes are without thinking about it. I'm not real worried when I start playing.

I'm not jazztele, but Micky Baker's Complete Course in Jazz Guitar, book 1, is often cited as the best first Jazz book. The reading is straightforeward, and no tab to distract you. If you don't play any Jazz, it is a great introduction. Cool chords, riffs, vamps and rhythm changes. First published in 1955; still in print.

Must bee good if it's been in print for 53 years.

A couple of folks mentiontioned "the real book". Whazzat?

It sure helps if you're into jazz, since most of the good books are in sheet music.
I consider my self to have excellent pitch and I've been able to learn lots of stuff by ear, from classical to hard-rock. But jazz is sometimes very difficult to figure out by ear, even the very slow solos.

This is something that has been on my mind. And my answer is, it depends on what you do.

I play for my church. We get chord sheets. Often fairly obscure chord sheets where they try to force a certain nuance and the wrong chords, but we get by.

I play and jam with friends. For much of these, it's either blues or someone plays a chord progression and the rest join in.

I pound on computers for money. I pound on guitars for love. For jamming and church, which constitute most of my playing, I do not and likely will not ever need to read music.

But....

I am trying to learn to play flatpicking and mandolin, which means fiddle tunes. I am not a plugged-in member of a local folk community, only connecting with other folkies about once or twice a year, so I don't have fiddlers all around me to steal melodies from. What I do have is the Fiddlers' Fakebook. It has everything in standard notation. If I'm going to learn the song, I'm going to have to learn it from notation. So, that's where I'm learning now.

I can't really read tab. I use it to get a general feel for the song and then throw it away and I can then only do what I learned in the tab because for me it doesn't = music. When I use standard notation to learn a song, I can learn the melody, the bass line if its there and figure out the chords by the notes in both staffs. I can switch over and play it on the piano to work out the intervals better and then I can decide where on the guitar I want to play it.

I play in a church band where none of the other members or singers read music. This forces me to improve my ear, but when we get around to working on hymns or more classical pieces I have to translate the sheet music for the group so that they can. Our keyboard player uses the number system so I can say iimin7/V7/Imaj7 in A and he can muddle through but I wouldn't put a chart in front of him.

As far as not knowing what posititon to play in the guitar in standard notation, try them all. You will find lots of new ideas to inspire you and some even cooler ways of playing partial chords then you could have imagined.

A couple of folks mentiontioned "the real book". Whazzat?


the original real book was a illegal collection of chord charts with melodies that was passed around between jazz students and players. it was notorious for mistakes and mislabelled songs.

the modern "real book" is published by hal leonard, in three volumes (1 being the most essential, but 2 is pretty damn important too) that contain the chords and melody for hundreds of jazz tunes

the real book is a template, of sorts, a suggestion. a working group will discuss their own changes to songs, but the real book allows folk who've never met to get together and play tunes...i actually have a "real book" gig tonight...me and a piano player at a party. All we've done is talk tunes and keys--otherwise we're going in blind...and we're gonna have a blast.

I can't really read tab.


I can't understand when people say that. I mean, all you need to know is what fret is what number, and which string on the tab is the Low E and which the high e. I hope I don't come across like a jerk, but I've seen this lots of times, and I just don't get it.

Do you really mean you can't read tab, or just that you don't like to?

Also how does sheet music represent things like bends, slides up or down to a note, pulloffs, or really heavy vibrato?

This really isn't a yes/no question. We could ask the same about any music skill. Sweep picking: Does it help guitar players? (Probably more than it helps auto mechanics). The answer might be “not really” if I’m a rhythm player in a 50’s DooWop band. The answer might be “absolutely” if I’m in a death metal band.

A more complete question could be: I want to play power chord rock in a garage punk band, will I need to learn to read music?

or

I want to be a professional guitar player for Broadway shows, will learning TAB help me?

I can't understand when people say that. I mean, all you need to know is what fret is what number, and which string on the tab is the Low E and which the high e. I hope I don't come across like a jerk, but I've seen this lots of times, and I just don't get it.

Do you really mean you can't read tab, or just that you don't like to?

Also how does sheet music represent things like bends, slides up or down to a note, pulloffs, or really heavy vibrato?
The same way it does on violin music. Or any brass and wind inst that can 'swoop' up or down into a note ... or use vibrato.

For example: Vibrato - a big curvy line over the note.

Trust me, there's very little in modern guitar music that hasn't been done before (or something very close to it) and "notated".
If you want to see some ... http://cnx.org/content/m11884/latest/

My guitar doesn't have any notes.
I just play it. :shock::grin:

`AZsz1`The same way it does on violin music. Or any brass and wind inst that can 'swoop' up or down into a note ... or use vibrato.

For example: Vibrato - a big curvy line over the note.

Trust me, there's very little in modern guitar music that hasn't been done before (or something very close to it) and "notated".
If you want to see some ... http://cnx.org/content/m11884/latest/

Also, there are standard methods of indicating which notes to play on which strings. One way is to use circled numbers to indicate strings. Usually you only need to do this once or twice in a passage, since logically the other strings can be inferred. The other method is to use roman numerals to indicate position.

Two things about reading standard notation that I didn't see addressed here:


Once you learn the system, it's faster to read than tab. When it comes to the pitches themselves, standard notation is nothing but pictures, shapes, and contours -- a position on a bunch of lines. A scalar run is immediately obvious because it has an obvious shape: a run of notes going up or down. Same goes for arpeggios. Thirds and seconds are very easy to develop an intuition for. Tablature, by contrast, is a combination of a position on a bunch of lines (which string) but *also* a symbol telling you which fret to play. This symbol is abstract and complicated: this little swirly thing means "six" and this straight line means "one" and this *slanted* straight line with the horizontal line on top means "seven." It's not only an extra dimension, but a different way of decoding. This is brain damage, asking your head to combine two different deciphering mechanisms for one goal. No one will ever sight-read tab. Not to say I don't like tab for learning. It's just more complicated than people realize, because we all learned Arabic numerals years ago, so the learning curve isn't as steep.



Standard notation is really neat and beautiful to look at. One of my favorite pastimes since I was eight years old is getting out a score and following along to a recording. Seeing how the printed communication is transformed into living music is fascinating and instructive. The notation of Debussy and Ravel is a novel in itself.



Conclusion: Whether or not reading standard notation helps your guitar playing, it's really cool.

Bravo Daves561!
I've always thought that TAB was PITA to read but I could never articulate why. Thanks. I will be plagiarizing you.

I can't understand when people say [they can't read tab]

Since I'm one of those that says this, I'll speak up. I cannot sight-read tab. To me numbers need to be turned into a meaning and then interpreted. So, for me to recognize 12-14-15 as an ascending pattern I need to think about what the numbers are first, and then recognize their quantities.

Perhaps this is a personal limitation to me, but "fifteen" means something to me, whereas "15" has to be interpreted first for it to mean something to me. I am not trying to be obtuse, I'm talking about recognizing these at a pace that is perhaps twice as fast as you could read them aloud. You know, a tempo.

I have to use tab, though, to teach a part to non-readers. I write it first in standard notation and let the software translate it to tab. I am frustrated with how much space on the page it takes - but it is a good crutch/tool in that use.

For me , it's similar to a guy reading an instruction manual in order to do a job v a guy who has done the job a hundred times and no longer needs the manual.

Interestingly enough there is a thread in the Bad-Dog forum about rocker gaskets for an HD Sportser in which the author recognized that his manual is in fact wrong. I'm not sure where that puts this discussion, though!

+++

Here's an interesting thing that could help you see into the world of written notational music. I could teach you (well, Larry F would do a much better job) to begin analyzing music even if you cannot read it (or are very weak). The first thing that stands out is any note that is outside the key (needing a natural/sharp/flat sign). You could see a patch of notes in a fugue, and then recognize when it occurs again in a different section, and even determine retrograde and other variations. You could also handle finding the A-B-A sections of a score without being able to play it (music students who cannot play piano must do this all the time in their early studies). For a theme-and-variations piece, you could determine ornamentation just by looking at what happened to general shape of the music. This is a wonderful thing.

These examples may be over the top, but how about seeing similar phrases in a song you are about to play? Also, many modern songs have a 2/4 measure thrown in to common time - and it stands out. Finally, a key change in written notation pretty much slaps you in the face when you see it - impossible to miss.

A week ago I was looking over the music for "Eleanor Rigby" with a student. He asked if it was E minor so I looked at the key signature (one sharp) - then glanced through the music for any accidentals. I kept seeing C# in the melody. I said "it is E Dorian Minor," in about 5 seconds. If someone could do this with TAB then I would be very impressed.

(Yes, I refer to a song written in Em with adjusted notes as Dorian Minor, rather than a song written in what looks like D major but with E minor chords which is a mode. I do not use the term mode.)

--gh

IMO, tab was meant to be used in conjuction with the recorded music that it tabulates. The guitar has so many positions and so many strings, all with duplicate notes, that using tab to articulate WHICH FRET and WHICH STRING helps me alot. I'll usually listen to a song that I want to figure out...then if needed, look at the tab to see where the original guitar player was playing on the fretboard. I DON'T THINK TAB WAS MEANT TO BE USED FOR SIGHT READING. :confused:

With regular music notation, a guitar player doesn't know which fret or string to play a passage on. The tone can sound different from different positions on the neck. I see music notation in general going the way of rubbing two sticks together to make a fire. With the easy availability of music recording devices, it's so much easier to record a passage, then distribute it. Slow downer software now makes it EVEN EASIER to learn a passage by listening to a recording rather than reading it from paper.

JMO, YMMV :grin:

IMO, tab was meant to be used in conjuction with the recorded music that it tabulates. The guitar has so many positions and so many strings, all with duplicate notes, that using tab to articulate WHICH FRET and WHICH STRING helps me alot. I'll usually listen to a song that I want to figure out...then if needed, look at the tab to see where the original guitar player was playing on the fretboard. I DON'T THINK TAB WAS MEANT TO BE USED FOR SIGHT READING. :confused:

With regular music notation, a guitar player doesn't know which fret or string to play a passage on. The tone can sound different from different positions on the neck. I see music notation in general going the way of rubbing two sticks together to make a fire. With the easy availability of music recording devices, it's so much easier to record a passage, then distribute it. Slow downer software now makes it EVEN EASIER to learn a passage by listening to a recording rather than reading it from paper.

JMO, YMMV :grin:

I don't know about this. For example, I can hear a lick on youtube, walk over and pick up a piece of paper and write it down. Anywhere, anytime. I takes quite a bit more time to set up to record. Also, I can be flying on a trip, and compose sitting in my seat--I do this a lot for some reason. Written notation is extremely quick and handy, usually faster than recording if you factor in setup and general lack of convenience.

The tone can sound different from different positions on the neck.

It could be argued that the tone sounds different when played on different guitars. Also, depending on the guitar, the same passage could be played in two different positions and someone not looking wouldn't be able to tell the difference.

You may be right about tab not being meant for sight reading. The best usage of tab that I have seen is when it is lined up with musical notation so that you can get a feel for rhythm.

IMO, tab was meant to be used in conjuction with the recorded music that it tabulates. The guitar has so many positions and so many strings, all with duplicate notes, that using tab to articulate WHICH FRET and WHICH STRING helps me alot. I'll usually listen to a song that I want to figure out...then if needed, look at the tab to see where the original guitar player was playing on the fretboard. I DON'T THINK TAB WAS MEANT TO BE USED FOR SIGHT READING. :confused:

With regular music notation, a guitar player doesn't know which fret or string to play a passage on. The tone can sound different from different positions on the neck. I see music notation in general going the way of rubbing two sticks together to make a fire. With the easy availability of music recording devices, it's so much easier to record a passage, then distribute it. Slow downer software now makes it EVEN EASIER to learn a passage by listening to a recording rather than reading it from paper.

JMO, YMMV :grin:

Tablature predates recording by hundreds of years so I don't think it was originally intended for that. Also, just because it's been tabbed out doesn't mean that the original guitarist played it that way. This has been said a couple of times already but standard notation CAN show what position, string, finger etc..to use. There is nothing that tab can show you that notation can't. There is so much you can learn from standard notation and I've never understood why anyone wouldn't want to know how to read it.

Neither 'standard' notation, nor tab, is going away any time soon. That would be like thinking that written language could've gone by the wayside once recording technology came into being.

Notation, like written language seems to prove itself more and more elegant as time goes on. Look how much we all still write today. Albeit type maybe, but it's still the written language.
For sitting around and learning 'guitar music' - yeah, great - TAB ... knock yourself out. For communicating efficiently to other musicians, even in the most non- professional situation, a little notational knowledge goes a long way. Even if it's as simple as saying (and understanding), "F# not G". Isn't that a lot simpler than turning around and pointing to the fretboard or having to say, "no, put your 3rd finger on the 7th fret, 2nd string"? Or, god forbid it might be a saxophone and trumpet player whose ear may not be used to the timbre of a semi distorted electric guitar(?). How long is it gonna take to teach them that horn part you've got in your head? And think how much more efficient a rehearsal can be if someone can write out (or at least verbally 'spell') a horn arrangement.

Other than some really basic "guitaristic" stuff, the guys who transcribe the TAB aren't the last word in how the original artist did it. They 'may' have a little more experience than you. And they 'may' have had the opportunity to glimpse a youtube clip of something for semi-verification(?). But there's no "original artist tab approval board" - they don't have time for that crap - and the editing process is 'spotty' at best. It's not the last word in how or where something was played by a long shot. I don't know how many different TAB versions of Jessica, Round-a-bout, More than a feeling and Rebel Rebel I've seen over the years. All different. And frankly, most have mistakes.

Not that it really matters (this is an interesting thread regardless), but it was never my intention to say that tab was better or could be used as a substitute for standard notation.

I think they are both tools, and was just interested to see what more experienced music readers thought the skill did for them. And I think I got a lot of great opinions on that.

As for the accuracy of tab, I think you need to be your own judge. Some of it it awful and some of it sounds just right. I do think that published tab (i.e., a book that you paid for) is generally a lot more accurate than the free stuff on the internet. Although I use the free stuff on the internet almost exclusively.

My question is why a guitar player needs to read music. For a piano player (like Macca), I think you'd need to read music, but how important is it really for guitarists?

I'm not talking about knowing theory, but specifically reading music.

My totally uninformed opinion is that traditional musical notation has lots of limitations when representing guitar playing, which is why Tab is so useful in many cases.

Am I totally wrong?

Well, speaking as a guitar player, reading music has helped immensely. Not only do I understand music better, hear it in my head when I see it written on the page, but I've been the arranger in several bands because I was the guy with reading ability. It has also gotten me recording sessions, gigs, and teaching jobs which would otherwise be unavailable to me. Ever have trouble figuring out the timing issues in tab? Look at the standard notation and it would be clear if you could read it. Instantly clear. Sure software helps the non-reader, but reading it saves a step or twenty. Combined with tab (for note locations so you don't have to work them out entirely for yourself) it's quicker and easier, but even though tab dates to before baroque lute music it shouldn't be the wobbly crutch.

For what it's worth.

Mike Bruce

Does predate written notation. In our quest (human quest) for continual improvement we invented standard notation to overcome the limits of tab.

Tab to me isn't really musical because I can't associate positions with sounds. I can do that with standard notation because I've played multiple instruments that use it. When I can't get it on a guitar I can switch to a piano or organ or other instrument and maybe get it there. I would have to translate the tab to standard to do so. The same thing is true of piano tab which is the first type of tab that I really tried to turn into music i.e. C/CEG. This means c with the left hand and an C chord in the right. I can use this easier than guitar or bass tab but sight reading it is difficult.

In order to play any written music, letters, tabs, standard notation, you have to be able to hear it in your head, decipher it with your mind, translate it to your fingers and reproduce it with your instrument.

As far as positions not being noted in standard notation there are several methods of doing that for guitar. A couple have been noted here. As you learn to play in standard you get to pick your position, which for me with my limited skills has been of great benefit. I play what's comfortable for me for that song and when I come back to it later I can move it somewhere else when I want to. Also helps when coordinating with another guitarist so we aren't in the same place producing the "exact" same sounds and we can each have room of our own.

I don't want to put down tab, I've used it some but for learning a new song and learning the whole song and being able to play it my way standard notation is a lot easier.

Does predate written notation. In our quest (human quest) for continual improvement we invented standard notation to overcome the limits of tab.

Tab to me isn't really musical because I can't associate positions with sounds. I can do that with standard notation because I've played multiple instruments that use it. When I can't get it on a guitar I can switch to a piano or organ or other instrument and maybe get it there. I would have to translate the tab to standard to do so. The same thing is true of piano tab which is the first type of tab that I really tried to turn into music i.e. C/CEG. This means c with the left hand and an C chord in the right. I can use this easier than guitar or bass tab but sight reading it is difficult.

In order to play any written music, letters, tabs, standard notation, you have to be able to hear it in your head, decipher it with your mind, translate it to your fingers and reproduce it with your instrument.

As far as positions not being noted in standard notation there are several methods of doing that for guitar. A couple have been noted here. As you learn to play in standard you get to pick your position, which for me with my limited skills has been of great benefit. I play what's comfortable for me for that song and when I come back to it later I can move it somewhere else when I want to. Also helps when coordinating with another guitarist so we aren't in the same place producing the "exact" same sounds and we can each have room of our own.

I don't want to put down tab, I've used it some but for learning a new song and learning the whole song and being able to play it my way standard notation is a lot easier.

As I understand it, standard notation was not invented to overcome the limitations of tab, it evolved out of a system of recording pitch movement for voices. Can you site sources for your assertion?

Mike Bruce

Mike I can't at the moment. I read way too much and often forget my sources while retaining the information. Sorry. If I come across the reference again I will get back to you with it.

This might shed some light ... ?

"Musical Notation"

The Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition | Date: 2008

Musical notation symbols used to make a written record of musical sounds.

Two different systems of letters were used to write down the instrumental and the vocal music of ancient Greece. In his five textbooks on music theory Boethius (c.AD 470-AD 525) applied the first 15 letters of the alphabet to the notes in use at the end of the Roman period. Notation of Gregorian chant was by means of neumes, which are thought to have been derived from symbols used in the Greek language to indicate pitch inflection. Neumes were certainly in use by the 6th cent., although the earliest extant manuscripts containing them are fragmentary ones from the 8th cent. These neumes indicated only the grouping of sounds in a given melody, evidently to recall to a singer the approximate shape of a melody already learned by ear.

Heighted neumes, arranged above and below a line, made the intervals of a melody more discernible in 10th-century notation, and by the end of the 12th cent. the staff perfected by Guido d'Arezzo was in use. Guido placed letters on certain lines to indicate their pitch, and thereby the pitch of the remaining lines and spaces. The letters evolved into the clef signs used today. Guido also invented a system of naming scale degrees using the initial syllables of the lines of a Latin hymn (ut, re, mi, fa, sol, la). Originally used for teaching sight singing, these or their derivatives are also used in some languages for naming absolute pitches.

A staff of five lines for vocal music was adopted in France and one of six lines in Italy. Instrumental music employed staves of varying numbers of lines until the 16th cent., when the five-line staff became the standard. Signs for chromatic alteration of tones appear almost from the beginning and had assumed their present shapes by the end of the 17th cent. The essential problems in pitch notation, the use of both lines and spaces to indicate successive scale degrees and the use of extra symbols to indicate raising or lowering a tone by a half step, were solved comparatively rapidly.

However, the evolution of the rhythmic notation used today took much longer than that for pitch. Mensural notation, in which each note has a specific time value, became a necessity with the development of polyphony . At first, certain patternings of neumes were used to represent the various rhythmic modes; later, in his Ars cantus mensurabilis (c.1280), Franco of Cologne created a clear indication for each note of its exact rhythmic length and selected certain neumes to represent tones of long and short duration. In his system, the long value was in principle equal to three of the short values.

In the 14th cent. Philippe de Vitry, author of Ars nova, which expands the system of Franco, codified the ready availability of duple divisions of the long and short notes. At the various rhythmic levels of a given piece either a 2:1 or a 3:1 relationship was implied, and a system of signs and colored notes developed for indicating which relationships were in force or were being temporarily altered.

In the 15th cent. numbers with the appearance of fractions indicated that one proportionality of rhythmic values was temporarily being substituted for another. Modern signatures evolved from these numbers. Bar lines, expression signs, and Italian terms to indicate tempo and dynamics came into use in the 17th cent. With the adoption of equal temperament and the major and minor modes, signatures indicating a major key or its relative minor became conventional. They assumed their present form during the baroque period.

The advent of aleatory music has produced notation systems, varying from piece to piece, indicating only approximate pitch, duration, and dynamic relations. Notation for electronic music is still not standardized but generally uses traditional reference symbols (staff and clef signs) in conjunction with specially adapted pitch and rhythm notation.


Bibliography: See W. Apel, The Notation of Polyphonic Music, 900-1600 (5th ed. 1961); C. F. A. Williams, The Story of Notation (1903, repr. 1969); E. Karkoschka, Notation in New Music (1972), G. Read, Music Notation (3d ed. 1972).

Thanks for the article Klasaine!

Mike Mea Culpa, Mea Maxima Culpa, Lo ciento Senior. Or rather I'm sorry for the bad information.