Learn by Tabs or by Ear

[jaxjaxon]

Which is better for a guitarist to develop his own style. Learn by ear. Learning by Tabs you will learn more about another players style. The only time I use tabs is if there is a song I cant get certain parts down I will look at the tab for that part. I have had times I would look at videos to see how different new ways to play like with taping on the fret board when that first became a thing and doing false harmonics/pinch harmonics or finger picking styles.

 

[Muadzin]

I grew up as a guitarist in the late 80's, when I had to figure things out by ear. And eye, watching video tapes. I can usually figure out the chords, key and bassline by ear. But solos? Unless its by the Edge not in a million years. Tabs were a welcome new addition when they came about. But even the books were still full of mistakes. Let alone the free tabs online But if you learn to discern at least some parts by ear you will also learn to spot the mistakes in a tab. And they are still a tremendous help to get you started in the right way. It therefore has to be a mix between both. Going one way only can never be the right way.

 

[RedRhino]

Hellman's mayo rules.

No, no, no. Duke’s Mayonnaise or none.

 

[fenderPS]

Interesting topic. I think you should learn by whatever method you find best. Not everyone has an ear for music, but that doesn't mean they can't be a awesome guitarist.
Tabs are usually wrong unless you have the software that can do it for you. Plus for example, you will find a guitarist may play a certain song using half bends or full bends and on the tab, it's written as slides. A good example is the SRV song scuttle buttin. The tab shows the riff with slides but he actually plays it with bends. But because it's such a quick and hard riff to play, maybe they wrote the tab as slides so you can play it quicker. But the interesting thing is, if you watch him play it live, sometimes he plays it with bends, other times with slides. Maybe he plays it with slides live because after playing so many gigs in a row, his fingers were sore. I don't know but it shows the tab is wrong for the recorded song, but it's right for some live recordings.

You develop an ear for music after time I think. I'm not that great, but I can hear generally what key it's in. If you can do that, you can generally work out the chords listening to a song but not the lead. To hear a lead break and then just play it by ear I think would be extremely difficult. So I need tabs to learn a lead break.

You also hear people saying if you can't read music, you will be a poor player. That's also a !owe of garbage. So I think you should learn a song by whatever way is easiest for you. I also like to watch a guitarist play the song. That also is a good way to learn.

 

[Mean Mojo]

The next question should be...

How does a guitar player go about developing and improving his ear acuity...?

I imagine that question could start a whole new thread and could be very enlightening, also useful.

 

[grindliner]

I find that listening to live tracks help immensely when trying to learn by ear, even with tabs, the live tracks help. It eliminates a lot of the the multiple tracks, overdubs, mixing, and other studio trickery

 

[ronzhd]

Both, get familiar with the song using tab and then by ear to smooth it out, works for me anyway. Constantly trying to improve. It's crazy how you can be doing the most random type of "noodling" and come across a "WTH" concept that will immediately change your playing forever.

 

[PhredE]

Tabs and ear are good in many cases, but there are two big limitations:

1). By ear requires you actually hear the tune first (and usually play it back ad nauseum to work through more difficult/complex parts).
2). By tab -- these often are incomplete or just plain wrong (or, transcribed by someone whose background isn't up to a complex task chordal / harmonic structure and end up substituting simplified or incorrect chords.. in short it's unreliable and prone to problems). Picking or fingering certain notes/chords is only part of the process of conveying the totality of a musical idea (many times, 'all the other stuff', is just as important).

I'd offer up the unstated third option: old school sheet music. The ideas are conveyed with precision and tell you precisely WHAT to play, not necessarily, HOW to play it ( ..I'm implying that fingerings might vary, which they often do in real music notation -- unlike what a tab might suggest). Why not use all the tools in your toolbox -- all 3: ear, tabs and actual sheet music (?)

 

[53Strat]

I don't think it's an either/or.


And I don't memorize the tab on paper. I memorize the notes and fingering on my fretboard. I might use tab to get me started, but I don't know I could even try to actually site read it on the fly.

YMMV of course.

Cheers,
Doug

I'm not sure it was ever meant to be sight read on the fly. There is no timing associated with tabs as I understand them.

No-one has mentioned that reading music is still a valid option for musicians, of course many instrumental breaks are not written into music sheets as many are improvised after the initial recordings anyhow. They are also fairly useless IMO where a vocalist changes the key and the fingering won't work for the new chord structure.

 

[SRHmusic]

The next question should be...

How does a guitar player go about developing and improving his ear acuity...?

I imagine that question could start a whole new thread and could be very enlightening, also useful.

It took me a long time to appreciate this. I'm working through this MI course, link below, now.

That said, one doesn't need great hearing ability to work out tunes. A little persistence and a little music theory go a long way. And it gets easier with every tune.

My sister did ear training and sight singing as part of her music degree program. I never thought much of it until we added a keyboard player with great hearing skills. He can listen once through a verse and chorus on a new tune and join right in. It seems like a superpower to me.

https://www.halleonard.com/product/695198/ear-training

 

[loopfinding]

tabs are a good way to get an idea. i would often use them when i was a kid, but i wouldn't treat them as gospel. they're like sparknotes or something. but the good thing is that there are often multiple tabs, so some have some things right. you can put together an aggregate in your head of the multiple tabs. then you can fill the rest in with your ear where you disagree.

at this point it's easier for me to use my ears than trust a tab. or a lot of times my hands don't agree with the fingering on a tab. i never really worked on it, it just came over the years. or at least, the way i worked on it would be to audiate melodies in my head and get an idea of how they looked if i played them on the fretboard, when i was away from the guitar (or upright bass). less cause i wanted to actually do this, and more as a weird compulsion when i was bored, like how some people incessantly count stuff.

what helped me is the first stuff i learned on guitar was like nirvana, foo fighters. then like zeppelin after that. there's a lot of stuff they have that it is either power chords or clear single note riffs, so they're not too hard to figure out. a hell of a lot easier to figure out than like, some joe pass arrangement or something with a lot of weird chords or phrases. but even for the latter, if i slow the record down and play it a million times, it stays in my head more than just reading a tab, which i forget immediately.

 

[teletail]

If you want to learn songs, use tab. If you want to learn the guitar, use your ear.

 

[alnico357]

I took four years of guitar lessons with music in front of me, while also learning by ear. Both are handy. I don't know much about tablature, but throw it in there too. It is all useful.

 

[perttime]

It has happened that I needed tabs or notes to figure out which notes I need. What to do with those notes is mainly by ear.

 

[Doomguy]

I like to use a combination of both, along with watching some live footage of the band playing the song to see what the guitarist is doing.

But guidance is somewhat necessary in the metal world. So many different tunings, extended range guitars. 7,8,9 strings. I'd rather read up a bit to get the tuning right then blindly give a song a shot in the completely wrong tuning.

 

[Supereditor]

Both are fine. Most classical musicians (some of the best players in the world) don’t figure everything out by ear.

 

[John Nicholas]

These kind of threads are so much fun!! You get to learn a great deal about how people approach learning.

The truly interesting part is every method is great. Whatever works for you is the "right" way.

Personally I find it very difficult to learn nearly anything but the most simple parts by ear, even after decades of practice. For me, tab helps to get me into the correct neighborhood... sure tabs can be and are quite often wrong, in my experience that's where your ear comes in...

So my process is to start with tab, then really listen as I play, learning where the tab was not right. The one aspect tab can not help with is how you approach the note, what kind of touch to sound the note properly, what expression the notes should sound like, and so on, in the end it's all by ear.

Great idea for a thread!

 

[_MementoMori_]

I started playing guitar because I had a knack for learning by ear, but I kept play because I discovered tabs. Decades later, I still do both, but I do seem to remember the things I learn by ear better than the things I learn from tabs. Some music is impossible to learn by ear though, I think.

 

[trapdoor2]

Both are fine. Most classical musicians (some of the best players in the world) don’t figure everything out by ear.

I was playing in an Irish Trad. jam/band and we had a young guy show up with his fiddle and a brand new book of tunes. He introduced himself as a violinist in the local symphony wanting to learn some traditional tunes.

Yikes! Not only could he play way above our meagre capabilities, he did so by sight reading. He'd never seen any of the tunes before sitting down. Sure, his 'feel' wasn't there and he was playing in strict concert style...but in a few minutes, he got it. Very scary for a bunch of hack players. Even our fiddler, who was quite good, had his jaw down on his chest.

Many years later, I joined an amateur string orchestra and took lessons from the guy who played first Viola in the local orchestra. These guys read notation like you might read a book...except it is their profession. He would 'see' stuff on the page that you and I would never think about. "Grok" finally made sense to me in that application.

 

[JL_LI]

Let's start out like this.

No one ever did better knowing less.

So if tabs help you learn, learn using tabs. Personally, I use lyric sheets and chords. Either way, most of what you download will be right with some of it, sometimes some key parts of it, being off. But it keeps you playing and keeps you focused. The key is how you get past the start. Do you want to play a solo exactly as originally recorded? Your ear will be your guide to how close you're getting. You don't get better if you keep playing what you downloaded over and over again. You make real progress when you can make a song your own. Go beyond tabs to a truly creative solo. Make sure the chords are right. Harmonize a few phrases your own way. Expand chords to include passing notes from the melody, especially if you're playing alone. There's more to musicianship than playing what someone else played exactly as he did. But a big part of musicianship is being able to play what you hear as you hear it. Practice has purpose. Noodling does not.