# Technique, Theory, Playing Tips and Tricks > Theory, Technique, Tips and Tricks >  Tabs vs music notation

## jorgey

Hello all,


Being new to the mandolin, I didn't know about the tabs, and never got into them when I was learning guitar.  

I can read music and have been practicing picking irish tunes using sheet music to get familiar with moving around the fret, but I see alot of music(on this site) in tab notation.  

My question:  Is this something I should switch over to, from an emphasis standpoint?  Is there an inherent benefit to tabs if I can already read music or stick to notation?  

thanks,
Jorgey

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## John Kelly

If you are a reader, I'd say there is no need for you to start using tabs.  Tabs are to show non-readers where to put their fingers to get the notes, and from what you say you already are quite capable of doing this.  my dislike of tabs is that they show you ONE way of placing your fingers but as you know there are many alternative fingerings can be used; tabs also tend not to show note values, though there are some tab writers who do show the value of the notes as well as their position.
Standard Notation has the advantage that any reader can use it, irrespective of the instrument he/she is playing - you can share the same sheet of music among your guitar, mandolin and fiddle colleagues, which you cannot do with tab, which has to be written for a specific instrument and tuning.

Now wait for the others' responses!

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jorgey

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## jorgey

Thanks, John.   So, I'm a Reader......it sounds so.....X-Files.  Does the government know I'm a Reader?  Just kidding...Thanks for the response.  I didn't know if there was something unique to mandolins that tabs help with.  I am amazed how quickly I can memorize a song, once I learn the music--seems the muscle memory kicks in fast.

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## Grommet

I agree with John in theory because notation does have the potential to give more complete information. However, you are likely to find resources that present tune info you want in either notation, tab, or abc format. Since you already read notation it should take very little time to reserach how to use the other two. Don't forget to try the TabLedit software (free download) which does a great job of reading/playing tabs and notation, and even allows importing of abc text files and converts them to tab and notation (though the latter function requires paying the fee to register the software). 

Scott

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## jmp

No reason to "switch" to using tabs instead.  Tabs don't represent things like rhythm very well but are useful to refer to for figuring out fingerings and voicings.  You will have little problem learning tab notation.

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## Chip Booth

Tablature provides information about specific fingering, which notation often does not provide.  It can, but rarely does in my experience.  This is not important on a piano or a flute, but on a stringed instrument where the same note exists in multiple places across the fingerboard choosing the right fingering can be tricky at times.

Should you learn tab? It's up to you.  You may not find it that useful depending on what you play, but you also aren't likely to find it difficult to learn.

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## neil argonaut

> Tablature provides information about specific fingering, which notation often does not provide.  It can, but rarely does in my experience.  This is not important on a piano or a flute, but on a stringed instrument where the same note exists in multiple places across the fingerboard choosing the right fingering can be tricky at times.
> 
> Should you learn tab? It's up to you.  You may not find it that useful depending on what you play, but you also aren't likely to find it difficult to learn.


In saying that, tab rarely tells you what finger to use, normally just what fret to put it on. It can have which finger to use, but so can normal notation. Although a lot of the time which finger to use is obvious once you know what fret it's at, it isn't always, especially to a beginner.

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## Perry

Is there even a learning curve to TAB? Just put your finger where it says. On the free resources on this site and many others you'll find mostly TAB.  Any commercial sheet music geared to the mandolin will have both so take your pick. I find sight reading to be mush easier with standard then TAB. TAB may be helpful when playing in third and fourth positions. 

Good luck!

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## Kevin Stevens

Usually you hear from people who know tab but not standard. I am one of those that learned tab and now trying to master standard. If I was you I wouldn't spend much time other than tab basics, as a standard reader you should find it incredibly easy. But not much need for it if you a proficient standard notation reader.

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## AlanN

I me mine...I mean, I dig both!

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John Soper

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## jorgey

Thank you all for the feedback!  I've been studying TAB and have downloaded the Tabledit software.  If I use, it is yet to be seen.

thanks again!

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## Bob Buckingham

I often read the music and if there is tab the student often reads that.  Then they want to know why I played it a bit differently, and that I tell them is the difference between tab and music.  Often the only difference is note location but sometimes it is timing too.

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## ralph johansson

> Hello all,
> 
> 
> Being new to the mandolin, I didn't know about the tabs, and never got into them when I was learning guitar.  
> 
> I can read music and have been practicing picking irish tunes using sheet music to get familiar with moving around the fret, but I see alot of music(on this site) in tab notation.  
> 
> My question:  Is this something I should switch over to, from an emphasis standpoint?  Is there an inherent benefit to tabs if I can already read music or stick to notation?  
> 
> ...


vs. ??? You're not going to unlearn standard are you? Contrary to what some people say, there's a steep learning curve to fluency in TAB  and it's not really worth the effort. Often TAB is published along with notation and in these cases a very quick glance at the TAB might suggest what position to play a certain phrase. However, there is no official TAB committee or TAB fairy who decides on the optimal way to finger and phrase a tune - in fact many TABs are poorly conceived, e.g., suggesting open strings where using the 7th fret would work much better. How exactly to phrase and finger is for you to decide - it's part of the fun.

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## neil argonaut

> Contrary to what some people say, there's a steep learning curve to fluency in TAB  and it's not really worth the effort.


While I agree with the rest of the post about deciding the fingering, got to disagree with this - maybe some people find it hard to learn, but in my experience, it took more or less no time to learn, as it seems (to me, anyway) intuitive and obvious from the start. I can't ever remember trying to "learn" it, it just tells you what string to play and at what fret, and that's it.

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## Randi Gormley

fwiw, I've always read standard notation and I find tab difficult to read at any speed at all; I can look at it and see what it says, but my mind is much much faster playing music with standard than trying to read the tab. I took a workshop where we were given most of the music in standard (no problem) but one piece was in ABC and I simply couldn't do the translation from page to fingers. I had to sit down and figure it out slowly. I've been fortunate in playing long enough to be able to pick up tunes reasonably quickly by ear so only having tab (or ABC) hasn't kept me from playing with non-standard-reading friends.

It's interesting to note that there is tab and ABC and solfeg and other systems, but it's generally said that standard notation is the biggest umbrella, and that the other systems, if they're all you know, have limitations standard notation doesn't. No real reason to move backward to a more restrictive method, I'm thinking. My 2 cents.

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hank

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## Jordan Ramsey

I was a notation reader my whole life on both piano as a child, and trumpet in grade school through college.  When I started playing the mando around age 20, I immediately gravitated toward notation... didn't want the tab, had no use for it, thought it was primitive and stupid.  Couple years later I started taking lessons with Jack Tottle and learning McReynolds' style crosspicking.  Ultimately, the tab became a much more efficient tool than notation for learning that style, hands down.  Very standard crosspicking example... second space A notated on the 12th fret on the D string.  With notation you would have to read two things, second space A note, plus a roman numeral III above the staff.  With tab, I only have to look at one thing, 12 on the D.  Couple years later, I discovered and immediately ordered one of the coolest books on the planet... Dave Peters' Masters of the Mandolin.  After waiting a week or whatever for shipping from Elderly and getting myself all psyched up to dig into these amazing solos from my heroes, I open the book to find that it was ONLY in tablature.  I was disappointed to say the least, but it ultimately turned out to be really good for me.  Because I wanted that material so bad, I dug in and got over my hangups with tab.  Then later the Statman Jesse McReynolds book, which is only in tab, etc., etc....  Between the crosspicking and spending hundreds of hours with various "tab only" books, my tab chops are as quick as my notation reading abilities, and it's only been a help to be proficient in both (when both are available, I find myself sight reading tab lines as much as notation lines).  No need to learn tab if you can read notation, but it never hurts to understand different ways to communicate (especially if you're doing any teaching.... tab is much easier for beginners to grasp immediately, and much easier to shorthand than notation, YMMV).

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DSDarr, 

hank, 

MikeyG

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## oneeyeross

as a sorta fiddle player, I would say stay with notation.  Fingering for mandolin is like fiddle music, and properly notated is no more difficult than tab...and the richness of notation provides more information (at least to my poor brain) than tab does.

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## August Watters

This is one of those perennial conversations, and it's usually rife with misunderstandings. Learn both, then you can compare.

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DSDarr, 

Mike Bunting

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## ralph johansson

> While I agree with the rest of the post about deciding the fingering, got to disagree with this - maybe some people find it hard to learn, but in my experience, it took more or less no time to learn, as it seems (to me, anyway) intuitive and obvious from the start. I can't ever remember trying to "learn" it, it just tells you what string to play and at what fret, and that's it.


Fluency in notation means the ability to look at the score, and forming a mental
(or even aural) image of the piece before you put your fingers anywhere - seeing its range, its melodic, harmonic and rhythmic structure, recurring motifs, motivic variations, relative proximity to the given tonality, etc. etc. etc. And it took you no time to achieve this in relation to TAB?

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Manfred Hacker

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## ralph johansson

> I was a notation reader my whole life on both piano as a child, and trumpet in grade school through college.  When I started playing the mando around age 20, I immediately gravitated toward notation... didn't want the tab, had no use for it, thought it was primitive and stupid.  Couple years later I started taking lessons with Jack Tottle and learning McReynolds' style crosspicking.  Ultimately, the tab became a much more efficient tool than notation for learning that style, hands down.  Very standard crosspicking example... second space A notated on the 12th fret on the D string.  With notation you would have to read two things, second space A note, plus a roman numeral III above the staff.  With tab, I only have to look at one thing, 12 on the D.  Couple years later, I discovered and immediately ordered one of the coolest books on the planet... Dave Peters' Masters of the Mandolin.  After waiting a week or whatever for shipping from Elderly and getting myself all psyched up to dig into these amazing solos from my heroes, I open the book to find that it was ONLY in tablature.  I was disappointed to say the least, but it ultimately turned out to be really good for me.  Because I wanted that material so bad, I dug in and got over my hangups with tab.  Then later the Statman Jesse McReynolds book, which is only in tab, etc., etc....  Between the crosspicking and spending hundreds of hours with various "tab only" books, my tab chops are as quick as my notation reading abilities, and it's only been a help to be proficient in both (when both are available, I find myself sight reading tab lines as much as notation lines).  No need to learn tab if you can read notation, but it never hurts to understand different ways to communicate (especially if you're doing any teaching.... tab is much easier for beginners to grasp immediately, and much easier to shorthand than notation, YMMV).


Crosspicking, McReynolds. That's Bluegrass, a strictly no-notation genre of music.  I don't crosspick on the mandolin; on the guitar I might throw in a couple of crosspicked segments in high positions (no open strings) which of course would present no problems in notation. I can't help but wonder why anyone would want full scores of crosspicked solos. What you need is the melody and a few ideas about which patterns to use, which strings to leave open (for a mildly dissonant effect); three or four diagrams should suffice to convey these principles. Maybe it's a generational thing. I was into Bluegrass in the late 60's; I, or my fellow players, never used notation of any kind. The only sources for material were records. We could slow the LP's down to half speed; we could also slow down EP's, but then had to transpose back a fifth or fourth, I forget which. I recall wanting to assimilate some of Monroe's blues language. I transcribed the first four (unaccompanied) bars of BG pt. 1 and immediately absorbed two contrasting principles: harmonic (playing from the chord) and modal (superimposing a blues or minor penta scale *over* the chord).That was all I needed, then I was on my own; some extensive experimenting with the two approaches helped me form *my* blues style on the mando.

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## Pasha Alden

Hi I fear I share the same problem, am familiar with standard music notation for violin, piano, etc, but the tab thing.  I also have a blind friend who wishes to learn mando.  The trouble is tab does not transcribe easily into braille as the blind person, like sighted musicians among each other cannot have the same musical info such as note values, etc.  So I share that frustration.  Out of interest, is there any standard notation for mandolin?  Anyone know?

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## neil argonaut

> Fluency in notation means the ability to look at the score, and forming a mental
> (or even aural) image of the piece before you put your fingers anywhere - seeing its range, its melodic, harmonic and rhythmic structure, recurring motifs, motivic variations, relative proximity to the given tonality, etc. etc. etc. And it took you no time to achieve this in relation to TAB?


What I meant was, it takes no time to learn how it works and understand it, unlike standard notation. The stuff you're on about, I'd more call general musical ability and knowledge, rather than fluency in understanding the notation (to use an analogy, someone can be a fluent reader but not be able to recognise recurring themes in a novel, or understand things the author is trying to imply); and I think that one of the drawbacks of tab is is isn't suited particularly to this kind of learning, and more a matter of just telling you where to put your finger.

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## Randi Gormley

Vannilla -- Do you mean music written specifically for the mandolin? Munier and Callace come to mind in the classical genre.

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## fatt-dad

tabedit files let you "show" the tab rendition or the standard notion rendition.  If you can read, just forgo the tab view and select the standard notation view. . . or view both at the same time if you want.

f-d

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hank

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## Perry

Also the very simple yet great thing about standard is that it visually depicts when notes go up or down. Yet another reason I find sight reading standard much easier.

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## Jordan Ramsey

> Crosspicking, McReynolds. That's Bluegrass, a strictly no-notation genre of music.  I don't crosspick on the mandolin; on the guitar I might throw in a couple of crosspicked segments in high positions (no open strings) which of course would present no problems in notation. I can't help but wonder why anyone would want full scores of crosspicked solos. What you need is the melody and a few ideas about which patterns to use, which strings to leave open (for a mildly dissonant effect); three or four diagrams should suffice to convey these principles. Maybe it's a generational thing. I was into Bluegrass in the late 60's; I, or my fellow players, never used notation of any kind. The only sources for material were records. We could slow the LP's down to half speed; we could also slow down EP's, but then had to transpose back a fifth or fourth, I forget which. I recall wanting to assimilate some of Monroe's blues language. I transcribed the first four (unaccompanied) bars of BG pt. 1 and immediately absorbed two contrasting principles: harmonic (playing from the chord) and modal (superimposing a blues or minor penta scale *over* the chord).That was all I needed, then I was on my own; some extensive experimenting with the two approaches helped me form *my* blues style on the mando.


Sorry to derail the thread here, but I feel inclined to respond to Ralph...  I completely understand that bluegrass comes from a non-notation history, but it's 2013, not 1945, and the bottom line is that notation allows people to learn more efficiently.  Why not take advantage of that?  Take modern Monroe-style master Mike Compton... he's got a million charts of Monroe tunes and solos transcribed note-for-note (in tab and notation :Wink:  ) that he uses to teach people Monroe-style.  He could just as easily take folks' $30 and tell them to "go listen and learn for yourself, that's the bluegrass way", but he's a good teacher and understands that transcriptions help people analyze and learn faster.  You say that you've never crosspicked on the mandolin...  well, if you ever have any interest in _really_ learning McReynolds' style, I guarantee you're gonna be happy some folks put this stuff down on paper.  I've got hundreds of hours of transcription time under my belt, and I can honestly say that McReynolds' style crosspicking is one of the hardest mandolin styles to transcribe on the planet.  Even proficient mandolin players with lots of melodic transcription experience are going to struggle getting McReynolds down on paper correctly without some reference or guidance... so much of it is counter-intuitive.  While I understand where you're coming from, that bluegrass should just be learned by ear and approximated... from a teaching and performing standpoint, it makes so much more sense to put this stuff into notation where it can be analyzed, learned, and communicated correctly.  As the late, great John McGann once said:  "Specific sounds sometimes require specific techniques. Anything else is an approximation. Life is short, so either 'close enough' is OK, or life is too short for 'close enough'".

I think life is too short for close enough.  YMMV.

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DSDarr, 

MikeyG

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## ralph johansson

> tabedit files let you "show" the tab rendition or the standard notion rendition.  If you can read, just forgo the tab view and select the standard notation view. . . or view both at the same time if you want.
> 
> f-d


Also, at least the first time, turn off all notation and just listen to the MIDI, and see how much of the structure and development you can grasp by just listening. That will make it much easier to understand the score regardless of the mode of notation.

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## pickloser

To quote Jordan, "go listen and learn for yourself, that's the bluegrass way."  
I get this from some (thankfully few) teachers at Kaufman camp.  Then we proceed to spend the next hour or so learning a tune the class could get in 10 minutes or less with either tab or notation.  And at that, most don't get the tune anyway, since you hear the line once and right after there's a sound jumble of everybody else trying to get that line, which obliterates recollection of the original line.  While the listen and play or Murphy Method may be fine alone at home or in a field or from a DVD or one-on-one (still, not my fave), in a class setting, it makes me crazy.  

Sorry to futher skew this thread, but tradition is sometimes just rationalization, I think.

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DSDarr, 

hank, 

Jordan Ramsey, 

MikeyG

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## AlanN

I dig both. As Ralph said, looking at a score lets you see the overall flow of the piece, tab tells me where to put the fangers. Last night, was working through the Tiny Moore book, he included both, one above the other. Niles' books, same. Grisman, same. It's  all good, I just wanna pick Rawhide like the big dogs...

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hank

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## ralph johansson

> What I meant was, it takes no time to learn how it works and understand it, unlike standard notation. The stuff you're on about, I'd more call general musical ability and knowledge, rather than fluency in understanding the notation (to use an analogy, someone can be a fluent reader but not be able to recognise recurring themes in a novel, or understand things the author is trying to imply); and I think that one of the drawbacks of tab is is isn't suited particularly to this kind of learning, and more a matter of just telling you where to put your finger.


Well, I think it's the difference between spelling your way through a text or actually reading it. You can't play from a score by looking at one note at a time, you got see where you're headed for. In fact, owing to poor eye-sight I much prefer to learn the tune first and then play it. I will usually not play it the way it's written - I may not even play it in the same key. Seemsd that jrfamsey has learned to actually read tab - that's quite a feat, Whenther it was woth the trouble only he can tell. When I started playing the guitar there was not tab to learn from and I'm happy I spent some time learning grand staff - a well-written piano score often conveys a more complete picture of the music.
(Also happy I didn't know about capos and learn the keys in systematic order going from C along the circle of fdifths in both directions).

 And on mandolin I just started playing,  exploring the fretboard. I certainly know where all the notes are in most keys, but notation never meant much to me on that instrument.

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## August Watters

> Sorry to futher skew this thread, but tradition is sometimes just rationalization, I think.


It's worth questioning what "tradition" means anyway. Bill Monroe grew up in a music notation-reading world; his family members read from songbooks and hymnals which were understood more widely than today. The reason Monroe didn't learn to read standard notation was due to his poor eyesight. 

I think it's fair to say that all the great musicians we learn from made the most of the opportunities available.

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## JeffD

> I can read music ...  
> 
> My question:  Is this something I should switch over to, from an emphasis standpoint?  Is there an inherent benefit to tabs if I can already read music or stick to notation?


I would not "switch", but there are circumstances where tab has advantages. 

I love wading into tunebooks and bumping into cool stuff I havent heard before. In old time music there are a lot of tunes played in cross tunings. When I am playing in cross I find it easier to get a tune from tab. Reading standard notation in cross is really really irritating, and can get me to stuttering and foaming.

A more common circumstance that argues for tab is when learning a transcription. My notation reading and sight reading is strong, but its strongest in first position. (My musical education started with woodwinds, where there is a distinction between fingerings and alternate fingerings.  Not as true for stringed instruments, but you come from where you come from.). I am not as good sight reading music most easily played up the neck. Tab is great when you want to know how the heck Sierra Hull does it.


As has been pointed out, there is no vs. There are advantages to both and everything you dont know will bite you in the tail piece.

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MikeyG

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## catmandu2

> I think it's fair to say that all the great musicians we learn from made the most of the opportunities available.


As the hot young players I play with say, "why not?" (use all resources at your disposal)

Re tab: it may not be as useful/effective in mandolin (relatively smaller range--limited fingering options), but it's prevalent in guitar and lute literature (evidence of lute tablature survives from the early 16 C.)...since tab provides precise fingering it is also a guide to performance

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## MandoTyro

What about the ABC notation?  This is very strange and I find it unusual that another transcription method is needed or used.

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## JeffD

I learned about ABC notation and I always thought it was merely for music printing software. I was absolutely surprised when I learned that there are folks that play from ABC.

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## neil argonaut

> What about the ABC notation?  This is very strange and I find it unusual that another transcription method is needed or used.


It's needed because the other two aren't as computer-friendly; for what it is it works very well; however, although I'm sure like JeffD says, there are folk who play with it, I wouldn't bother learning it; there's a good converter from ABC to PDF's of standard notation here.

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MikeyG

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## Mandophyte

All you need to know about ABC, see my siganture below.

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## ralph johansson

jramsey raises a number of interesting questions. I'm curious what August Watters, as a professor in ear training, has to say about the role of notation, and the increased availability of transcriptions. When I started out on the guitar in 1957 (the mandolin came 10 years later) I already knew standard notation in G clef. I had absorbed the system in music classes. Of course, that skill immediately gave me access to a lot of material and in those days sheet music was much cheaper than records. Notation also was a gateway towards theoretical understanding. For instance, since one my friends played saxophones, first the tenor then the baritone, I  learned to play from his Bb and Eb books - because I *understood* notation as a represesntation of music, not fingers.

 But unfortunately I didn't rely on my ears at all. If I had had the nerve, and money, to take lessons, a good teacher might have aided me a bit in ear training, but for better or worse I'm entirely self-taught on both my instruments. Only when I began to take interest in folk, old-time, and Bluegrass music did I rely more on my ears, simply because I had to. And, since Bluegrass is a group music I had to use my ears to play reasonably well with others. I never regretted that. For a short while I tried to learn the 5-string banjo and I learned a lot by slowing down Earl Scruggs to half speed - that's when I really understood how those rolls were constructed and how he used the fifth string. I even rediscovered melodic style which is really counter-intuitive.

Crosspicking. Ultimately it's a matter of taste. To me it's a device, to Jesse and his disciples it's a method. When I hear something like that on record I ask myself, what's the idea, what's the system, how does he do it, and what can I do with it. Then I'm on my own. You could compare to tremolo, I suppose. To classic players it's a default technique, to me it's an expressive device to be used when it expresses something. Continuous tremolo is not my bag at all; and it's the same with cross-picking, 3 notes determining the next 15. It's really nice to hear someone who masters it, like Statman, but to me it doesn't have the snap that I'm striving for.

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## Bertram Henze

> What about the ABC notation?  This is very strange and I find it unusual that another transcription method is needed or used.


ABC solves the old problem how to separate content from layout. It can be converted to any of the other readable forms, such as notation, but you can change it with any old text editing tool.

Example: I want to learn an Irish jig, say Calliope House. I get the ABC from thesession.org, but whoever posted it there packed all of his personal instrument-dependent ornamentation in as well, which I don't want. So I replace his triplets with quarter notes, directly inside the drop field of the concertina site Neil has posted a link to, and do whatever else I need to customize it for my purposes; then I generate standard notation and repeat until it looks like what I want. No tab or notation editors are harmed in the process.

So, ABC's not for reading, it's for PROGRAMMING  :Mandosmiley:

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MikeyG

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## The dman

> Also the very simple yet great thing about standard is that it visually depicts when notes go up or down. Yet another reason I find sight reading standard much easier.


Agreed and I never thought about the visual aspect. Tabs drive me crazy, give me music and I'm good

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## lukmanohnz

I am mostly self-taught, never learned to sight-read standard notation well for pitch but I can read it easily for note duration/timing/syncopation. I wish I had persevered and developed comprehensive skill at sight reading standard notation, but that ship has sailed. TAB was more straightforward for my brain to process, and the time it would require for me to develop fluent sight reading of pure standard notation is time I'd rather spend enjoying playing music and learning new songs. I prefer the instructional books that include both TAB and standard notation, and that seems to be the norm these days especially for folk, bluegrass, blues, and rock instructional books - classical not so much (though more and more is becoming available).  TablEdit and other similar notation software makes it easy for me to create my own sheet music with both TAB and standard notation. Through years of study and practice I have become adept at 'sight reading' this dual-system form of music notation. TAB also provides an intuitive system for notating fretted instrument-specific dynamics such as hammer-ons, pull-offs, slides, bends, trills, whammy bar (has anyone ever seen a mandolin with a whammy bar??), etc.

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## O'Riabh

Maybe the wrong thread:  I prefer music notation and have been searching for an arrangement for mandolin of Bach Sonata #1  4th Mvt Gm Presto including fingering.

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## ralph johansson

> TAB also provides an intuitive system for notating fretted instrument-specific dynamics such as hammer-ons, pull-offs, slides, bends, trills, whammy bar (has anyone ever seen a mandolin with a whammy bar??), etc.


How does that system differ from that used in standard notation, and what makes it more intuitive? (And, again, who wants all that instrument-specific detail?)

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## russintexas

> (And, again, who wants all that instrument-specific detail?)


This. I have one set of music. I don't have different charts for mandolin, guitar, and piano.

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## August Watters

> Maybe the wrong thread:  I prefer music notation and have been searching for an arrangement for mandolin of Bach Sonata #1  4th Mvt Gm Presto including fingering.


I've heard Joe Brent is working on this and is planning to publish soon. For myself, I prefer to explore the possibilities, and then upon choosing one just write in a fingering here or there to remind me next time. I encourage people to follow this process, to explore the timbral possibilities - rather than follow someone else's fingerings. Is there a trouble spot you're thinking of?

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## Jim Garber

I agree with August and usually prefer the urtext versions. the S&Ps are readily available all over and even for *free download*. There are many editions with later annotations for violin fingering and dynamics but sometimes even violinists differ in that respect. One person's choice of fingering does not always work of others.

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## lukmanohnz

> How does that system differ from that used in standard notation, and what makes it more intuitive? (And, again, who wants all that instrument-specific detail?)


 I don't know that one system is any more or less intuitive than the other. I wasn't trying to make a value judgment, but for me TAB was easier to learn when I started out. As a guitarist, the instrument-specific symbols in TAB helped me figure out how to play things I heard on recordings. I truly wish I'd developed sight reading skill for standard notation way back when. If I had, perhaps I'd consider that system easier to read. Oh well, luckily there's more music available in TAB than I could ever hope to learn in my lifetime, and I have a way to transcribe the music I compose.

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## ralph johansson

> I don't know that one system is any more or less intuitive than the other. I wasn't trying to make a value judgment, but for me TAB was easier to learn when I started out. As a guitarist, the instrument-specific symbols in TAB helped me figure out how to play things I heard on recordings. I truly wish I'd developed sight reading skill for standard notation way back when. If I had, perhaps I'd consider that system easier to read. Oh well, luckily there's more music available in TAB than I could ever hope to learn in my lifetime, and I have a way to transcribe the music I compose.


If you look up words like trill, mordent, glissando, appoggiatura, legato in, e.g., Wikipedia, I believe you'll find that the notational devices used in SN are very intuitive - they may even be the same as in TAB. HO's and PO's are conveniently indicated by legato arcs; the only exception I can think of is hammering on a note on a string/course without picking that string/course first. I occasionally use that device on guitar but not on mandolin.

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## Tom Cherubini

For someone who reads music notation, deciding to "learn" tabs is like a bike racer deciding to use a three-wheeler. Aside from the very occasional need to see how another player laid out his fingering for a piece or exercise, why would you want to? 
I have found that while a figure can often be played in several locations on a guitar neck, a mandolin doesn't enjoy this flexibility, so complicated melody lines (as in classical music) often have to be inverted or the key changed to get it to lie well on the fretboard.

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## August Watters

> I'm curious what August Watters, as a professor in ear training, has to say about the role of notation, and the increased availability of transcriptions.


Well, thanks for asking. I'm really excited about the increased availability of written music, both new and old. Historical works are being recovered, new music for mandolin is being written, and exploring written music as an arranger is also a rich, creative place to be. It's a great time to be a reading mandolinist!

I think standard notation and tablature both have their place. I usually use both for teaching, to be understood. But I sense your question is about the value of learning to read standard notation, so, without writing a book here, let me convey a few ideas I try to get across in teaching:

1) standard notation can be easily learned, and someone fluent in SN has little need for tablature;
2) a dual system with tablature and SN can be useful for short ideas, but page turns soon get in the way;
3) Mentally "hearing" SN used to be a standard subject for school children, and in some parts of the world, still is. Children easily transfer this skill to reading SN on instruments;
4) standard notation is too often taught by connecting to instrumental technique, rather than to the ear, limiting its value;
5) whether improvising or reading, we should work toward mentally "hearing" the sound. The fingerings self-generate from your knowledge of the fingerboard. Often this is the opposite of the process when we were beginners - reading the tab (or SN) and producing the sound as a byproduct of fingering.

Or to graph that last point:

"sound" < Fingerings 
NOT
fingerings < sound

----------

Mike Bunting, 

pickloser

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## Bertram Henze

> For someone who reads music notation, deciding to "learn" tabs is like a bike racer deciding to use a three-wheeler.


It's more like this:

----------

Randy Smith

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## Austin Bob

> 5) whether improvising or reading, we should work toward mentally "hearing" the sound.


Nicely put. I was once trying to learning a song from a classically trained violinist, and he stopped me in the middle of trying to finger the notes while looking at the music. He told me to whistle or hum the tune before even picking up the instrument. I try, but I still suck at it. I played for 25 years before I ever tried to read music, so I play by ear, and kinda sorta read music at a Dick and Jane level.

But to get back to the tab vs. notation discussion, I still feel each has value. But say for instance, you had never heard Brubeck's Take Five. I'm not sure if someone could ever figure it out with just tab.

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## Randy Smith

> Hello all,
> 
> 
> Being new to the mandolin, I didn't know about the tabs, and never got into them when I was learning guitar.  
> 
> I can read music and have been practicing picking irish tunes using sheet music to get familiar with moving around the fret, but I see alot of music(on this site) in tab notation.  
> 
> My question:  Is this something I should switch over to, from an emphasis standpoint?  Is there an inherent benefit to tabs if I can already read music or stick to notation?  
> 
> ...


If you're playing Irish tunes, stay with notation.  Since Irish fiddlers virtually never leave the first position, you won't need tablature to help you with fingering.  Besides, reading notation makes the books of hundreds of Irish tunes (O'Neill's *Music of Ireland* and *1001* immediately accessible.  No computer program is necessary to change a tab into notation.

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## JeffD

> If you're playing Irish tunes, stay with notation.  Since Irish fiddlers virtually never leave the first position, you won't need tablature to help you with fingering.  Besides, reading notation makes the books of hundreds of Irish tunes (O'Neill's *Music of Ireland* and *1001* immediately accessible.  No computer program is necessary to change a tab into notation.


I agree with that. Irish fiddle music was an early passion and being able to read notation was central to being able to get up to speed with the music.

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## Dr H

I learned notation first, as a child, and picked up tab much later on.   What has always mystified me is that tab is usually presented as a *easier* alternative to learning standard notation.  But, really, it isn't.

For starters, notation IS a form of tablature, and one which has been codified, slimmed down, and standardized over centuries of use.  It evolved from earlier, less clear or universal systems of tablature:  take a look at a medeival songbook written in neumes, or one of John Dowland's lute pieces in the original manuscript sometime.

As plenty of people have pointed out, notation is far more universal than tab -- it can be applied to any instrument, immediately.  And notation packs more information into a smaller space (with fewer symbols) in most cases.

But the big tab catch is that tab is not _standardized_ and notation is.  Indeed, that was one of the problems in the Rennaisance which eventually led to the development of modern notation:  every lutenist (for example) had devised his own system of tab, and only he and his immediate students could decipher it with any facility.  This problem still exists with modern tab, where each publisher has his own quirks:  one book's symbol for a string bend is another book's symbol for an accent, and a third book's symbol for a hammer-on.  One might pick up 8 different songbooks and find 8 different symbols for a pull-off.

What all this boils down to is that it's no harder to learn standard notation than it is to learn a given system of tab.

Any system of tab can be every bit as arcane as the most obscure aspects of notation -- and more arbitrary.  Given that notation is universal, expending the same amount of effort learning notation as one would have to expend learning a particular system of tab pays greater dividends, since it is applicable in more areas.  

The main reason I use tab at all is that so many recent publications (particularly for guitar) exist _only_ in tab, and it's usually less work to learn the tab -- even with the publishers idiosyncratic quirks -- than to transcribe a bunch of tunes into standard notation, one note at a time.

I wouldn't tell anyone to _not_ learn to read tab, but I would encourage them to learn the "tab" that is standard notation, first.  And if one already reads notes, I can think of very few compelling reasons to "switch" to tab.

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## Bernie Daniel

> I learned notation first, as a child, and picked up tab much later on.   What has always mystified me is that tab is usually presented as a *easier* alternative to learning standard notation.  But, really, it isn't.
> 
> For starters, notation IS a form of tablature, and one which has been codified, slimmed down, and standardized over centuries of use.  It evolved from earlier, less clear or universal systems of tablature:  take a look at a medeival songbook written in neumes, or one of John Dowland's lute pieces in the original manuscript sometime.
> 
> As plenty of people have pointed out, notation is far more universal than tab -- it can be applied to any instrument, immediately.  And notation packs more information into a smaller space (with fewer symbols) in most cases.
> 
> But the big tab catch is that tab is not _standardized_ and notation is.  Indeed, that was one of the problems in the Rennaisance which eventually led to the development of modern notation:  every lutenist (for example) had devised his own system of tab, and only he and his immediate students could decipher it with any facility.  This problem still exists with modern tab, where each publisher has his own quirks:  one book's symbol for a string bend is another book's symbol for an accent, and a third book's symbol for a hammer-on.  One might pick up 8 different songbooks and find 8 different symbols for a pull-off.
> 
> What all this boils down to is that it's no harder to learn standard notation than it is to learn a given system of tab.
> ...



I think you can show more information with "modern day" tablature that many people are aware.  For example here is a piece of tab I made up today.

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## bratsche

> For someone who reads music notation, deciding to "learn" tabs is like a bike racer deciding to use a three-wheeler.





> It's more like this:


Not really.  We need a better analogy than either of these.  I'm experienced at riding a two-wheeler (if not racing one), so it's just as easy for me to ride a three-wheeler.  And I can tell at a quick glance that Bertram's paint-by-number drawing's a horse.  

On the other hand, tab, which I'm not versed in, tells me nothing useful at a glance.  Actually, it even confuses me, because I first intuitively want to read the tab diagram as a staff, when it's actually a fretboard.  I wonder "why does this staff have only four lines?"  and then it dawns on me that it isn't a staff.  Duh!  And then when I realize it's supposed to be the fretboard, and that someone has actually bothered to count the frets, I have to proceed to count the frets myself, which seems like a silly and time-consuming thing to do, but I don't know off the top of my head which note might be found at the Xth fret of such-and-such a string, since when using notation, I just go to the note without thinking about which numbered fret it resides on.  

Of course, this thought process took me longer to describe than to actually experience, but still, it wastes enough time to preclude its usefulness for my reading of music.  

What is an appropriate analogy for something that is counter-intuitive to the way one is comfortably accustomed to?  Maybe this one:  Notation is something like finding directions to a certain address by reading a map, and tab is more like relying on directions like "Turn left at the second street after the stop sign, and then go down to the eighth house on the right."  That's not perfect either, but analogies always fall short. (shrug)

bratsche

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## Bertram Henze

> I can tell at a quick glance that Bertram's paint-by-number drawing's a horse.


You're right, I just wanted to give everybody a chance  :Grin: 

How about this one:

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## Bernie Daniel

> ....What is an appropriate analogy for something that is counter-intuitive to the way one is comfortably accustomed to?  Maybe this one:  Notation is something like finding directions to a certain address by reading a map, and tab is more like relying on directions like "Turn left at the second street after the stop sign, and then go down to the eighth house on the right."  That's not perfect either, but analogies always fall short. (shrug)  bratsche


OK.  I understand you're point is here that you have to look at the notation as well as the tab to get the value of the note and other information.  But the problem is that is not true.  The horse head/paint-by-numbers analogy is not just poor it is incorrect (with all due respect).

Pull up the .pdf that I attached to post #56 in this string and point out to me what information is lacking in the tab line compared to the standard notation line.  (discounting the fact that I forgot to change the key description to "C" in the text when I transposed it from "F")

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## Bertram Henze

> point out to me what information is lacking in the tab line compared to the standard notation line.


It's not about lack of information, it's about digital (written numbers) vs. analog (graphic position) representation, and thus it is about mental economy. Just like a quick glance at your analog watch directly shows if you're late (while a digital watch has you make a calculation), standard notation is a graphical picture of pitch. For many sight-readers used to this, the little numbers in tabs are cumbersome headwork; they are about midway to reading ABC code (yes, I know some can even do that).

I can do with both, but only because I don't sight-read; I use the music sheet until I can play the tune by heart and then throw it away.

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## Mark Robertson-Tessi

One advantage of notation is that is you can play the notes where ever you want on the fretboard without any interference from the notation itself.  With tab, the delivered information is specific fret, so at the least you have to be able to add 7 very quickly to certain notes if you want to play in a different position.  I.e., sometimes tab gives too much information.  I might play Bernie's example using second position in many places, and with the notation it's transparent to do so.  For example, it's a bit of a pain to see 1 3 6 tabbed on the E string and want to play 8 10 on the A and 6 on the E.  

There are a few instances where having tab is a good companion, especially with complex passages that pick across strings, with high and low frets.  There are ways to indicate all this on std notation, but if it's not a repeating pattern, deciphering it can be a bit cumbersome, whereas tab would instantly give you the RH pattern.  Still, pulling the melody out of the tab by sight would be much harder.

Cheers
MRT

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## Bernie Daniel

> It's not about lack of information, it's about digital (written numbers) vs. analog (graphic position) representation, and thus it is about mental economy. Just like a quick glance at your analog watch directly shows if you're late (while a digital watch has you make a calculation), standard notation is a graphical picture of pitch. For many sight-readers used to this, the little numbers in tabs are cumbersome headwork; they are about midway to reading ABC code (yes, I know some can even do that).  I can do with both, but only because I don't sight-read; I use the music sheet until I can play the tune by heart and then throw it away.


Interesting.  I see what you are getting at.

Well I think a big part of it is like most things, one likes what one is most familiar with.  I was in band and chorus decades ago in high school and learned to read standard notation on brass and for singing.  

But 15 years later I did not start playing guitar and mandolin by the "notes" so I never made the connection between notes on a staff and frets on a fret board I guess.

Tab solves that problem - the fret and the string are shown -- no worry about key signature or flats and sharps -- but of course it is only good for a certain instrument for which it is composed for.  

But with digital representation of music (,mid and .abc) it is pretty easy now to quickly compose tab for most instruments and make a nice print out if you want.   I find that I sight read tab today exactly like I used to sight read notation in band.  So, because I'm used to it I don't really "think" about a "2" on the E-chorus line (F#) I just play it?

Your comment about ABC notation was interesting -- I have often wondered if some folks don't develop a facility to sight read abc just like standard notation.

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## Bernie Daniel

> One advantage of notation is that is you can play the notes where ever you want on the fretboard without any interference from the notation itself.  With tab, the delivered information is specific fret, so at the least you have to be able to add 7 very quickly to certain notes if you want to play in a different position.  I.e., sometimes tab gives too much information.  I might play Bernie's example using second position in many places, and with the notation it's transparent to do so.  For example, it's a bit of a pain to see 1 3 6 tabbed on the E string and want to play 8 10 on the A and 6 on the E....Cheers
> MRT


I agree with that.  In fact I often "edit" the tab in TablEdit after going through a few times to get the most efficient way.  Then re-save it so I don't have to do it later when I come back to needing a little reminder of how to play the tune.

Of course note on the staff specifying a certain pitch can be played in more than one place on the fret board too?

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## Bertram Henze

> I was in band and chorus decades ago in high school and learned to read standard notation on brass and for singing.  
> 
> But 15 years later I did not start playing guitar and mandolin by the "notes" so I never made the connection between notes on a staff and frets on a fret board I guess.


Ah, that was different for me of course: I learnt to play violin by notation, so the jump to play mandolin by the same notation was not too far - in fact one of the factors that made the mandolin attractive for me at the time.
Guitar, OTOH, has remained a completely alien beast to me. If I had to learn to play it by reading, would I
- prefer guitar tab to make a shortcut, or
- tune the guitar in fifths to make an even bigger shortcut? Hard to say.

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## Tobin

> There are a few instances where having tab is a good companion, especially with complex passages that pick across strings, with high and low frets.  There are ways to indicate all this on std notation, but if it's not a repeating pattern, deciphering it can be a bit cumbersome, whereas tab would instantly give you the RH pattern.  Still, pulling the melody out of the tab by sight would be much harder.


That's precisely how I feel about tablature.  It's only good as a companion to the notation, for suggestions on which strings and frets to use.  You can always deviate from the tabs (which I often do) if it's easier or makes more sense to use a different combination, especially when moving up the fretboard and across strings.  But the notation is important for visualizing what the music should sound like.  I've tried playing music strictly from tabs, and I always feel like I'm not getting the full picture.

For me, a good comparison is that tabs are like reading the English language in all caps, with no punctuation or spaces.  You can probably make out what it's trying to say, but it just isn't right.

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## JeffD

For sight reading in standard tuning, there is nothing better than standard notation. One can tell at a glance if a given tune is going to be fun to play or not, one can "hear' the tune with the eyes, and even hum it out before picking up the instrument.

For cross tuning, I prefer the tune as it sounds in standard notation with the tune as its fingered in TAB below it. 

For general tunebooks in standard tuning, if they feel they have to include TAB, I wish they could just put it all in standard, and then in the second half just repeat it all in TAB. I get really tired of turning pages.

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## MikeyG

"For me, a good comparison is that tabs are like reading the English language in all caps, with no punctuation or spaces.  You can probably make out what it's trying to say, but it just isn't right"

I don't think Tobin's comparison is at all fair.  Tab certainly can be "RIGHT".  Back in 1977, as a beginning mandolin player, I wanted to learn the McReynold's crosspicking style.  I found the tablature in Jack Tottle's book to be ideal for this beginner who didn't yet know the mandolin fretboard.  Try crosspicking Tottle's "Home Sweet Home" or "Wildwood flower" by looking at the standard notation.  A couple of years later, Statman's more comprehensive book was published - and it contained tab notation ONLY, not a single note of standard notation.  I say thanks to Oak publications & these fine authors for documenting this unique style for us in such a way as to give access to it for BEGINNERS through tablature. 

Mike

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## Tobin

> I don't think Tobin's comparison is at all fair.  Tab certainly can be "RIGHT".


Perhaps "right" was not the best word to have used.  What I was driving at was that it never seems to really convey the full meaning of the music.  At least, not in the tab style I typically see.  I'm sure with as many variations of tablature that are out there, some will be better than others.  But at the end of the day, I can't look at tabs and sing the melody in my head.  They're just numbers to show you how to play the notes on the strings/frets.  They don't actually give you the notes.

I'm sure it's all a matter of perspective, though.  I learned to read standard notation as a child on the piano and brass band instruments.  So tablature was never as natural to me as notation.  Others will see it the opposite way.

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## Jim Garber

Ah, this discussion rages on!! I lean toward std notation for most music and instruments. I found tho that tab was excellent when i was learning frailing banjo and for fingerpicking patterns on guitar. Overall for folks styles it helps sometimes to have both tab and std notation.  

The bottom line is: whatever works for you. Years ago I learned some chord-melody tunes on uke and tenor banjo from a well-known ex-vaudeville star. I taped the lessons but developed my own notation system which used chord diagrams with added single notes indicated. That, in conjunction with the taped music worked out nicely but as something to stand alone, it would not have worked.

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## tmsweeney

I do remember in classical guitar studies our instructor being offended by a performer who recently acquired his masters in guitar performance- for referring to sheet music on some of the pieces he played
the instructors comment was - use sheet music to learn the piece
but to "muster" the piece - you must thoroughly understand it and that means knowing it by heart
now a lot of fiddle tunes can fit on less than one page and most are fairly easy to "groK" 
somewhat different than a 40 page guitar concerto or Sor study

I myself can not really site read - but I prefer notation over tab
and I think that is just a familiarity thing

so I think it is correct to say tab is just a newer form of musical notion
all be it limited to fretted stringed instruments

but for a "universal" approach - notation clearly out performs tab
think if a mandolin player wanted to try a flute or trumpet sonata

no need to transcribe - just read the music and play where you know you are supposed to
a tab player would have to convert first, and there would be no way of knowing where the composer intended the note to be played on the fret board.

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## Jim Garber

> no need to transcribe - just read the music and play where you know you are supposed to
> a tab player would have to convert first, and there would be no way of knowing where the composer intended the note to be played on the fret board.


Early composers (like Bach and the like) didn't usually indicate fingerings anyway. Most printed violin music usually has fingerings and often dynamics indicated by later editors. For some pieces I prefer urtext editions anyway and work out my own fingerings. Just another reason to lean toward std notation for some purposes.

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## Bertram Henze

> ...work out my own fingerings.


Aha. Your avatar  :Wink:

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## Jim Garber

Bertram... I learned that chord under the tutelage of the Great One, Jethro Burns.

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## jmp

Not to belabor the point, but the main difference is that most of the tab available out there do not capture the rhythms only the pitches. Therefore you really have to know how the tune goes ahead of time to play a tab, however with standard notation you can learn how to play a tune you have never heard before. There is some tab notation that wedges in rhythm but then you are half way to standard notation. Granted, most of the time you do indeed know how the tunes goes ahead of time, so tab can be a fast way to "see" how to play it.

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## jmp

sorry, somehow made a duplicate...can't see how to delete a post.

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## MikeyG

```
1) standard notation can be easily learned, and someone fluent in SN has little need for tablature;
```

Gotta also take issue with these words, quoted from Professor Watters in #50.   

First, standard notation tutorials are abundant - the most famous may be Pete Seeger's "Henscratches & Flyspecks", written over 40 years ago.  Did you ever hear of a BOOK that attempted to teach the rudiments of tablature?  Of course not, because as several have pointed out, it's completely intuitive & can be learned almost INSTANTLY. 
I'm not saying SN is difficult to learn - just not nearly as easily as tab. I think there are lots of folks that would not agree than SN is "easily learned".

Second, as Jordan Ramsey & I have both pointed out, tablature CAN be very useful for those fluent in SN who want to learn a crosspicking piece exactly as the master(s) have presented it.  

As Jim Garber said, the argument "rages on".  I love SN, tablature and abc.  They all have their special advantages.  After 35 years with the mandolin, I don't feel ashamed to say that if I were presented with a simple tune in all three formats, I'd immediately take to the tab version first because it would allow me to hear the tune much quicker than SN or abc.  That being said, if the tune were also available in a digital audio format, of course I'd prefer THAT.  

I want to thank the posters here for helping to bring me out of my "shell".  I will defend TAB to the bitter end.   :Smile:    Keep it up!

Mike

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## Jim Garber

> I will defend TAB to the bitter end.


You don't have to defend anything, Mike. You should do what is best for you. I frankly don't understand why this thing becomes an argument. It is sort of like saying, "I write with a pencil" vs. "I write with a pen." Some people use one or the other and some use both. They are both tools.

These notation systems are tools for accomplishing, more or less, the same end... playing music or communicating musical ideas. Some of us prefer one or the other and some actually use both. I have no problem with anyone using tab but I am just more accustomed to std notation, at least for mandolin. 

BTW I do know that some folks do read abc notation directly, but the when it was first developed it was merely a means to send notated files in ASCII text over the internet. The files were very small (made a difference in the bad old days). I usually take those files and put them into either Barfly so i can read them in std notation or listen to the midi of use the online abc conversion utility on concertina.net to convert the tune and then save as a pdf. I am sure there are other conversion utilities that will convert to mandolin tab.

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## tmsweeney

> [CODE]1) I don't feel ashamed to say that if I were presented with a simple tune in all three formats, I'd immediately take to the tab version first because it would allow me to hear the tune much quicker than SN or abc.  
> 
> Mike


not trying to be nasty or combative and if Tab is your preference - wonderful!

however if I were presented with a simple tune- I would prefer standard notation

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## Bernie Daniel

> ...For me, a good comparison is that tabs are like reading the English language in all caps, with no punctuation or spaces.  You can probably make out what it's trying to say, but it just isn't right.


Of course your view is yours and that's fine with me.  Nonetheless the statement that tab is like "English without punctuation" is simply incorrect.   Modern day tab produced on programs like TablEdit gives the same information to the playerr as standard notation. 

Again please pull up the tab I posted in PDF in post #56 of this string to see what I mean.

----------


## Dr H

> I think you can show more information with "modern day" tablature that many people are aware.  For example here is a piece of tab I made up today.


Sure, you can show a lot of information.  But I think you proved my point that tab isn't any _easier_ to learn or read than standard notation.  Some of the tab is ambiguous -- in m10, are the flyspecks after the verticle line for a double-dotted quarter, or a double dotted half note, for example?  In the staff notation it's obvious.

And with note heads, I don't have to put on an extra pair of glasses to tell if those are "3's" or "8's" that I'm looking at.  :Wink:

----------


## Dr H

> What is an appropriate analogy for something that is counter-intuitive to the way one is comfortably accustomed to?  Maybe this one:  Notation is something like finding directions to a certain address by reading a map, and tab is more like relying on directions like "Turn left at the second street after the stop sign, and then go down to the eighth house on the right."  That's not perfect either, but analogies always fall short. (shrug)
> 
> bratsche


I'm thinking more like:  "Turn left at the corner where the old gas station used to be back in '65, and go down the street a couple of blocks to where Aunt Masey lost her hubcap last summer, then down the alley and behind the hedge on the right -- you can't miss it."

 :Smile:

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## Dr H

> Pull up the .pdf that I attached to post #56 in this string and point out to me what information is lacking in the tab line compared to the standard notation line.


OK:  Your tab has no time signature; number of beats in bar 1 is unclear -- 1, 2, 4?  Bar #2:  I see 5-3/8 beats in the notation, but again, it's unclear how many in the tab -- could be 1, 2, 3, or 4-3/8 (I assume the extra 3/8 beat -- the extra dotted 16th -- is a typo, BTW).  Putting dots down by the beams makes them hard to see and easy to miss -- in m4&5 I don't see the dotted rhythms int he tab at all; maybe they got swallowed up by the flags on the note stems?

Not sure what's going on in m6 & 11, with the little "3" hanging in space below the tab -- a fingering, maybe?

In m11 & 12, if those really are A-double sharps in the notation, it's not reflected in the tab.  If I saw a 'B' followed by an 'A double sharp', I'd play those notes on two different strings -- but the tab shows them both in the same place, as if they were both 'B' or both 'A double sharp'.  

It looks to me like there are too many beats in a number of bars in this arrangement (unless you're shooting for avant garde  :Wink:  ) -- this is readily apparent from the staff notation, and easily fixed.  It is not so apparent from the tab notation.

I think that if you used staff notation, maybe enhanced by a few of the chord symbols you have there, you could convey pretty much everything that's present in _both_ the tab and the staff notation, other than maybe a fingering or two -- but I don't really see any fingerings in the tab that's there now, either.

----------


## Dr H

> Guitar, OTOH, has remained a completely alien beast to me. If I had to learn to play it by reading, would I
> - prefer guitar tab to make a shortcut, or
> - tune the guitar in fifths to make an even bigger shortcut? Hard to say.


Some of this is a problem inherent not in the notation itself, but in certain traditional methods used to _teach_ notation.  My first instrument (at age 4) was the piano, and virtually all music theory I was exposed to until I got to graduate school was piano (or at least keyboard) oriented.  The piano was always used to provide the demonstrations and play the examples.  All music students, whatever thier particular focus, were required to demonstrate a certain level of piano proficiency.

That teaching method came with a significant cost.  When I took up guitar at age 13, and eventually decided to make it my main instrument, I had been thoroughly inculcated with _keyboard_-based theory.  This was especially bothersome when I was trying to learn jazz harmonies.  I couldn't see "F9+5" and instantly picture a shape on the guitar neck -- I'd _first_ get an image of how I would play that chord on a piano keyboard, and then translate it to guitar.  Needless to say, this severely hampered my ability to sight-read on the guitar.

At some point I realized that this was a problem, and began actively working to overcome it, but I can say truly that it took at least ten years before I finally developed the ability to "think onto the guitar" the way I had been trained to "think onto the piano" from an early age.  I experienced something similar when I took up the mandolin years later -- I would "think guitar" first, and then translate onto the mandolin neck.  But the transition with mandolin went much faster -- by years.  And it's gotten quicker with each subsequent instrument I've taken up.

I think there is *far* too much reliance on the use of the piano in teaching basic music skills, and I think it's detremental to practicaly anyone who goes on in music to become anything _other_ than a pianist, later in life.

I can also see where too much reliance on tab could have a similar effect.  Guitar tab is different from mandolin tab, although there are lots of simularities.  But guitar tab and mandolin tab are both a _lot_ different from piano tab.  This is less of a concern, I suppose, if a person picks one instrument to play, and sticks exclusively with that instrument for the rest of their life.  But if someone wants to move to a different instrument, this kind of background can make the switch almost like having to learn _basic music_ all over again, for each new instrument.

----------


## Dr H

> For cross tuning, I prefer the tune as it sounds in standard notation with the tune as its fingered in TAB below it.


I agree that's one place where tab *is* really useful --with scordatura (cross tuning, or alternate tuning) parts.  I've used it occasionally with instruments like retuned violins and basses, even.  String players get to expect certain notes to be in certain places on the neck, and if you change that on them, it really screws them up.  :Smile: 

Imagine if a piano player's E's were suddenly all tuned to D's, and to get an actual 'E' he had to play D# instead.   Then ask him to play a tune in the key of E.  (I've played some gigs where the 'house piano' was almost that much out of tune; it's not fun.)

----------


## August Watters

I don't usually participate in quasi-religious debates such as this one, but someone asked my opinion - so I outlined some ideas I try to get across in teaching. 




> I think there are lots of folks that would not agree than SN is "easily learned".


Not exactly what I said - which is that SN can be easily learned. As I mentioned it can also be taught poorly, or not connected to the ear, in which case its benefits can be overlooked or misunderstood. These debates are fueled by such misunderstandings.

SN and tab are two different tools. Learn them both, then compare.

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## JeffD

> I think there it *far* too much reliance on the use of the piano in teaching basic music skills, and I think it's detremental to practicaly anyone who goes on in music to become something _other_ than a pianist, later in life..


I agree. There are a lot of prejudices that creep into the teaching of music because of the limitations of the piano. I had to unlearn a bunch of these to make progress on the mandolin.

----------


## Dr H

> Did you ever hear of a BOOK that attempted to teach the rudiments of tablature?


Sure -- they're all over the place:

http://www.amazon.com/Guitar-Tabs-In...itar+tablature
http://www.amazon.com/How-Read-Reall...ead+guitar+tab
http://www.amazon.com/Secrets-Guitar...ead+guitar+tab
http://www.amazon.com/Guitar-Dummies...ing+guitar+tab




> Of course not, because as several have pointed out, it's completely intuitive & can be learned almost INSTANTLY.


No it isn't.

Well, OK, maybe it is.  Here, see what you make of this:



or this:



or maybe this:



or even this (hint: the red ink means something different from the black ink):



Now _I_ sure don't find these immediately intuitive -- it's not even immediately obvious whether these are all for the same instrument or not -- but maybe _you_ find them intuitive.  If so, you're a better man than I, Gunga Din.




> I'm not saying SN is difficult to learn - just not nearly as easily as tab.


And I'm saying that it's roughly the same amount of work to learn the one as to learn the other.  I will grant you that a lot of people _believe_ that it's hard to learn to read standard staff notation -- mostly because someone _told_ them that it was difficult.




> Second, as Jordan Ramsey & I have both pointed out, tablature CAN be very useful for those fluent in SN who want to learn a crosspicking piece exactly as the master(s) have presented it.


Sure, I don't disagree that tab has some uses.  

But the staff-notation/tab "mystique"   that so many seem to see is a false dichotomy.
Say it takes you a week to learn the basics of a particular publisher's/composer's tab, and you have to learn four different tabs from four different publishers to get the tunes you want to play.  

It takes about a month to learn the basics of standard staff notation, which applies to tunes put out by all four publishers.

Either way, you've spent a month learning to read a new "language", as it were.  No?

And I will "note" that the standard notation has a few distinct advantages here:  one is that when a _fifth_ publisher comes out with a tune you want to learn, you already have the skill to read the music he prints.  If you only learn tab, you may find yourself having to learn yet a _fifth_ set of idiosyncratic symbols.

And as I think Jim pointed out, you can look at staff notation of a piece you've never heard before and "hear" it in your head, and learn to play it, never having heard it before.
With tab that's a whole lot less facile, and even if you _can_ look at tab and "hear" the tune, if you don't know what instrument the tab was designed for, you may be "hearing" something very different than what the composer wrote.  (For example, looking at a piece in banjo tab that you thought was mandolin tab.)

Modern tab was invented for the recorded-music era -- as a visual aid for those who learn mostly by ear.




> I want to thank the posters here for helping to bring me out of my "shell".  I will defend TAB to the bitter end.     Keep it up!


Certainement:   _En garde. Prêt. Allez._  :Grin:

----------


## JeffD

> I will defend TAB to the bitter end.


 :Disbelief: 

Nobody wants to take it from you. Stick with TAB for as long as it is useful. Use other notation systems if and when they become useful to you. Let go of any sytem that nolonger is of use.

I do mostly notation, and some TAB for cross tuning. I am teaching myself the Nashville Number System because chart reading has recently become useful to me.


I

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## Dr H

> I don't usually participate in quasi-religious debates such as this one


LOL.  You got *that* right.  :Grin:

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## JeffD

> I don't feel ashamed to say that if I were presented with a simple tune in all three formats, I'd immediately take to the tab version first because it would allow me to hear the tune much quicker than SN or abc.  That being said, if the tune were also available in a digital audio format, of course I'd prefer THAT.


What does shame have to do with anything? The only thing I am ashamed of is that sometimes I go to the laundromat in a suit and tie because I have nothing else clean to wear.

Seriously though, I would chose standard notation in that case because I could tell what it was going to sound like just from looking at it, and I probably would not have a digital audio player around to play it on.

----------


## Bernie Daniel

> OK:  Your tab has no time signature; number of beats in bar 1 is unclear -- 1, 2, 4?  Bar #2:  I see 5-3/8 beats in the notation, but again, it's unclear how many in the tab -- could be 1, 2, 3, or 4-3/8 (I assume the extra 3/8 beat -- the extra dotted 16th -- is a typo, BTW).  Putting dots down by the beams makes them hard to see and easy to miss -- in m4&5 I don't see the dotted rhythms int he tab at all; maybe they got swallowed up by the flags on the note stems?
> 
> Not sure what's going on in m6 & 11, with the little "3" hanging in space below the tab -- a fingering, maybe?
> 
> In m11 & 12, if those really are A-double sharps in the notation, it's not reflected in the tab.  If I saw a 'B' followed by an 'A double sharp', I'd play those notes on two different strings -- but the tab shows them both in the same place, as if they were both 'B' or both 'A double sharp'.  
> 
> It looks to me like there are too many beats in a number of bars in this arrangement (unless you're shooting for avant garde  ) -- this is readily apparent from the staff notation, and easily fixed.  It is not so apparent from the tab notation.
> 
> I think that if you used staff notation, maybe enhanced by a few of the chord symbols you have there, you could convey pretty much everything that's present in _both_ the tab and the staff notation, other than maybe a fingering or two -- but I don't really see any fingerings in the tab that's there now, either.



OK fair enough.  I don't think this discussion would benefit from a point by point response. I'll just make two observations -- I could have put a lot more information into the tab lines by just checking some additional boxes in the TablEdit program output and you would be more comfortable with the tab if you were using it more often I think.  It has its flaws but you learn to deal with them.

The B versus A double sharp thing -- looks like that is an error in the programs conversion of the midi file -- if you "hum" along both notes should be "B" so the tab is correct second fret of the A course.  I don't know if that happens a lot because I never even print out the standard notation - - and if a note is "wrong" in the tab I manually change it.  My only goal is to get a format that lessens the time it takes me "to learn the tune by ear"!   :Smile:

----------


## Bernie Daniel

> Sure -- they're all over the place:
> 
> http://www.amazon.com/Guitar-Tabs-In...itar+tablature
> http://www.amazon.com/How-Read-Reall...ead+guitar+tab
> http://www.amazon.com/Secrets-Guitar...ead+guitar+tab
> http://www.amazon.com/Guitar-Dummies...ing+guitar+tab
> 
> 
> 
> ...


Why no example of Gregorian chant?

----------


## bratsche

> Originally Posted by bratsche
> 
> 
> 
> What is an appropriate analogy for something that is counter-intuitive to the way one is comfortably accustomed to?  Maybe this one:  Notation is something like finding directions to a certain address by reading a map, and tab is more like relying on directions like "Turn left at the second street after the stop sign, and then go down to the eighth house on the right."  That's not perfect either, but analogies always fall short. (shrug)
> 
> bratsche
> 
> 
> I'm thinking more like:  "Turn left at the corner where the old gas station used to be back in '65, and go down the street a couple of blocks to where Aunt Masey lost her hubcap last summer, then down the alley and behind the hedge on the right -- you can't miss it."


Well, I confess to thinking similar thoughts, but at least I _tried_ to remain charitably diplomatic .  :Wink: 

bratsche

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## Bertram Henze

> I think there is *far* too much reliance on the use of the piano in teaching basic music skills, and I think it's detremental to practicaly anyone who goes on in music to become anything _other_ than a pianist, later in life.


Oh yeah. How I hated these music teachers always talking "white keys" and "black keys", and there I was, outcast, stringed instrument in hand (don't get me started about those strings inside the piano). At least, violin and mandolin offer a surrogate system of consequent fifths you can build on, but the guitar with that odd third was clearly designed to remove all sense from life.




> The only thing I am ashamed of is that sometimes I go to the laundromat in a suit and tie because I have nothing else clean to wear.


Shame is a matter of excuses - in those situations, you're a stock exchange broker during lunch break or a senior consultant on his way to a board meeting, of course. Don't forget to take your laptop to the laundromat.  :Wink:

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## ralph johansson

> I think you can show more information with "modern day" tablature that many people are aware.  For example here is a piece of tab I made up today.


That looks like a parody. I've heard that there are keyboards that notate whatever you play in real time, did you use one of these? I'm asking because there are some very tricky rhythmical things here, e.g., eighth note followed by dotted 1/8, followed by another 1/8 and then a 1/16. This tune is most conveniently notatade in 6/8.

 Then there's the mysterious use of double sharps. A double sharp is normally used to raise a note that's sharp already in the key signature, e.g. a g in F# would be an f double sharp in notation, here it's used to denote a b natural in F. And no key signature!?

----------


## ralph johansson

> ```
> 1) standard notation can be easily learned, and someone fluent in SN has little need for tablature;
> ```
> 
> Gotta also take issue with these words, quoted from Professor Watters in #50.   
> 
> First, standard notation tutorials are abundant - the most famous may be Pete Seeger's "Henscratches & Flyspecks", written over 40 years ago.  Did you ever hear of a BOOK that attempted to teach the rudiments of tablature?  Of course not, because as several have pointed out, it's completely intuitive & can be learned almost INSTANTLY. 
> I'm not saying SN is difficult to learn - just not nearly as easily as tab. I think there are lots of folks that would not agree than SN is "easily learned".
> 
> ...


Well, you're wrong and I already explained this above. You are simply comparing two completely different levels of literacy. I have been playing the guitar for 55 years and the mandolin off and on for 45. I know my way around the fretboard on both instruments, in all major keys (at least on guitar; I haven't played that much in Db and F# on mando). I know the "idea" of TAB and yet it is pretty painful to learn a song, except a very simple one, from TAB. On the other hand,  a quick glance at an SN score will tell my what the tune is "about", whether
it's in good range or whether I should tranpose it to some other key, what possible personal touches to add, etc.

But then I believe I've learned only one mando-specific tune, Rawhide. From the LP; I had to slow it down to half speed (and down an octave!) and I heard lots of notes that weren't really there, because I needed them.


Anyway, people are forgetting the question of the OP: should he "switch" from SN to TAB? One possible answer could be, get the Peters book, work through it; if the going gets less rough after a while maybe you are actually learning to READ TAB, not just spell your way trough it. I think he should switch from notation dependence to using his ears more. E.g., get some tef files, turn the notation off, listen to the MIDI, and at least get a feel for the tune and its structure before looking.

One of the first mando players after Jesse to adopt cross-picking was John Duffey. Does anyone believe he used any kind of notation?

----------


## Bertram Henze

> ...or even this (hint: the red ink means something different from the black ink):


Very impressive. I suspect we had a completely wrong notion about these:



 :Cool:

----------


## Bernie Daniel

> That looks like a parody. I've heard that there are keyboards that notate whatever you play in real time, did you use one of these? I'm asking because there are some very tricky rhythmical things here, e.g., eighth note followed by dotted 1/8, followed by another 1/8 and then a 1/16. This tune is most conveniently notatade in 6/8.
> 
>  Then there's the mysterious use of double sharps. A double sharp is normally used to raise a note that's sharp already in the key signature, e.g. a g in F# would be an f double sharp in notation, here it's used to denote a b natural in F. And no key signature!?


Well it IS kind of a tricky little tune!  Strauss and Rimsky-Korsokov both stole Luigi Denza's beautiful little Neapolitan melody and they were sued for the effort.   Strauss lost his case and had to pay -- not sure about the Russian guy.  The double sharps are in the standard notation not the tab and that must be a result of the programs interaction with the midi file I guess?  But I think the tab gives the "correct" notes.  You don't need a key signature with tab?  (PS I pointed out in an earlier post for the notation that I think I have the tune in the key of C here -- I just forgot to change the information on the title page after I transposed it).  

But the bottom line is you can play the tune with tab and that's all I care about.  It is amazing the standard notation readers have such a angst with something they don't have to use at all!  :Smile:

----------


## jesserules

> Hi I fear I share the same problem, am familiar with standard music notation for violin, piano, etc, but the tab thing.  I also have a blind friend who wishes to learn mando.  The trouble is tab does not transcribe easily into braille as the blind person, like sighted musicians among each other cannot have the same musical info such as note values, etc.  So I share that frustration.  Out of interest, is there any standard notation for mandolin?  Anyone know?


Well, as long as the mandolin is in standard GDAE tuning you can use standard notation just as you would for violin.  There are lots of collections of traditional tunes in standard notation available.

----------


## Dr H

> OK fair enough.  I don't think this discussion would benefit from a point by point response. I'll just make two observations -- I could have put a lot more information into the tab lines by just checking some additional boxes in the TablEdit program output and you would be more comfortable with the tab if you were using it more often I think.  It has its flaws but you learn to deal with them.


I could say the same about staff notation.

Seriously, in your example the staff notation version could stand some clean-up.  If it was more accurate, there would be less diference between the tab and the staff.

I think Bertram's analogy to the digital-versus-analog watch is a good one.  
There are two different kinds of information being presented, and they are processed differently by the brain.  If I need to know how much time I have to get to my 3:00 appointment, a glance at an analog clock shows me instantly that I have about 1/3 of an hour.  With a digital clock I have to process "2:41", interpret it as a hybrid sexagesimal/decimal number, and do a mental subtraction.

When presented with numbers (tab) we're using a different part of the brain than when we interpret a visual image (notation), so tab adds a step to the process.  In some cases it makes little difference:  to determine whether a note is an eighth-note in either kind of notation I have to look at the bottom of the stem.  

But in other cases staff notation takes fewer steps:  I only need to see the head of a half-note on the staff to know that it's a half-note.  With tab I see the number first, then I have to look at the other end of the stem -- and even then I'm not 100% sure if it's a half-note or a quarter-note without also examining the larger context of the measure.  That's a whole lot more work than just looking at the note-head.

As a learning tool, I can see some uses for tab.  But for sight-reading, notation is far superior.




> The B versus A double sharp thing -- looks like that is an error in the programs conversion of the midi file -- if you "hum" along both notes should be "B" so the tab is correct second fret of the A course.  I don't know if that happens a lot because I never even print out the standard notation - - and if a note is "wrong" in the tab I manually change it.  My only goal is to get a format that lessens the time it takes me "to learn the tune by ear"!


Yeah, I figured that it was probably an artifact of the MIDI conversion.  :Wink: 

But I didn't mention that because it raises what I think is an important point.  In "classical" playing, if the same pitch is notated in two different ways in a passage and the enharmonic is _not_ a functional part of the harmony, the implication is that two different _sounds_ are desired (for example, an open 'A' and an 'A' played on the D-string, 7th fret).  Sure, you _could_ show this in tab by indicating a different fret number, but the reason for making that change probably wouldn't be immediately obvious, especially if it introduced an awkward fingering.

As far as an aid to learning a tune by ear, yes, I agree that tab is useful in that regard.

Let me be clear:  I am NOT "anti-tab."  

I just think that the most common reason given for using tab -- that it's easier to learn than staff notation -- is bogus.

----------


## Dr H

> Why no example of Gregorian chant?


Heh.  :Smile: 

To answer seriously:  because we are discussing tablature for (primarily) stringed instruments and Gregorian chant is a vocal form.  All of the examples I gave are of tablature for closely-related stringed instruments -- three are for Renaissance lute and one is for Renaissance vihuela, which was generally tuned the same as the lute.  

All of the examples are contemporaneous.  They illustrate the point that tab is not necessarily intuitive because it was not/is not standardized, even among people writing for the same instrument at around the same time period.  If you were a student of Mudarra you could read _his_ tab, but probably not John Dowland's tab; and vice-versa.

As already noted, this situation, although somewhat improved, is still true today.  Staff  notation is standardized; tablature notation is not.  Different publishers use differet symbols to mean the same thing, and sometimes the same symbol to mean different things.  Without actually _hearing_ the piece first, you can't really be sure of what those ambiguous tablature elements mean.

----------


## bratsche

> I think Bertram's analogy to the digital-versus-analog watch is a good one.  
> There are two different kinds of information being presented, and they are processed differently by the brain.  If I need to know how much time I have to get to my 3:00 appointment, a glance at an analog clock shows me instantly that I have about 1/3 of an hour.  With a digital clock I have to process "2:41", interpret it as a hybrid sexagesimal/decimal number, and do a mental subtraction.
> 
> When presented with numbers (tab) we're using a different part of the brain than when we interpret a visual image (notation), so tab adds a step to the process.  In some cases it makes little difference:  to determine whether a note is an eighth-note in either kind of notation I have to look at the bottom of the stem.  
> 
> But in other cases staff notation takes fewer steps:  I only need to see the head of a half-note on the staff to know that it's a half-note.  With tab I see the number first, then I have to look at the other end of the stem -- and even then I'm not 100% sure if it's a half-note or a quarter-note without also examining the larger context of the measure.  That's a whole lot more work than just looking at the note-head.


That's quite an interesting point about the brain.  It also makes perfect sense to me, in that I'm a highly visual learner, even when it comes to sonoral (musical) things, which seems strange to some people.   I even use a mental picture of standard notation as an intuitive key component of my process of memorization of tricky passages.  I also, not surprisingly, tend to favor analog clock displays, road maps, and of course, standard notation, over other forms of numeric, symbolic, coded and/or verbal directions.  The more graphically (visually) they're made to represent the reality they stand for, the more naturally my mind "gets" them.   (I do not look at my fingerboard or conjure up any mental images of it, though. I guess that's more of a tactile sensory input thing with me!)

bratsche

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## fatt-dad

I play by ear first, then by road-map.  My road map (historically) has been tab related to the mandolin.

As yourself, why is there no tab for singing?  (Ha!)  It just doesn't make sense that's why!  That said, as a singer, I don't process the bouncing ball into notes and then some setting on the larnyx.  I just sing!

When I was learning the french horn, my teacher told me, "You have to sing the french horn."  That sort of made sense to me. You see if you don't hear the note before you try to play it, you'll likely play the wrong note, irrespective of your fingering.

I recently carried this "singing" approach to playing the mandolin.  From this I can now (sort of) read standard notation.  For starters, I get the standard notation, then I listen to the music (temper my ear) then I try to replicate what I heard in my ear to playing the notes on the page - sort of singing.

It's sort of working!

f-d

----------


## Tobin

> Of course your view is yours and that's fine with me.  Nonetheless the statement that tab is like "English without punctuation" is simply incorrect.   Modern day tab produced on programs like TablEdit gives the same information to the playerr as standard notation. 
> 
> Again please pull up the tab I posted in PDF in post #56 of this string to see what I mean.


I can see how the more complicated tablature might start to approach the same level of information that standard notation does.  But I'd venture to guess that 95% of the tab out there isn't like that.  At least, not that I've found.  It is usually presented simply as numbers, with the actual notation shown separately above, and the tab acts only as a supplement to the actual music.  Which takes me back to my original point.  It doesn't seem to be a stand-alone form of written musical language without taking it to levels that most people have never seen.  And so _in its common usage_, I can really only see it as being a fingering aid, and not a replacement for the ability to read sheet music.  I actually like to see both.

Perhaps my example of comparing it to the English language was not the best.  Sorry, I'm not very creative with analogies like this.  Maybe a better example is that standard notation is the English language and tab is the phonetic spelling.  It will help you speak the words (or in this case, play the notes), but isn't really the same as reading the actual language.  If one understands the language thoroughly, he doesn't need the phonetic spelling.  And seeing the phonetic spelling alone isn't really an equal substitute.  *shrug*  I'm sure that analogy can be picked apart too.  

As for the discussion on piano methods working against stringed instruments, I am probably the odd man out, because I actually think it helped.  The keys on the piano are a pretty effective way of remembering the structure of the chromatic scale.  And I do still mentally translate from my mental image of piano keys.  I honestly don't know how else to think of music.  It just helps keep it logical and structured in my head.

----------


## Dr H

> Oh yeah. How I hated these music teachers always talking "white keys" and "black keys", and there I was, outcast, stringed instrument in hand (don't get me started about those strings inside the piano).


I feel your pain.




> At least, violin and mandolin offer a surrogate system of consequent fifths you can build on, but the guitar with that odd third was clearly designed to remove all sense from life.


Well, speaking as one who was a guitarist for a long while before becoming a mandolinist, I do have to defend my larger instrument.  It has too many strings to be effectively put into 5ths tuning.  

I have experimented with all 4ths.  It's wonderful for playing single-line solo lines, or jumping around in parallel intervals -- a passage fingers the same no matter what string you start on.  But it makes a lot of standard chords an absolute b|tch to play.   That 3rd was slipped in there for a reason.  :Smile:

----------


## Dr H

> Very impressive. I suspect we had a completely wrong notion about these:


Whoa!  An Ancient Egyptian death-metal solo!   :Grin:

----------


## Dr H

> When I was learning the french horn, my teacher told me, "You have to sing the french horn."  That sort of made sense to me. You see if you don't hear the note before you try to play it, you'll likely play the wrong note, irrespective of your fingering.


One of my better jazz teachers used to tell me something similar.  He'd have me sing a solo line before he'd let me play it.  His motto was "if you can sing it, you can play it."  

While this might not have been 100% literally true, it did help me to conceive of improvised solos that weren't dependent on pre-learned fretboard patterns.

----------


## Dr H

> Maybe a better example is that standard notation is the English language and tab is the phonetic spelling.  It will help you speak the words (or in this case, play the notes), but isn't really the same as reading the actual language.  If one understands the language thoroughly, he doesn't need the phonetic spelling.


I think that's a great analogy.

When I was in elementary school and they still did things like "Christmas Pageants", our music teacher decided one year that it would be interesting to do something different than the standard "top 20" carols.  I grew up in a highly ethnically diverse community, and after determining the ethnic backgrounds represented by the kids in the music class, she selected a popular "old country" carol for each ethnicity, and decreed that we would perform each in its original native language.  Mind you, we ranged in age from about 7-12, and except for one kid (bilingual in Ukranian) none of us spoke any language other than English.

She gave us phonetic lyric sheets for each carol, and lo and behold, with just a month of rehearsal we brought off a performance featuring carols in 12 different tongues, that was a major hit in the community, and subsequently brought back each season for many years afterwards.  The bilingual kid translated the Ukranian carol for the rest of us, but to this day I don't know what we sang in the other 10 non-English languages.

----------

Jon Hall

----------


## August Watters

> I can see how the more complicated tablature might start to approach the same level of information that standard notation does.


Well, there it is. We've created a new internet meme.

----------


## ralph johansson

> I don't usually participate in quasi-religious debates such as this one, but someone asked my opinion - so I outlined some ideas I try to get across in teaching. 
> 
> 
> 
> Not exactly what I said - which is that SN can be easily learned. As I mentioned it can also be taught poorly, or not connected to the ear, in which case its benefits can be overlooked or misunderstood. These debates are fueled by such misunderstandings.
> 
> SN and tab are two different tools. Learn them both, then compare.


I've encountered people who "learned" SN without reference to  theory. So, if there were three flats in the key signature they strained to REMEMBER to flatten those three notes, instead of simply reading further and deciding whether the tune was in E flat major or c minor (in most cases). I don't think they really heard the music in front of them. And in one earlier thread I read that one of the advantages of TAB is you don't have to think about keys at all!

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## ralph johansson

> Well it IS kind of a tricky little tune!  Strauss and Rimsky-Korsokov both stole Luigi Denza's beautiful little Neapolitan melody and they were sued for the effort.   Strauss lost his case and had to pay -- not sure about the Russian guy.  The double sharps are in the standard notation not the tab and that must be a result of the programs interaction with the midi file I guess?  But I think the tab gives the "correct" notes.  You don't need a key signature with tab?  (PS I pointed out in an earlier post for the notation that I think I have the tune in the key of C here -- I just forgot to change the information on the title page after I transposed it).  
> 
> But the bottom line is you can play the tune with tab and that's all I care about.  It is amazing the standard notation readers have such a angst with something they don't have to use at all!


It's not tricky at all if notated properly, in 6/8 without mysterious  dottings. I had to bring out paper and pencil to determine whether the note values add upp correctly. A 1/4 note followed by a dotted 1/6, followed by another 1/4 and dotted 1/16, whew!
If one of these transcribing keyboards was used someone has a very free sense of rhythm.

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## Bertram Henze

> I have experimented with all 4ths.  It's wonderful for playing single-line solo lines, or jumping around in parallel intervals -- a passage fingers the same no matter what string you start on.  But it makes a lot of standard chords an absolute b|tch to play.   That 3rd was slipped in there for a reason.


I had suspected this. Having more strings than fingers can lead to no good. 4 is plenty.  :Mandosmiley:

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## JeffD

> I've encountered people who "learned" SN without reference to  theory. ...I don't think they really heard the music in front of them. And in one earlier thread I read that one of the advantages of TAB is you don't have to think about keys at all!


Its quite easy, perhaps easier, to learn something wrong. And in my experience, the less I have to think about, the less I am going to think about.

There is no magic system that "gets you there" faster, or easier. The extent that it is easier is the extent it leaves out harder stuff that you will eventually need to learn anyway. Everything you don't know will bite you in the tail piece sooner or later.

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## Dr H

> I had suspected this. Having more strings than fingers can lead to no good. 4 is plenty.


I always figured that if the average human had six fingeres on each hand, the standard guitar would probably have been given seven strings.  :Smile:

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## Bertram Henze

> I always figured that if the average human had six fingeres on each hand, the standard guitar would probably have been given seven strings.


There is kind of hard evidence for that.

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## SincereCorgi

> I always figured that if the average human had six fingeres on each hand, the standard guitar would probably have been given seven strings.


Are you implying that Russians and Brazilians...?

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## bratsche



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## Londy

I can read standard notation and tab.  I think it's good to know both for communication reasons but as a musician, I use standard most of the time.  Just remember there are advantages of being flexible using both.

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## Austin Bob

> I can read standard notation and tab.  I think it's good to know both for communication reasons but as a musician, I use standard most of the time.  Just remember there are advantages of being flexible using both.


Agree wholeheartedly. Tabs are great for learning a tune on your own, but nothing beats sheet music when you get 4 or different instruments plus twice that many singers in the same room trying to learn 5 new songs in an hour. Which is pretty much what we do every week in choir practice.

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## Grommet

Glad that's finally settled! What's next?

Scott

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## bratsche

> Glad that's finally settled! What's next?
> 
> Scott


A group hug?   :Laughing: 

bratsche

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## Dr H

> Are you implying that Russians and Brazilians...?



I don't know about Brazilians, but it seems to me that I once read about a village or a region in Russia in which a substantial part of the population had hereditary ulnar polydactyly, in the form of a fully developed 6th finger on each hand. . .   :Smile:

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## Dr H

> Glad that's finally settled! What's next?
> 
> Scott


A style versus F style?   :Wink:

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## Dr H

> There is kind of hard evidence for that.


No problem -- 10 strings, 10 fingers.

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## Mark Robertson-Tessi

> the population had hereditary ulnar polydactyly, in the form of a fully developed 6th finger on each hand


That's better than what my kids sometimes display, hereditary stridulous pterodactyly, in the form of screeching and flying around the house in the early hours.

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Austin Bob

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