Tabs vs. reading music

[Mike Bunting]

Seems to me that if you are going to be a musician, you use every tool at your disposal.

[catmandu2]

Useful! Its essential.

The only thing that's essential is the wherewithal to perceive and/or enjoy what you are playing. One only needs ears for this.

Technology/recording has been epochal to musicians (learning to play music); "youtube" itself has got to be the biggest advantage to musicians in history--not only can you hear it, but see it, and have it explained to you all the while...(to say nothing of traditions based on oral/aural transmission, etc).

Written notation has certainly been outmoded and made somewhat obsolete--it is an additional and unnecessary layer of abstraction/symbolism. It is of course useful, and many schools however adhere to the method. And, for those of us into music from very sources, without written notation/tablature (many forms of tablature existed that are unique to the period and the instrument--prior to the advent of "standard" notation) there would be no record of the music at all.

[dulcillini]

I will agree. Start with notation, if you can. You will eventually want to go there anyway. That allows you to pick up any score at a store, on line, or in a book and sit down and play it. TAB is fine, but you will eventually want to go to notation. If you plan to play in a mandolin orchestra, then notation is essential. Hope this helps.

[Maczart]

I have to agree with those who say start with learning notation. While all three methods are important and useful, notation gives you the ability to explore music you have never heard played before.

Not to disrespect those who rely on ear or tabs, I have always thought that playing an instrument without knowing notation was like speaking a language without knowing how to read it…. very limiting. Personally, I find it nearly impossible to play a tab if I don't already know how the tune should sound. Granted, notation is really just a type of tab but it is universal and not limited to one instrument. I think it conveys much more info than a conventional tab. However, it takes the ear to turn the written 'code' into music.

[Tommcgtx]

I recommend picking up Debra Chen's book Standard Notation for the Tab Addicted Mandolinist.

+++1
I have it, and it has helped me out immensely.

[EdSherry]

Standard notation was developed at a time when recordings were unavailable, as the only way to convey information across distances or over time. IMHO, the need to learn to read standard notation diminished with the advent of recordings. But it's still a useful tool. As others have said, being able to read allows you to pick up a piece of sheet music and play it without knowing what the tune sounds like or tracking down a recording. There's lots of stuff available out there in notation for which no one has generated a tab.


For an instrument like a piano, where a given note is found in one and only one location, there is no advantage to tab. The same is not true for instruments where a given note can be found at multiple places on the fingerboard. I learned tab when I started learning banjo, both because nobody wrote out banjo pieces in standard notation and because there are multiple places on the neck where you can play a given note. That said, I'd recommend notation over tab for mandolin, because the exceptions are readily dealt with (position markers on the sheet music). But sometimes tab is nice (e.g., IMHO, McReynolds-style cross-picking is easier to learn from tab than from notation).

I also recommend Deborah Chen's book.

[lorrainehornig]

I read music already, so my inclination is to focus on learning how the music notes translate to the mandolin instead of learning a new system.
Thanks!
Julie

Like you, I already knew how to read music, so when I started playing mandolin, notation was the way I wanted to learn. The only time I use tab is when I come across a particularly difficult measure. Tab will get me over the bump. The best of luck on your new journey.

[PaulBills]

I just wish I could read either at the same speed as I need to play it

[catmandu2]

I have always thought that playing an instrument without knowing notation was like speaking a language without knowing how to read it…. very limiting.

But this would only be so in the case of rendering scores. There are many approaches to playing music (exponentially more, in fact) that don't involve scores. Perhaps it is a bit like--enjoying a meal without having read the recipe...or painting a picture and mixing your own colors...

[Misty Stanley-Jones]

As someone who reads notation very well, I found tab very very hard to pick up but I'm glad I put in the effort. I had to find things in tab only or else I would "cheat" and only read the notation. Now that I've been working on it, I can play from either tab or notation equally well (or poorly). I work on picking out melodies by ear too.

[Jack Roberts]

This discussions comes around every once in a while, and I would boldly like to offer some advice about notation.

On the mandolin it is rather easy to learn notation. First learn G,D,A and E. All those notes have no lines going through them. In first position, the other notes with no lines through them are played with your middle finger. The notes with the lines through them are played with the index finger when they are right above G,D,A and E, and with the ring finger otherwise. Pretty easy.

You'll need to learn key signatures and learn which frets to play those with those fingers, but you do that by learning scales. Start with the G scale, then the D scale, then the A scale, then the C and F scales. It doesn't take much time at all. Remember, all together in first position, you only have to learn 29 notes. But if you start in the key of G you can play 3 octave with 15 notes, and that will get you a long way. The other 14 notes you will learn when you learn new scales. Then you can go on to "playing up the neck", which you will learn is not that hard if you already know the patterns.

Mandolin tab is great, but being specific to the mandolin, you can't pick up a hymnal and play an old hymn, you can't pick up an old tin-pan alley piece of sheet music and rediscover George M. Cohan, you can't pick up an old piano book and play Bach, you can't pick up the Carl Sandburg American Songbag and recover lost folksongs.

Learn notation and you have a powerful musical genie bottled in your mind for the rest of your life.

[ralph johansson]

Several posters seem to miss the fact that the TS already knows standard.

When I started playing the mandolin I had already been playing the guitar for close to 10 years. That's where I learned music as I knew standard, or at least how it worked, even before that. My motive for learning the mandolin was (no longer is) Bluegrass, Oldtime, fiddle tunes, etc., non-notation genres so I never used any kind of notation then, and certainly not when playing with a Bluegrass band. I simply worked out the positions, scales and chord forms in various keys.

I've never felt the need to become fluent in tab - if there even is such a thing. If I see a song or a solo in notation and tab I follow the notation; in certain places a quick glance at the tab will then tell me which position or fingering is used, I need not spell my way through the details.

But I simply don't know what's so easy about tab. When I study a piece, say an American Songbook standard, in notation (preferably accompanied by
chord symbols or a full score in grand staff) I will quickly see the structure and layout of the tune, its rhythmic character, where it sticks to the given key, and where it goes outside the scale or modulates to some different key, etc. That's something
I could never extract directly from tab.

Also, one thing I know, I will not play the song the way it's written. Reading and hearing the tune inside my head will suggest variations and embellishments right away - I may even decide to play it in some other key. Transposing from standard is really no big deal, but if I learned form tab I would probably have to learn the song in the given key first, then transpose it.

Someone says that you need tab to understand which of several possible positions or fingerings to use. That's for you to find out or decide. Acutally, tabs in tab banks are often mechanically conceived without regard to pick economy etc. - e.g., in first position
notes will be given on open strings where using the 7th fret would be optimal.

[Maczart]

But this would only be so in the case of rendering scores. There are many approaches to playing music (exponentially more, in fact) that don't involve scores. Perhaps it is a bit like--enjoying a meal without having read the recipe...or painting a picture and mixing your own colors...

Well, yes....if a score doesn't exist for a tune, then the point is moot. It will have to be learned by ear or some other method.

But what if you enjoyed the meal so much that you want to cook it yourself? Unless the chef is there to show you how to prepare it, you will either need to able to read the recipe or be prepared for a lot experimentation. You aren't bound to follow the recipe. You can add your own twists to it as you prefer. It's the same with notation.....it can be followed as closely or loosely as you like, but it gives you the basic starting point. As someone has already mentioned, I can get an overall sense of the piece, without even playing a note, just by looking over the score. Key signature, tempo, technical difficulty, etc. Just one of the advantages of being able to read notation, IMHO.

[catmandu2]

Notation (in all its forms) certainly does offer advantages--replication is a big part in our (western) tradition. I merely wanted to point out that it is but one of many musical traditions--of which many do not utilize paper and pencil...an aspect that sometimes gets overlooked by those ensconced in the classical tradition.

And, for those of us into music from very sources,

This was supposed to read -- "...very old sources"

[JeffD]

When I learn something by ear that I cannot find in a tune book or collection somewhere, I will write it out in standard notation. In this way, every tune I have ever learned is somewhere available to me in standard notation.

While I have all the technology, smart phone and three networked computers, I doubt this will change. Even when I learn a tune from some recorded source, a CD or an audio link on the internet or a youtube, I then transcribe it to sheet music, often as a way of sticking it to my brain.

I have several three ring binders of tunes written in my own hand, more than a few of the tunes I have found in a tune book somewhere long after I had learned and written them out. And, as you can imagine, I have shelves and shelves of tune books.

And often I have found, going back, that I now play some tunes differently than the way I learned and wrote them out. Which is fun too.


Because I came to the mandolin already reading music, it was the way I thought of it, and until I see it written out I often can't get a good understanding of the tune. (Oh, I see, that is just a G run up the scale skipping the fourth and seventh note), is often easier for me to see in notation than to hear.

[JeffD]

But I don't lose site of the fact that its the playing that is important. And however you get there, there is where the music is. My tune books are very silent. Can't hear a thing walking past them at night in the dark. And I can roll up a sheet of music and stick it in my ear for all the sound it makes.


Puts me in mind of a story by Anton Chekhov where a Professor Nikolay Stepanovitch explains that he never goes to the theater, because if a play is good enough it can be entirely enjoyed by reading it, and if it is not good enough, actors on a stage cannot make it better. I don't want to miss the music by writing it down.

[Londy]

I strongly recommend standard notation without question. This will be helpful through your journey as a musician and working with others. I would not short cut it.

[catmandu2]

When I learn something by ear that I cannot find in a tune book or collection somewhere, I will write it out in standard notation. In this way, every tune I have ever learned is somewhere available to me in standard notation.

And thank you--documentation/preservation is extremely important. The work I've been at lately--learning from the R. ap Huw manuscript ca. ~1600--wouldn't be possible without it, as the tradition had died-out and was "re-birthed" through such scripts.

[JeffD]

Until recently, a piece of sheet music was a the easiest way to remind me how a tune goes. Not, perhaps, as true today, where everyone can get to those huge tune link sites from their cell phones. But quickly grabbing a book off a shelf was easy, I had to do it for work all the time anyway.

I have a fiddle friend who cannot read, and who collected many rather obscure fiddle tunes, would play through every tune he knows, from a list, every so often, for fear of forgetting a tune he had not yet taught anyone else.

[Maczart]

[QUOTE=JeffD;1316493]When I learn something by ear that I cannot find in a tune book or collection somewhere, I will write it out in standard notation. In this way, every tune I have ever learned is somewhere available to me in standard notation.

Hey, me too! Not only do I write it out in notation but I mark it up with fingering, dynamics, pick direction and any other pertinent info. I really hate to learn something twice (or more).

[bayAreaDude]

[QUOTE=Maczart;1316860]

When I learn something by ear that I cannot find in a tune book or collection somewhere, I will write it out in standard notation. In this way, every tune I have ever learned is somewhere available to me in standard notation.

Hey, me too! Not only do I write it out in notation but I mark it up with fingering, dynamics, pick direction and any other pertinent info. I really hate to learn something twice (or more).

Yep and trying to do this with tab is painful because there's almost zero support for rhythm. Sometimes I'm improvising and come up with a cool melody or lick - I write it down in standard notation, that way I can reproduce it anytime. For me, this is how songs are born. Trying to do this with tab would totally butcher it unless you also recorded it so you could document the rhythm.

[JeffD]

I have taken recently to writing in the double stops. Kind of a cool exercise.

I have never composed anything. But if I did, I think I would figure it out first on the mandolin and then transcribe it to paper. I do not think I could compose on paper alone.

[ombudsman]

Written notation has certainly been outmoded and made somewhat obsolete--it is an additional and unnecessary layer of abstraction/symbolism.

It will never be obsolete so long as it is used.

It certainly is not an extra layer of abstraction, in objective terms, for music that is composed and published to be played from the score. On the contrary, the score is the piece. All performances of it, even by the composer, are interpretations. What you are saying would only be true for transcriptions of performances, which is normally done for the study of improvisation or to document folk music.

[catmandu2]

It will never be obsolete so long as it is used.

It certainly is not an extra layer of abstraction, in objective terms, for music that is composed and published to be played from the score. On the contrary, the score is the piece. All performances of it, even by the composer, are interpretations. What you are saying would only be true for transcriptions of performances, which is normally done for the study of improvisation or to document folk music.

Aha, I knew I was going to have to account for this

Yes, the tradition on which (SN) is based is so vigorous that it's possible it will be long before it wanes--if ever. And my reference to abstraction (in the sense that scores must be translated into music-sound) is addressing the world of music beyond this tradition (that which is predicated on notation).

[JeffD]

And my reference to abstraction (in the sense that scores must be translated into music-sound) is addressing the world of music beyond this tradition (that which is predicated on notation).

In the sense that the story is much more than the book.