Free Classical Mandolin tablature????

[bbaker2050]

Anybody have any websites or ideas for free classical mandolin tablature? I'm a beginner and would like to learn some classical pieces, but can't read music. Thanks.

[JeffD]

Anybody have any websites or ideas for free classical mandolin tablature? I'm a beginner and would like to learn some classical pieces, but can't read music. Thanks.

I know I am answering the wrong question, and you probably don't want to hear it, so let me be the first and we'll get it out of the way -

Learn to read music.

Yes there is some tabbed out classical for mandoolin here and there, but the entire universe of music, written for most every instrument, will be opened up to you if you can read. Its not that hard. You can do it. Its more than worth it. Of course you can do it.

Learning to read music will be like opening a door into a hurricane. Oceans and oceans of music will crash in on you, and the problem won't be where can I find tab, it will be where do I start playing all the beautiful stuff.

That being said, I will defer to others where the best tabbed classical can be found.

[Jim Garber]

I agree with Jeff that learning standard notation is a definite advantage. In the meantime check out the files here. You will need the TEFview reader to read the tabs tho.

[vetus scotia]

I have to ask: do you really find TAB easy to read? I never have. If you are a beginner, take the advice above and at least work in a few minutes a day of learning to read music. Mel Bay's Complete Mandolin Method and Hal Leonard Mandolin Method Book 1 both ease you into reading music quite nicely. Mel Bay is a better workout for those interested in classical, with more variety in keys and time signatures. Hal Leonard is very bluegrass oriented. (I also used Suzuki Violin Book 1, and thought I was a genius for doing this, but it turns out that this is also a very standard entree for mandolinists into reading music.) I started this last year and now imslp.org is (mostly) all open to me.

[bbaker2050]

Yeah, I know I should just bite the bullet and learn to read music. I guess it just intimidates me a little bit to be honest. Thanks for the encouragement!

[vetus scotia]

Indeed, it is intimidating. You know what, I almost forgot about this site: http://violinflashcards.com/
There are also online resources for beginners, and once you have the basics this is great practice.The nice thing about using the violin as the template is that it immediately gets you into thinking about the '4th finger.' You would not use it in quite the same way as with violin (that is, I don't think mandolin players eschew open E in favour of 4th finger on A string whenever possible the same way violinists do), but for classical mandolin you will be up the neck right from the get-go (or, as one of my wife's friends says, 'the gecko'. I have no idea what she thinks that expression means.) Good luck!

[vetus scotia]

PS, in case you are not at all familiar with the violin fingerboard, what you see pictured are the lines that correspond to the 2nd, 4th, 5th and 7th frets. If it were filled in there would tapes between the nut and the red line, between the red and yellow lines, and between the green and the blue lines.
It will make sense as soon as you get started....

[Tavy]

I have to ask: do you really find TAB easy to read?

Yes actually

For the OP, here's some classical tab to get you started:



Prepared with Musescore 2.0 (the development snapshot). There are a lot of free musescore files online too at http://musescore.com/ which helps a lot.

[vetus scotia]

This TAB would be perfect for the process of learning standard notation if it were not for mandola!
I must say that I feel profoundly grateful to the people who took the time and put in the effort to produce all these tabs (although I think there is a high degree of computer automation involved these days, with the ability to turn standard notation into tab pretty easily, but back in the day....). I only ever used tabs for a couple of Bach pieces before becoming frustrated and learning to read music, but the fact that these tabs are out there for all the mandolin players who find themselves suddenly attracted to classical music is incredible. They are like translations of great texts. In my line of work I would never fault people for reading Plato in translation, but will always encourage them to at least try to read it in the original.

[mquimpy]

If you haven't seen it yet there is a book , "Standard Notartion for the Tab Addicted Mandolinist" by Debora Chen. I recently received this book and am just beginning to plug away at it. She also has some Bach in tabs (not free) and if you purchase it all together, you get a discount.

http://www.mandolincafe.com/news/pub...ns_00679.shtml

[akp]

I found this post inspirational. I went out and looked at imslp.org after reading this and was inspired to try my hand at reading music. I've been tinkering with an app on my phone to try to learn.

I downloaded a file containing Bach's Minuet in G and started trying to read it. I learned the whole sheet in a couple of hours. It's actually a violin part, but works since they're tuned the same.

Thanks so much for telling us about imslp.org. This is the first piece I've learned strictly from score.

If you do want to learn to read music, the app I've been using on my iPhone is called iReadMusic. If you decide to try to learn to read, I would highly recommend it. It has modes where it will show you a mando neck and a staff with a note and you have to touch the corresonding note on the neck.

[Roin]

Anybody have any websites or ideas for free classical mandolin tablature? I'm a beginner and would like to learn some classical pieces, but can't read music. Thanks.

On this forum I found a thread where there was a picture of what fret produces what note. Thing is I was able to read and play by standard notation on my accordion, but I NEVER grasped the concept of frets -> notes (It is just my brain is somewhat weird when it comes to stuff like that lol). So what really helped me was this picture (that I cant find right now, you might do a search on the forum) to give me a small help to figure out what fret produces what note. I think you make a good step if you start that way but after all I already knew how to read sheet music :/.

[khusted]

Me too! This thread has me thinking about trying to read music though.