tabs or old fashion notes

[mic]

Hi all you good people out there. Hope you are all well and playing away :-)

sins I have started to take lessons, my teacher have been learning me to play after notes, like learning the value of notes and all that goes with it, have to say it is so much more fulfilling to play after notes, then it is to play after tabs (there is nothing wrong with tabs, have always used them myself)

So my question is this, Do you play after tabs, notes, or by ears?

 

Take it easy out there, be good to the people around you, and have a super nice day

 

Michael

 

[b5pilot]

I wish I would have learned how to read. I used to some but I had forgotten over the years. Now mostly by ear and occasionally a bastardized form of Nashville notation.

 

If you are learning how to read notes by all means stay with it.

[EddiePlaysBass]

I can read music a wee bit, but not nearly enough to call myself "fluent" or proficient. When I look at a tab, I will know which notes are referred to.

 

When playing by ear, I need a bass in hand. For some reason I always hear notes a fourth below the actual note played ... I was learning a song by a Dutch artist named Anouk and I heard it and went: "Aha, Dm!" Turned out to be Gm ...

[jeremy c]

I'm a very good reader and often get hired to play gigs where I sight-read the music on stage. I know what my part is going to sound like by looking at the music.

 

 

I also play by ear and know many songs. Sometimes when learning a song, I write it down in notes and chord names.

 

 

Tab can be useful, but no one is ever going to hand you tab on stage.

[mic]

i'll be honest i hope to fluent in the art of note reading, but stil have a long long.... long way to go, i think i still will be using tabs then needed, but there is something about it, then you know how to read music.

[J. Dan]

I look at them completely differently. Sheet music is a tool to learn and play a piece note for note. Tab is a way to follow along the basic structure of the doing, but do your own thing. Tab is also good after you've learned a piece from music, to jar your memory and not get lost.

[mic]

J.Dan

I like the way you look at it, as a tool and a way to follow. most imported is (i think) to enjoy playing no matter what way it is done :-)

 

[Michele C.]

If I had been able to sight read faster, now I would be sitting in a big band gigging three times a week. I had to give up, it was too stressing for me.

Never seen anything resembling a tab coming from an arranger.

I see it takes a lot of effort, but it is worth it.

Being unable to read makes a library useless.

[butcherNburn]

I used to have some music reading ability but my vision is terrible and I get lost easily.

[Groove Mama]

I'm not the most fluent note reader, but that's only because I have to learn the fretboard better. I played classical piano for 10 years, so I can read both treble and bass clef well.

 

That said, I can't read tab...at all. There's no indication of time or rhythm. I find it hopelessly confusing.

[Wally Malone]

I read fairly decently but would say sometimes rhythms can give me a little problems. When this happens it is good to work on the rhythm separately just using one note.

 

Wally

[Paul K]

...... I get lost easily.

 

Indeed, the bane of readers. When I was reading a whole lot in the big band I would first take a highlighter to the chart and mark the repeats, coda's DS's and DC's. Important things generally happen at those junctures, and that's where I am most likely to get lost and have to rely on the atonal thump-a-thump.

 

And DC and DS's: In the heat of battle, I always mix up which one goes to the beginning, and which one goes to the sign.

 

Old school Real Book charts give me fits when they put three bars on the first line so the four bar phrases never lined up on the left hand of the page. Stoopid.

[jeremy c]

DS stands for da Sign. At least that's what I tell my students.

[Michele C.]

Quick tip from Italy

 

Dal segno == from the sign (it is a capital S, or at least it has been)

Da capo == from the beginning, literally from the head

Al coda == to the tail (looks like a capital O)

[jeremy c]

I used to work with Al Coda. He was great at playing the endings. LOL

[Ross Brown]

I used to work with Al Coda. He was great at playing the endings. LOL

 

[Paul K]

DS stands for da Sign. At least that's what I tell my students.

 

Yes. I know. But in the heat of battle I just freeze up on those Latin abbreviations. And spelling it out doesn't help either. Illogical and stoopid. But it's what I do.

[Cthulhu Fhtagn]

I would be real surprised if Jeremy (along with any other music teacher) wasn't aware of this strip.

 

Al Coda's Used Instrument Kiosk

 

More on Al Coda's Used Instrument Kiosk

 

... located at the Three Pines Mall right behind Bogey's Hoagies.

[Bob Gollihur]

I read, but it's seldom been needed for the last twenty-five years or so. The the last time I had to read music was for an URB audition, which I played cold after many years of simply not having any music to read. I was pleasantly surprised how much skill survived, tho sight reading more complex rhythms can get in my way.

 

IMHO, reading traditional notation can open doors into a deeper understanding of music, even if you seldom use it.

[jeremy c]

This cartoon is great if you know your theory, otherwise it won't make sense.

 

 

[hurricane hugo]

any and all three, depending on the situation.

[TempleOfTheBass]

I'm so glad I saw this thread today. Starting my first lesson in a few hours yay! I've been doing some research about playing and came across tabs. Had no clue what they were lol I'm a former violin player so I can read music very well. Hoping I can read bass clef just as easily. The strings GDAE are exactly the same as a violin. Had no idea when I decided to play x)

[Groove Mama]

Welcome, TOTB! The Low Down guys are really great, but it's good to see another female on this forum.

[Michele C.]

To be fair, this is a long going debate, it has been discussed for at least five centuries and it has given a bad name to guitar players. At a rehearsal with a big band, the director said the old joke "to keep a guitarist silent you just have to put a part in from of him". He was disturbed by guitars playing while he was speaking.

It is true that our strings scatter the notes everywhere, while a piano is so easily understood graphically.

Still, I try to learn the language of all musicians and not a lingo of our own.

 

http://www.mondimedievali.net/sire/images/1-capirola.jpg

 

The image comes from here http://www.mondimedievali.net/sire/corde4.htm

 

Google for "intavolatura di liuto" (tablature for lute) and see how many images you get.

Ah, the signs over the numbers are not 'F', but they are symbols of duration, I think they symbolize semiquavers.

TOTB, if you were not taught the grand staff from the start, you might think of the bass clef as a third above, but in the end it is more productive to think in term of a grand staff, at least for me.

 

[TempleOfTheBass]

Welcome, TOTB! The Low Down guys are really great, but it's good to see another female on this forum.

 

Thank you! First lesson went great and yeah, tab is WAY easier for me, at least for now. I'm going to have to unlearn what I learned playing the violin... Heh...

[Ross Brown]

Welcome, TOTB! The Low Down guys are really great, but it's good to see another female on this forum.

 

yep... good place... good people....

[mic]

Hi all. was ment to comment on all this before now, but weekend= family and stuff got in the way.

anyway, thanks for given your point of view,funny to see that there is many ways to read music, in whatever way one like :-)as it is, i think i am going to give sheet music a chance, and forget about the tabs for the moment

[johngoldsby]

That's great, mic, that you are getting into reading. It takes some slow concentrated effort to start, but once you can read basic lines from notation, you open up a huge world of possibilities.

 

If anyone here subscribes to Bass Player Mag, I just did a series of columns on sight-reading (May, June, July). I recorded the notation examples in each article and I am posting them here each month. The examples for the May issue are already up.

 

Enjoy!

[Bottom End]

I subscribe, but I haven't dug into your sightreading column yet.

 

I'm trying to read and sight read, because once I had the opportunity to accompany a pianist on songs I did not know, and if I could have read then, I could have played.

 

I also want to learn to read proficiently so I can learn more parts and steal umm, incorporate, more cool ideas.

[mic]

Hi John.

wow you have a lot of stuff on your homepage, it is with great interest i am reading what you are doing

 

Regards

Michael