Need help in Playing

[rockdawg1974]

I'm a beginner keyboard/piano student.

I like many rock bands like: Creed and Tesla.

The problem is that their sheet music is only transcribed in guitar tab and vocal.

 

My question is: How can I learn to play guitar tab songs on keyboard/piano?

Are there books that teach this?

 

Any advice would be much appreciated.

[Byrdman]

Originally posted by rockdawg1974:

I'm a beginner keyboard/piano student.

I like many rock bands like: Creed and Tesla.

The problem is that their sheet music is only transcribed in guitar tab and vocal.

 

My question is: How can I learn to play guitar tab songs on keyboard/piano?

Are there books that teach this?

 

Any advice would be much appreciated.

Are there chord symbols as well or just guitar tab? That would be unusual. As a piano player its the chord symbols you want.

 

You can work out what the guitar tab means if you need to. Its rather laborious. The Guitar tab is a picture of a fretboard and the dots are where the guitarist should put her fingers. So you can count semitones from the known tuning of the open strings (EADGBE is standard but there are various others. Anything but standard should be noted on the chart.)

[Analogaddict]

Or simply use your ears! I know it can be a pain in the @ss sometimes, but in the long run there´s nothing better. Those guitar tabs don´t really work well for piano; since there are probably at least two guitars and a bass line, you´d have to check all the tabs to figure out the chord. What you would get out of that would be a pretty dysfunctional chord, voiced for guitar. IMO The ´tab´system is a good way to gain easy access the sound of a band, but in the bigger picture, they are probably a limit, since they only tell you where to put your fingers, neither why nor how to do it in a different way. Many of the ´tab´ schooled guitar players I meet are very limited in most other aspects. Remember those metal guitarists that could play lightning-fast sweeping licks and arpeggios? have you ever heard them trying to play other kinds of music? Don´t get me wrong, i like sweep-picking licks as much as the next guy, but I believe there are more useful things to study if you want to make music.

 

/J nas

[Graham English]

I agree about using your ear. I know you're a beginner, but you've got to learn to use your ear sooner or later. Make it sooner

If you're interested, I've got a tool to turbocharge your ear. You can check it out here:

Perfect Pitch Power

[bearded yeti]

Don't listen to that perfect pitch crap, it's a scam.

[Jojje]

"Don't listen to that perfect pitch crap, it's a scam."

 

I second that. Use your precious practice time on something constructive instead like transcribing from records and you will learn lots and as abonus end up with a good relative pich with is something more valuable than perfect pich.

[Graham English]

Perfect Pitch is not a scam. I've developed Perfect Pitch at age 30 and I've helped many people do it.

[Dan South]

You've just highlighted one of TAB's many problems. It's not instrument independent.

 

I would suggest that you forget about TAB completely, find examples in traditional notation, and transcribe from ear (as others have suggested.

 

If you absolutely MUST use TAB, translate the notes yourself. It's not that difficult. The standard tuning for a guitar fretboard is as follows:

 

E

B

G

D

A

E

 

If an alternate tuning is used, that will be noted.

 

TAB shows the order of the strings as viewed from the player's perspective, i.e. looking over the neck, upside down from the audience's perspective.

 

Every fret on the guitar raises the pitch of a string by a half-step from the fret before it. The first fret creates a note one half-step above the open string's note. So if you see the number "1" on the "A" string, that corresponds to an A#, or equivalently, Bb. The number "2" corresponds to a "B", "3" to a "C", etc. One the D string, "1" means D#(Eb), "2" means "E", "5" means "G", 10 means "C", etc.

 

The low "E" is equivalent to the "E" note on the first ledger line below the bass clef. The "A" is the lowest space on the bass clef. The "D" the middle line on the bass clef, the "G" is the highest space on the bass clef, the "B" is the note just above the bass clef, and the "E" is the lowest line of the treble clef.

 

NOW PLEASE BE CAREFUL! A guitar player may read this and be confused, because guitar music is written UP AN OCTAVE from where the pitches actually sound. The above mapping description works only for translating TAB to a piano or other keyboard. If you are playing from STANDARD NOTATION written for GUITAR, you'll have to transpose all notes down an octave to get them to sound right.

[Dan South]

Uh, DM, could you please change your avatar? I check this forum from my office, and the powers that be have been known to snoop into downloaded content, especially photographs. Your photo could cause me, and others in my situation, some embarrassment and potentially more serious trouble.

 

Thanks!!!!