Keyboard Tab ?

[joethebaddog]

Hey folks.

I'm a relative newbie at keys and always played other stuff by ear. Is there any such thing as "keyboard tablature"? If so, can anyone leave me a link? Thanks.

[saucyjack]

I think it's called sheet music.

[DafDuc]

Keyboard tab was used until the 1500's or so, but I don't think it was ever prevalent. My college music text book had an example, but I couldn't figure it out.

 

Didn't try real hard either, LOL...

[iLaw]

0-9 said all there is to say on the subject of keyboard tab years ago:

 

http://www.musicplayer.com/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=18;t=008710

 

It's a classic thread IMHO.

[Sven Golly]

Damn, you beat me to it...

 

Definitely should be granted sticky status...

 

Cheers,

SG

[joethebaddog]

Thanks for the help friends. I said I was new at this, and when your new at something you tend to ask dumb questions, because you DON'T KNOW ANY BETTER! Instead of being sarcastic you could've just explained without making one feel ignorant, but I guess that would'nt have been as much fun.

[Dave The Rave]

Joe, I don't think they're trying to be sarcastic - it may sound a little like that, but I'm pretty sure they didn't mean it to be.

 

The thing is, the keyboard tab thread has legendary status around here - it's one of the funniest threads ever (I was crying with laughter myself) - so people try to mention/bump it whenever they can. You came along and were the perfect "straight man" for their "act"!

 

I know it's an old cliche, but for sure "The only dumb questions are the ones you don't ask". Keep asking. They forumites are (mostly) harmless and, as you'll come to find, are extremely helpful when it comes to keyboard playing/practicing/technique/comparisons/buying tips etc. Give 'em a chance and they'll prove it to you.

 

Cheers,

:DTR

[Dave Horne]

The only musical shorthand that I use are lead sheets (melody and chord symbols) and figured bass. Figured bass is the musical shorthand that Bach and Mozart used. It is still taught at university level. (I also read conventional notation which consists of two staves.)

 

There's the Nashville system which has been demonstrated here.

 

When in Rome .... learning the system that we use today seems the best way to approach music. There's no need to reinvent the wheel since the system in place does more than an adequate job.

 

_Get a teacher_ and learn the basics.

[iLaw]

Joe,

 

If my earlier post offended you, I sincerely apologize. Like DTR said, people are actually quite civil around here. If I can offer any defense, it is that your post was so perfectly calibrated to generate the responses it got that I actually suspected a troll.

 

That said, you indicated you're a newbie so you deserve a real answer as to why so many around here were derisive of "keyboard tab." First, unlike guitar and other stringed instruments, there's only one place on a traditional keyboard to get a particular note. Thus "tab" notation systems like guitarists use that are designed to tell you where to place your finger, rather than what pitch to play, offer no advantage.

 

Second, standard notation offers incredibly densely-packed intuitive graphical performance information on everything from pitch to dynamics to rhythms to tempos to articulation to pedalling, even to what finger to use if fingering is tricky. Every attempt at "keyboard tab" that I have ever seen (mostly on the internet) is grossly inferior. It is hard to imagine what an unworkable mess the Jordan Rudess "Octavarium" solo in the current Keyboard issue, or any other of the samples, would be if transcribed in "keyboard tab" (see, e.g., taborama.com) rather than standard notation.

 

If you don't read standard notation at this point as your post suggests, the advice that you'll get from a great many here will be to learn how; the sooner the better. Then when the band says "let's do Barbarian" you won't have to go looking for keyboard tab, you can just check it out at the library. If you don't find it under "Emerson" you'll find it under "Bartok."

 

Larry.

[Trill]

Oh man , I never knew about that thread.. That is hilarious . I need a laughing emoticon with tears coming out. I'm hurtin .. +

 

0-9 , as one of the boards I frequent says.

 

"You must spread some reputation around before giving it to 0/9 again."

[Jessica T]

Joe,

I think I get where you're coming from, although I may be too late. Hope you're not scared away yet. ha ha! The closest thing I can think of to Keyboard tab is looking at a MIDI file in the matrix or "piano roll" view of a sequencer like Cubase or Digital Performer. In this view, you can look at one or more parts and see the notes as "chocolate jimmies" alligned with the vertical keyboard layout at the left. This will tell you which notes the "jimmies" represent in relation to the keys themselves. The length of the "jimmies" according to the grid will tell you when to start and how long to hold the note. Sure, I agree it isn't the best and may be a little humorous, but it's a satisfying way to get started until you can learn to read standard notation. Besides, MIDI files are all over the Net for free, and you can find them for many songs out there, even esoteric ones. Hope this helps. Let us know if you have more questions... really!

[iLaw]

Keyboard tab certainly exists, but take a look at a sample (selected at random and blocked and copied in its entirety from taborama.com and unedited) to better understand what exactly we're talking about:

 

 

#----------------------------------PLEASE NOTE---------------------------------#

#This file is the author's own work and represents their interpretation of the-#

#song. You may only use this file for private study, scholarship, or research.-#

#---------------This file was downloaded from www.taborama.com-----------------#

#------------------------------------------------------------------------------#

 

Iron Butterfly - In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida

Tabbed By: modest mouse

Email: modestmouse666full@gmail.com

 

listen to the song for the timing.

this song rocks!

 

|----------------------------------------------|| ] 2°HO

|----------------------------------------------|| ] HO

|----------------------------------------------|| ] MO

|D-D-F-E-C-D-A-Ab-G-F-D--D-D-F-E-C-D-A-Ab-G-C-D|| ] LO

|----------------------------------------------|| ] 2°LO

 

repeat many times

 

 

Downloaded from www.taborama.com

 

 

I think you can see immediately that if you didn't already know the song, you'd be no better off with the tab than you were before.

[joethebaddog]

Okay Guys.

First, Dave the Rave, I get it now, and if I can't take being the straight man in the joke I might as well hang it up. Guess I was confused and a little too sensetive.

Next, Ilaw, no apps. necassary (see above explanation). Thanks for your descriptions of so-called "keyboard tab". I actually found a site on my own. As an example of it they showed this incredibly odd looking graph-type thing with all kinds of strange and complex notations on it and said " This is the intro to Candle in the Wind " and I thought " there is no fucking way I'm gonna learn to play piano lookin' at this shit!" So, it was a stupid idea from someone who didn't know any better 24 hours ago, but look how much I've learned in just a day!lol.

And to the others who offered positive advice, thank you too. I'm sure I'll be back for more help, but I'll try to make my questions a little more sensible from now on.

Joe

[JeffLearman]

It's the difference in the natures of piano keyboard and guitar fretboard that make tab helpful for the latter but useless for the former.

 

With a keyboard, for any given note, there's only one place to play it on the keyboard. With guitar/bass, most notes can be played in 3 or 4 locations on the neck. Seeing a cluster of notes written using normal music notation doesn't give less experienced/educated players much of a clue where to play these notes.

 

Another way of looking at it is that a guitar neck really is a retangular array of note positions, so a rectangular format for showing it makes sense. With a keyboard, you don't have a rectangular array, so the expressive extra dimension of tabulature is wasted.

 

Finally, while we generally know where the 7th or 12 (or whatever) fret is on a guitar neck (whether we read music or not), on a piano we generally don't think about what note position we're playing. Some MIDI nerds may know that 64 is middle C, and be able to quickly add & subtract multiples of 12 and calculate the offsets to find notes rapidly, but for most of us it's far easier to recognize the note itself.

 

BTW, there's no such thing as a stupid question. It takes a PERSON to be stupid! But your question raises an interesting point, IMHO, so you don't qualify!