i can read them but prefer sheet music. Tabs are trying to do the same thing. Indicate eighth notes wit a bar. doted notes. just in a more clumsy way. imho
even worse. why is tab showed up side down? you’re holding a guitar and looking to see where to put your fingers. But the tab is up side down from your guitar neck. Thats just crazy dumb.
heres an example. eight notes have the bar. no bar means quarter. top line is the thinnest E string. backwards from when you hold a guitar.
Sheet music is so simple. Anyone can learn to read it in a few days. More complicated rhythms takes time to learn to read. But Tab is just as hard, if not harder.
How do you feel about Tabs? Do you read sheet music too?
A lot of songbooks show both. I usually ignore the Tab. I know where I want to finger notes. I don’t always play in first position.
I reference online Tabs in 30-second quick-reads when I am looking for key or chord changes. Beyond that I don’t give them much thought. As someone used to read music but has forgotten, I find tabs and chord charts to be much easier for my needs.
It depends. I grew up reading music and still read music well. For guitar, though, the exact voicing of the chords and notes are important, so I like tabs for that. Ideally, it’d be the sheet music with the tabs below, but I’ll take plain tabs (unless it’s just a rhythm strumming part–then I like to see the chords and their voicings, and just some rhythm strum notation belowYou know, something like this). I also like to drum, but I hate drum tabs. I far prefer reading the trap notation written out, as I can better quickly get a sense of the rhythms than from reading a tab chart.
I don’t mind the tabs, but yeah, the upside down (for lack of a better term) notation takes getting used to, although it’s the same style for chord tablature. I can’t read music, so tabs are how I and my guitar teacher communicate, along with him doing a video for each piece we’re working on. Tabs without video are pretty much useless for a song you are not familiar with. If all I’d had for Slaves and Bulldozers were the tabs, I’d have been SOL.
I’m a musician only in the loosest sense of the word, so I can’t read sheet music. And if someone asked me to play an C on my guitar, I’d only be able to play it at 1 or 2 spots on the fretboard.
I agree with this. Tabs instantly tell you the chord-shape and neck position and I can find I can learn and play “in the flow” of the tablature instead of having to derive the one of a possible hundred different ways to create the staff notes, which may end up being completely in an awkward location or shape from the next notes I need to play, and so on.
One string on a guitar can fret 20+ different notes, a one-to-many relationship. A piano key can play a single note in a one-to-one relationship. Traditional staff notes are great for piano, but inadequate for guitar.
Tabs have their uses, but I can read music very well, so that’s what I prefer. Of course, I play bass which is only a single note instrument mostly. Tabs are best for learning a song.
Dont take online tabs for gospel! Many online tabs are wrong or badly written. I’ve seen bass parts written only on the E and A strings when playing across the fingerboard makes it so much easier. I’m sure the same sort of thing happens for guitar, too. I often will find a video of the artist performing the song so I can see his fingerings.
As far as the higher pitch strings being on the top, think of it this way. Put the guitar in your lap or on a strap. Now, look down at the fingerboard. That’s the tab orientation. Don’t think of them like a mirror. It’s looking down at your instrument with your viewpoint “upside down”, which is how most people work on a song. Alternatively, pick your guitar up off your lap and face it up to you. That’s tab orientation.
I’m not really a musician, more of a plucker. I learned a whole bunch of songs using tabs a long time ago and now I either play them or BS together progressions of cords that I couldn’t name to save my life. I can read music (I played other instruments in the past) but the notes and cords have no meaning to me on a guitar.
You don’t really need to learn tab in the same sense that you need to learn to read music. When I decided to start playing guitar I figured tab out on my own and in a fairly short time got pretty good at it. It may not have all the nuance that standard music notation has but for your average yahoo like me, sitting on the couch in your underwear…it’s pretty user friendly.
No. of pit band gigs (musical theatre) where I’ve been given tabs: 0
No. of big band gigs: 0
No. of jazz combo gigs: 0
No. of Glenn Branca gigs: 0
No. of cabaret acts: 0
No. of rock gigs: 0
That being said, whatever gets people making music is OK in my book.
It’s funny, I’ve always used tabs because I can’t read sheet music, but I’ve also never thought of it as being upside-down. I think of the bottom E as being at the bottom, and it seems sort of intuitive.
As a pianist, I like 'em just fine. If I’m playing a standard, I can ignore the left-hand line and just throw in chords. C-minor, E-seventh, A-flat, I can do that just fine.
Best for sight reading things. If I am dressing to impress, I read the bass staff as best I can.
