My vocal teacher can play piano from tabs. He just plays the chords indicated. works out ok for accompanying his students while they sing.
Sheet music meant for piano and not guitar will just list the chord changes above the vocal line, with no guitar tab. I assume that’s meant for Saturday Night Tinklers such as myself, but a guitarist or a bassist could use them to join in.
Oh, I wasn’t thinking of tabs that also include traditional music notation. I was thinking more of the online sites where it’s just ASCII tabs, like this, for instance. But the tabs in guitar magazines usually have both the traditionally notated music and the tablature (and often the chord symbol), so they look like a lead sheet with tabs below.
Oh, wait, are you just thinking of this kind of tab? What the OP is referring to, I think, is more like this (musical notation above, tablature below). I guess the chord formations must be “tabs” as well, but usually when I hear folks talking about tabs, they mean the latter.
Oh, hell. I blush. Yes, I was thinking of the tabs you cite first. I’m no guitarist, but I have used those to pick out chords on a fretboard.
I used them to pick out “Mr Tambourine Man” when I was a college freshman, on a borrowed guitar. Still the only thing I can do with a guitar. The chords are easy, you see.
Seems natural to me now, but when I first picked up the guitar after a 30 year absence, it seemed odd to me for some reason.
I guess it’s kind of weird if you think about it like looking at someone else’s fretboard, but say you’re standing there, holding your guitar. You look down at it. You grasp the bottom of your guitar and lift it up, tilting the front of the guitar up toward your face. The low E is on the bottom.
I guess it also mimics standard notation a bit, where (generally) lower notes = lower on the staff.
It really depends on your perspective. I would call the low E the top string (i.e., the string closest to me) from my perspective. But I can see calling it the “bottom” string, too, even though “top” to me makes more sense. That said, tab notation has never confused me, as I expect low notes to be notated on the bottom and high notes at the top like in conventional notation.
Traditional sheet music is best or at least suitable for many styles.
However, good quality tabs are necessary in order to quickly learn (or communicate to band mates on new songs) quirky guitar licks in some genres particularly noisy rock, shoegaze, nu-gaze, some of the weirder metal / folk / art rock where unusual tunings, odd guitar setups, muted string pick scrapes, picking behind the bridge, 1/4 string bends, and other odd techniques are employed. Likewise, how could one make traditional sheet music for ‘Bull in the Heather’ by Sonic Youth?
I’ve had some music books for guitar or banjo with both tab and sheet music in parallel together, and those are really great.
NOTE: Either sheet music or tab can be really crappy and watered down or just flat out wrong especially the free stuff online.
Traditionally that E has been “bottom E”, which I suspect confused me when I first started out. It’s not an important distinction, however, unless you’re doing online or text learning.