Guitar TAB

[MartinLindsay]

I noted and, to some extent, share Griff’s recent perspective regarding reliance on guitar tabs for learning blues guitar.

My pursuit of guitar dates back to pre-internet/YouTube days, and there are many more channels of learning guitar available today. Undoubtedly, the internet would have saved me thousands of hours trying to learn from vinyl!

FWIW, learning flatpicking guitar, I found that I became way too reliant on tabs, so I developed an approach to use TABs simply as an initial step or starting point. You won’t really learn technique or feeling from a tab. It gets you down the road, headed the right way. Music notation stops short of the emotion that goes into it. You can find lots of “clinical” examples on YouTube showing that note-for-note is not all there is to playing. It comes down to listening. Listening to what and how you play provides the positive/negative feedback which is the ultimate way we learn.

At some point, you want to find your way without having to refer to that map - you reach the destination; then you explore other routes leading there. (Oh shoot, forgot that with GPS phones and navigation that maps are obsolete..... hopefully, most will get where I’m coming from.)

Example:
I found a blues slide guitar tune / TAB I wanted to learn. TAB showed intro and break only, so additional homework left to me, the student.

I ALWAYS start by listening to the original of any TAB. This helps me to discover nuances that are missed or which just can’t be captured in TAB. Learnng what’s not in the TAB helps free you from it. Then, if TAB is a cover version, compare that rendition to the original version to hear what happens to the song as it goes from Elmore James to an Eric Clapton for example, not only in terms of what is played, in what key, how (original is clean, cover version uses heavy tube distortion, metal vs glass slde). This is important! Even when an artist seeks to be faithful to the original, he/she inevitably makes it his or her own. When it comes to slide guitar, I do this right from the start, since I play lap steel, not bottleneck.

For me, this approach seems to augment or flesh out the TAB and get more into playing - less looking at the map, more driving! Interested in others thoughts on finding the learning “groove.”

 

[Silicon Valley Tom]

Another Lap Steel player! I own and play a George Boards "Blue Hawaiian".

I play many instruments, and over the years have typically stuck to playing the songs I like. I find tab is good to "simplify" a piece of music, in many cases. I have specific pieces which I label "Level 1-3". I read notation, and use tab a good deal. Most important to me has been to first develop the proper techniques for the instrument you ae playing. Listen to the recorded music, and emulate the emotion of the music.

I still sight read, which came in handy when I took a Masters Class with Segovia, at UC Berkeley in 1963. To me, music notation is more accurate than tabs, but tabs are easier to follow when learning the nuts and bolts of a piece of music.

I have used TablEdit since 1999 for all my music notation and tabs. It does what I want, and saves me time compared to doing everything by hand!

Tom

 

[tommytubetone]

I like your approach Martin. I start out with tabs most of the time also, then tweak them to fit what I'm able to play. If I can play a whole sole except for one lick, that lick gets simplified so I "can" play it. I also transcribe solos myself. I might take 12 bars of a solo by somebody and learn it hoping for a lick or two to stick. I do a lot of blues jams and trying to play a whole solo is risky. They may give you the nod to solo a little late and the whole thing goes down the drain. Griff just made a comment alluding to that recently. You need some knowledge to fall back on when things go south, like patterns and scales that always work. Good post Martin!

 

[MikeS]

I take a somewhat different approach. It's closer to my "Old days" learning.
I listen to the lick/solo/fill a bunch, then I loop small portions while trying to figure it out.
I enter it into GuitarPro 7 (creating notation and tab). GP7 lets me play back what I have written so that I can check it against the original ( and I can even sent it to mp3 to A/B it with the original).
By the time I have it in GP7, I've got it semi memorized.
My next step is to read the tab while practicing along to the original track. That way I get the feel of the piece that is missing from the tab.
At the end of the process, I've got a really good handle on the solo plus I have a reasonably good tab that I can refer back to down the road.
It's a lot of work, but since I enjoy transcribing solos (at least up to the frustration point), it's a win/win.