Which Is Better?
Guitar Tablature vs Standard Musical Notation - Understanding Guitar Tab
The skinny on Tablature.
A lot of people who read tablature tell me when I asked them about reading notes, they
say "well, that's too hard, tablature is easy" which is true and then I have guitar teacher
tell me "Oohh, I don't want students reading tab, they need to learn read notes.
It seems to me that they're both valuable and it's helpful to be able to understand
basic note reading and to be able to understand tablature and to use both when either one
when its appropriate sometimes even both.
Now a lot of people do things that reading notes is too hard and tablature is easy.
In fact, reading notes is not that hard it does take more time and especially if you
just look at notes it doesn't make sense but with a methodical approach it's really not
that hard to read music.
With that said, there are some approaches to reading tablature.
It is very easy to understand just by looking at it.
It's a more natural representation of the guitar neck.
You can see then looks like a guitar fret board.
The other thing its very available that's easy to find tabs on free websites or you
can find pretty much any song somewhere and the other thing is if you want to create tablature
yourself you can actually do it on a typewriter.
You can use regular typewriter font to create a rough version of tab.
Now there are some cons as well.
The biggest one is that tablature doesn't give you all the information and in particular
it doesn't tell you how long to hold the note, that's a real downside actually.
You either have to know the song or have the recorded version to keep comparing if you
have tablature.
The other thing is if you're looking for a free website for tab, a lot of it is not just
accurate and there's really versions from a really an accurate to pretty good.
Of course, anybody can put free tablature on the web so even some 10-year-old boy can
scribble up something and put itup there and it may not be really close to the song.
I used sometimes website to look for tablature and I just compare different version and see
what sounds more like the actual song.
Another thing is when you learn to read music you're learning something that's universal.
You can apply it to other instruments, tab -- you cannot.
Guitar tablature is only for the guitar.
So we have an example of tablature . This top line is standard music notation and the
bottom line is tablature.
The six lines represent the strings of the guitar.
The bottom line is the thickest string or low E on the guitar and the top line is high
E so it starts with low E then the fifth string A then D the fourth string, G the third string,
B the second string and high E. These numbers represents frets in the guitar.
They don't actually tell you which finger to use it just so happens in this fingerpicking
exercise , these are the same the frets and the fingering but later on especially when
you go up to the neck, the fingering and the frets don't coincide so tablature doesn't
tell you what finger to use only which fret to put your finger on.
It is easy to learn tablature but it is incomplete information .
Now I want to show you another example of tablature.
In this case, its B minor scale and here we have the actual notes on the guitar.
Down here is the tablature underneath the notes and above I have some indications for
fingerings.
Now as I mentioned before, the tablature really only tells you what fret is on without any
indication or what finger to use.
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