I learned to read bass clef(being a bassist and all) but tabs were and have been a big help in starting to learn guitar. Especially when attempting to tackle classical pieces. Tabs with standard notation really helps me get a complete picture of what is to be played and I have enough experience as a musician that I can alter as needed.
im team both, i find transcriptions that use both tab and sheet music at the same time nice as it lets me both see the finger placements that the person intended while also telling me the notes and making it easy to find other placements i prefer when playing :D
Merce: WHY Classical Guitarist HATE tabs? Me: Spend hours manually translating sheet music to tabs so I can sight read without putting in the effort of learning to properly read sheet music above first position... 😆
hahaha your comment made me laugh so much Ryan! my god so many hours into 'translating'.... I with I could have avoided this for you. 1 coffe and 10min to explain how it works is all it takes for you to read the entire fretboard 🤓
I have been playing guitar for 6 years, and classical guitar for 3. I have done it all through tabs, but also with the inclusion of reading the phrasing and dynamics with the sheet music above. I am a very accelerated musician that also plays saxophone and many other instruments. I just never could read normal sheet music for guitar as well as I can read the tablature. I truly feel using both is the best way. I have made my way now to where I feel comfortable playing more advanced pieces like Capricho Arabe. So I’d say it’s going pretty good.
Hey Merce, Great portion on TABS. Everything you say is spot on and something that many people over look. I made a video on TABS as well from a more “music” based perspective and the fact that we ended up with different answers totally shows how much tabs leave out. But for learning rock songs I’m totally team tabs 🤘
Hi John! Thanks! Indeed for songs it becomes easier to go for tabs as rarely one finds sheet music for single songs, you always need to buy an entire book or collection that include the couple of songs that you want to play, so yeah, I see also from my students that for electric guitar stuff it becomes too difficult to find sheet music and tabs becomes the way to go... XD
Love it! Awesome video. I think you actually can have a lot of the information shown on tab such as stems coming directly out of the notes, phrasing, articulation, expression, dynamics, all of that is doable. You often don't see it though, usually it's just numbers and measures with the sheet music above. You are spot on about fingerings, with tab the player will have a harder time understanding all of the different locations for an individual note, and thus the different fingerings for various phrases. My biggest complaint about tab is that there is no information pertaining to triads/chords. The reader will likely not learn to see harmonic information in the score unless they simultaneously are studying triad and arpeggio shapes intensely. Might as well just be learning to read notation at that point. I confess I use both quite a bit, tab coming in handy especially for reading and transcribing rock guitar solos with bends and tapping and such. Once again I thought your video is great, we gotta get more guitarists reading and stop all those bad jokes about us!
hahahaha of course! nothing to be ashamed of! Different systems that work for different approaches and purposes! By the way, your comment literally seems like you have already watched the video before premiere! hahaha You'll see what I mean when it gets published... 😃😆
#tabs for life. I'll use tabs til I get it down, then listen to various recordings/other people play to get the nuances I was missing. I think I'm too stubborn to learn to read sheet music
I'm an amateur guitar player & use both tab and sheet music for playing. Quite often standard notation doesn't work for me. It rarely indicates proper location on the fretboard for notes or chords. A standard C note or chord can be played in numerous locations. Utilizing both Tab & notation gets me all the details I need.
Thanks! That's an interesting topic you bring up in here. You are right, in music notation you can have scores that are all full of fingerings and indications and others that have just the bare minimum. Many times because it's given by understood the fingering that needs to be used in certain passages, so editors leave them out. But I can imagine that this can become an issue for many players. On the other hand, is also great to have freedom of choice as a player (I prefer a score with no fingerings so I can make my own thing) and not be conditioned with the position choices, jumps, color, fingering possibilities, resonances, melodic consequence, etc... but that's something one learns as you go and a good teacher should slowly open your eyes to all those options so that one day you get to decide everything on your own :) Either way, thanks for the remark!!! I wish you an awesome weekend! 😊
Merce Thank you very much for the great answers. I would make one suggestion regarding advice on taking up classical guitar, having bought a guitar you need a good teacher. Sheet over Tab always.
Great suggestion! So very true but also a bit tricky because when you are a beginner is hard to tell if you get a good teacher or not. I relied a lot on my intuition and feeling of progress and proper guidance on that. A good teacher should make your practice at home understandable and achievable and then everyone needs to build up the skills to know when is time for a change or when something isn't working. But most of all, you need to put in the work first. One can have the best teacher in the world but will never get results if you don't keep up with the work :) Thanks for your comment Frank! Best wishes to you!
I went to music school and earned a degree in music theory, so reading sheet music is no problem. In fact in most cases I dislike it when there are both notes and tabs on the same page. That said, I find tabs helpful when working with a piece where 2 or 3 of the stings have been tuned differently, for example C-E-C-G-B-E. I can more quickly find the correct fret until I get the piece memorized and don't need the paper anymore.
Hi Carl! That's so true, when the tuning is changed it is indeed such a mental work to replace all the notes in the new frets in your mind... Your solution will be a big temptation to many readers here.... 😳😂
Wow. Your video/audio production skills get better and better! I love this format. Parece que el exceso de tiempo durante la pandemia ha presentado mas oportunidad para practicar sus habilidades - en ambos casos - la musica y la produccion.
I think tab is fine typically I will have heard the music I want to play enough that I don't need the other information, rhythm and expression whatever else fingering shouldn't take too long to figure out with a bit of experience
I taught myself how to read music with Frederick Noad's first book of guitar. I was sixteen and played on and off until I was 49 and in four years since I have improved, making me 53. Mel Bay is a good book to learn how to read music too. I learned first position and didn't worry about fingering. I now play first and second position pretty well. I only played pieces in the key of c and g until four years ago. I now play in c, g, d, a, e, and f. I don't know what all the symbols mean on sheet music being self taught, but I get by. I would recommend getting a teacher if you want to learn though I discovered that finding out how something is played instinctively is very nice.
Occasionally one encounters published music in tablature only, which is certainly annoying, but I’m also annoyed with published music with both standard notation and tablature. Now you might suppose that rather ungracious of me. Why not live and let live, just ignore the tablature if I dislike it? Because there are several glaring problems with this approach. The most egregious is that publications that do this invariably leave out essential information from the standard notation version: fingerings, expression marks, etc. In standard guitar notation if you want to specify that a particular note is to be played on a particular string, you write the string number with a circle around it. In tablature you are FORCED always to specify the string even when it’s arbitrary or a matter of no consequence. Thus the reader cannot tell how seriously to take an editor’s recommendations. The most obvious problem, perhaps, is just that it clutters up the page. There are more page turns, and it’s harder to read, jerking from one to the other.
I am in the tab camp...Sorry Merce 😂. I am more of a rock and roll/country Stratocaster guitarist so tabs are my best buddies. I understand 0 theory, so obviously that rules out learning to read music
makes sense, for certain type of music you will find many more scores in tabs rather than sheet music, I guess the only thing is to find reliable tab source to practice from :)
@@MerceFont Yeah Ultimate Guitar tabs is probably the best, certainly the most reliable anyway. Of course you do get some diabolical tabs added by some idiots who are clearly doing it to annoy everyone else
Because I learned to play piano and read sheet music, it is not at all difficult for me to read the sheet music (I am not saying I am in any way good or efficient in sightreading though 😩). However when it comes to guitar and the music happens to provide both tabs and sheet, I just can’t take my eyes from the tabs! You can argue that playing piano requires reading both treble and bass clef at the same time while playing classical guitar requires reading only one clef, but still I look for tabs intuitively👀 It’s an interesting phenomenon that I want to think about more deeply, hahaha🤣 And I like your mentioning how some great musicians can’t read the music. I can see that! I thought of some people I knew from a choir who are the very best singers among the choir members. They have the best voice and present the musicality really well but they just never acquire the ability to read the music!
I can recall to this temptation quite well! hahaha Indeed reading sheet music requires a bit of getting used to it. I also started of with tabs and in the beginning the simplicity of tabs makes you easily choose them over sheet music. In my case, the fact that I found constantly mistakes or things that made little sense in the tabs make me want to know better music so at the end I realised how much more I got from normal notation. I had some experience with singer on that and is indeed a funny thing that if one is blessed with natural skills and a beautiful tone of voice many relay only on this and put aside to really dig deeper into music. Knowing less about music it doesn't make their voice sound worse but you can feel that they might struggle a lot more getting interpretational freedom and skills to adapt to different music they sing (I'm speaking here more on the classical side of singing). All that just makes you realize how rich and full of possibilities music is, there is space for everyone, all styles and approaches 😃
I think sheet music is better because it has fingerings, dynamics, rhythms, it can translate to other instruments, and because very complicated pieces will be easier to read and put onto paper.
That's also a big point here. Once you know the music with the sheet music, you can also transport it from key, instrument or ensemble. It empowers you quite a lot more as a musician than only knowing where to put your fingers 😃 I guess that's also why it might be a bit harder to learn but for me it's totally worth the 'effort' 😊 Thank you for your comment Philip!!!
Although I use standard notation myself, tabs can be useful at times. Also most of the drawbacks about tabs that she mentions (missing information) is only because tab creators do not put that info on the tab. They can certainly add left-hand fingering, phrasing dynamics, etc., just as they do with standard notation. I would say the main problem with tabs is the poor quality and the tendency to have a program create the tab, putting most notes in the 1st position and using open strings wherever possible.
Tabs plus net, is very good. As a kid, tabs were discouraged because it wasn't 'musical'. (Closer to learning typewriting than music so we were told.) Even then, if we were to get in to tabs (which was how most pop and rock were transcribed then along with chords, so we did), our teacher advised that we drill in the concept of efficient fingering of classical and not allow the 'pinky to sleep', lol. Today, I find it faster to get the mechanics with tabs and use clips of proper guitarists and tutorials to learn to play the musical information and to get ideas on the fingerings missing on the tabs.
I started acoustic guitar in 1967, classical guitar in 1974. There were no tabs, at least I was not aware of them. To one like me who started on music notation, learning tabs is like learning a foreign language. But I'm an old curmudgeon; I'm not going to throw a temper tantrum. If you need them, use them. But beware that if you start with tabs exclusively, then regular notation will become your foreign language. Besides when you get to the pearly gates, would you dare admit to Andres Segovia that you used tablature? He would get so angry!! 😂
I'm a student of classical guitar, my teacher determine me to rely on the notes. I also play melody on electric guitar with my band and when I need to find out a new song I go with the tab. So, both of them are useful for me. Anyway, there are some classical guitar composed songs that also included with tab. I found it on another channel.
yes, tab can be very helpful in many situations indeed! I think its always best to know both! But as musical source of information, sheet music still is a more complete means of communication within composer-interpreter. Far from perfect but yet more exhaustive than tabs for many things.
I came a little late to see the video, but about the steel strings guitar, I'm totally agree, it also depends on what colour or what kind of sonorities are you looking for, however, the "Western guitar" has a different purposes and intentions #teamsteel haha just kidding. Thanks to share all this knowledge dear Merce :) abrazos!
hahaha thanks! Yes I will be doing some tremolo tutorial, already many people asked, to I'll try to bring it to the channel soon :) Always listening to your feedback 🤓
What's the best way for an older beginner guitarist to help with stiff and small fingers? Should I switch to a guitar like a cordoba fusion 12 that comes with a smaller neck for my small hands?
There are hundreds of methods that can run you through the basics, but if you prefer the video format, I can indeed work on such a video for the future :)
In the accordion world we have a form of tab notation called a griffschrift. In the harmonica world there is a notation using numbers, it's used a lot in China. The advantage of these systems is that they are less intimidating for beginners than the seemingly mysterious dots of musical notation. The disadvantage is that most people who learn these systems never understand what notes they are playing, and how that relates to the key or the structure of the music. And that's OK, if you're happy with that. But it means you will have difficulty to improvise, you will probably never learn to transpose, and even playing by ear and picking out tunes will be a sort of random thing. If you can read notation then the whole world of music opens up to you because you can take music sheets written for other instruments or even just fakebook "melody and chords" notation and use it to make your own arrangements. There's a phrase in engineering "nothing beats knowing what you're doing", and it's just the same for music. If you know what notes you're playing and how they relate to the key you're in then that has to be a huge advantage over just hitting memorized patterns of physical movements.
For music after Bach, I'm sure it makes little sense to use tabs as something else than an aid to get you to memorize the music, or to remember fingering, and so on. But interpreting the music as well, I think, can be a lot easier if you just have the fingering to go with, while remembering the music (and then working with figuring out the fingering). Because as detailed as the scores will be, you're never really getting a perfect match between what is written and what the composer wanted (with the exception of Schoenberg?). Sheet music is, after all, a way to map music that was composed fairly accurately, not a way to accurately portray what the music should sound like. So if you look at Brescianello's manuscripts, for example, you sort of see why tabs and a combination annotation was used very quickly: it's made this way so you should understand how to use the fingering to get to be able to play the music at all: i.e., the pieces are composed for a stringed instrument while the guy was sitting with an instrument, probably. And then he's put down the method for how to play it, rather than just the notes. Different approach, and it can be very useful. So basically: both.
I've used tab in most of my guitar learning with the help of Guitar Pro 7. Its very helpful and not really expensive software. Currently I'm studying Cavatina using it. I also found out that classical guitarist playing Cavatina have also their own way of interpreting the music which is not exactly the way John Williams played it, take Anna Vidovic version for example.
Dude cavatina is no joke u wil soon find out what a torture that piece is on the left hand let me know your progress and till then give lots of love to your left hand thumb
The tabs thing... It seems I am limited because I can't get the timing from sheet music, I need to hear the music... having heard it I have the phrasing so the tabs are fine. You say about fingerings and approach... well the sheet music doesn't give fingerings or frets so you have the same problem. Its solved by experience... also given the notes repeat around the fretboard often I might decide rather than playing a note in one position I might play it on a different string to make something smoother. Tabs aren't always perfect but take a lot of work out of playing something by ear.
I'd also note that some musicians are good readers, others play entirely from memory/ear. Its only an elite group that can do both equally well. I'd fall into the second camp and don't have much interest in joining the first camp... my time studying would be better spent on music theory and I am too lazy on that also... I just like playing.
Look lets talk frankly ok ? I can play any song by listening to it played nor only by one artist but many So i can get the timing and dynamicks. Fingering is second nature if it hurts its probably wrong. In truth using notations and tab in combination is a good way for a student to learn in the begining years
I don`t hate tabs I just don`t use them much...they are very helpfully for figuring out complicated sections..I should probably refer to them more often..the Segovia scale book has tabs..if it was good enough for him it`s good enough for me
Classical guitarists know how to read notes. Therefore there is no need for TAB. However, I found that some arrangers are not very meticulous with their arrangements. There are occasions where the positions are not shown. When that happens the TAB is helpful, if it provided.
Two reasons why classical guitarists hate Tabs. First, you should always figure out your own fingerings and I often play the same phrase in different positions to vary the tone. Secondly, it takes up twice as much space so a two page piece suddenly has a totally unnecessary page turn.
Tabs vs Notation? I use both. If the piece was originally written in tablature (like lute music) I will read from tabs. But notation is too useful not to learn.
I'm new a solid year in .... maybe my mind just don't like it, but I hate tab. I'm better off noodling... not good practice, but staring at a tab for hours makes me want to get a flame thrower and toast my sheets of tab to ashes LOL. I feel like i am a robot connecting dots! It never sounds good. I know it's probably a necessary evil... lol
Greetings Ms Font I have a question, how many people you know are able to sight read ANY musical score on the spot at real time? Some people who play for the orchestras claim that they can sight read on the spot. Frankly I don't believe them unless they prove it in front of me coz I find this impossible for the average eyes and brains. Besides modern music could be technically crazy. However if you say thats its possible for the average musician to sight read anything on the spot at real time please justify.
Hi Hulio! Well, orchestral players are very much used to sight read. The good thing for them is that usually (not always but very often) they have only one voice and they practice reading new parts on a very regular basis. So, yes, they can sight read a large part of repertoire without much trouble. Sight reading thought doesn't mean play it amazing. They can just follow through all together but from here to make an ensemble sound great there is a lot of work to do. High complexity pieces, sight reading gives a too poor of a result even for a rehearsal, so they often do it on pieces they see that's on their reach to read comfortably. On the other hand you've got harpsichord players, piano players (mostly the ones whose job is to accompany singers, violinists, flutists, etc...), organists, etc... they are also super good at sight reading and I find this even harder because they've got sometimes really big chords and several voices to read all together. Maybe, the 'solo repertoire' is the hardest to sight read because of the technical difficulty (solo repertoire was aimed for virtuosos), but on a slow tempo every player should be able to do it. If you get to practice sight reading on a regular basis you get progressively faster. It's not rocket science, just practice practice practice ;) If you want something brain challenging check the harpsichord players who used to improvise figured bass on baroque music. That's really a crazy mental music workout!!! hahaha!
Merce Font .Eu toco por acordes cifras até sei o significado de campo harmônico etc.Porem o que eu mais queria é saber sobre a escrita musical entender e praticar acho bonito mais me esbarro na dificuldade de encontrar na internet pessoas que ensinam de fato sobre partitura e não fiquem enrolando.Sou do Brasil .Abraços e até a proxima.
Hi Nilson! I googled translated your comment, so hopefully you can understand my answer as well :) Yes, many people focus on chords, or technique, or any other concrete aspect of music making. if you are looking for a teacher that will guide you on the overall picture of music (structure, harmony, melody, compositional choices, etc...) you should maybe find a guitar teacher that knows well guitar and knows all the 'theory' behind the music so that he/she can coach you on that 😊
@@MerceFont Obrigado por responder: A questão é o tempo como eu trabalho o fator disponibilidade fica dífícil ,estou procurando na Internet mesmo porque os horários são flexiveis ,já encontrei alguns mais a maioria é de lingua estrangeira e fica díficil a compreensão.Obrigado e continue postando videos abraços Merce.
Tabs are my comfort zone, but im learning how to read sheet music! Currently I use both! Tabs to quickly memorize the left hand, and then use sheet music to know the rhythm and the right hand.
1) The term “sheet music” does not mean music written in standard notation in contradistinction to tablature. It refers, rather, to music published in single sheets, in contradistinction to folios. Individual hit pop songs are traditionally published as sheet music, that is, in single sheets. 2) If you want to use both standard notation and tablature, just be aware that you are normally allowed to play a given note on any string you like, but you can’t change the note itself without changing the actual music. The solutions proffered in tablature versions are often poor solutions. Take them cum grano salis.
As a lifelong classical - rock (and somewhat jazz) guitarist; 1. There's an impedance mismatch between tabs & classical guitar. 2. And there's an impedance mismatch between rock/folk/jazz/country-etc. and sheet music. Whazzat mean? The world of classical composition starts and ends with notation. But the world of non-classical music is more an aural (play-by-ear) tradition - which is "practically" impossible to notate - with (often) an underlying triplet feel that would make notation really (REALLY) hard to read - but which - cake to play by ear
Very interesting comment JS! Indeed non-classical music has all these 'flows' or 'grooves' as you mention that would make the score a huge mess to notate to the exact precise value. But you a funny thing? There is exactly the same problem with classical music. Baroque music coming from different regions was performed SOO different than notated, but, as they knew how it was supposed to sound, they just notated a straight line of 16th notes and then performers would to their thing. Different 'grooves' were performed different depending on the musical context and the type of dance that was. In fact, that remains valid (but with very different outcomes/feels) with later music (classical, romantic). The fact that is notated shouldn't mean that you have to follow it as if you were a machine just reproducing the sounds. Notation is our most effective system to pass on the composer idea indeed, but far from precise. Therefore it takes knowledge to understand how every figuration and music style should, or is/was intended to sound like. Thank you for bringing up such topics, is always interesting to read other people thoughts! 😊
@@MerceFont Ah musicology - I wonder how many classical guitarists even at your world-class-level have studied that? To your point, the "Viennese Lift" - that orchestral players do, for Strauss - that provided this: wdced.com/2012/11/perfect-10-the-viennese-waltz-by-marianka-swain/
@@jsguitargeek1432 "Ah musicology - I wonder how many classical guitarists even at your world-class-level have studied that? " At a professional level their training is badly deficient if they are not at least aware of what Srta. Font relates.
The best way? - Learn with a competent teacher and start to read notation from the very beginning of learning your instrument. But that is not always possible for everybody. If you already have some playing skills and are now first coming to standard notation then be prepared to have the patience to go back to basics of playing, relearn how to walk before running. Get a good teacher or at least use a recommended published guitar method that allows you to progress step by step. No shortcuts. Read as much music as you can at the appropriate level you are at.
Provide you the " le primera lecciones of guitarra" of Julio Sagreras book. In this book Julio guide you study after study, note by note teaching you, learning you. An other good method is "La chitarra volante" From Paradiso
What do you think about"Alip ba ta" sister?this guy is a very popular finger style guitarist on RUclips,many reaction on Alip video said this guy is a genious,,
hi Jia! I didn't know him, so I searched his channel and he is indeed a very talented player. I have no clue about his background, but if he never got real training with a teacher or not, but either way, he is incredible natural with the instrument and has a very well curated approach to music! ⭐️ Thanks for discovering me something new Jia! :)
@@MerceFont guitarist "queen" has apreciate Alip skill and upload Alip video on his Facebook , Helloween band apreciate Alip too,many top guitarist arround the world blown away by Alip skill!
how can you possibly be part of the world of music, which includes instruments other than the guitar, if your idea of "writing" music is drawing a picture of your instrument (essentially tab)? Interestingly, guitar chamber music (guitar with other instruments) first started to flourish (early 19th c.) once guitar music started being written with the same system (regular notation) as other instruments. Besides, music is essentially pitches & durations - which is the essence of Western notation (not tab). And notation, minus fingering, allows for someone's or perhaps your own (if you're qualified) fingering to be used or tried/modified.
There are those who will always choose and defend an inferior system on the erroneous grounds of it being easier and do so without even understanding the concepts involved, this is because the full picture is revealed best to those who master the more comprehensive system or both systems.
@@Anriuko The role of a comprehensive musical notation is to communicate musical information in a manner that allows for as much information as possible required to perform it accurately, communicating the writer's intent. It also allows for harmonic and theoretical information about the music to be communicated at a glance. Tablature is greatly inferior to standard western musical notation for that purpose. It allows only a miniscule fraction of the musical information to be conveyed. Those promoting it over standard notation are the ones making the assumption that easier is superior for this purpose., an erroneous equivalency. Guitar and lute tabulatures (earlier spelling) have been used for six centuries. For solo guitar music they went obsolete circa late 18th century as they simply weren't up to the demands of modern music. They are having a bit of a resurgence due to popularity of electric guitar and the often musically illiterate self-taught folk and rock music styles, all accelerated by mass electronic communication. I hope you found that helpful.
@@rjlchristie Apologies for being so slow to respond to your well thought-out answer. In terms of the capacity to convey accurate musical information, the standard sheet music is superior. I agree there. I guess where we would disagree is how important is that accuracy for a musician. I'm self-taught on piano, relatively recently picked up guitar a few times, and I've never been that interested in the exactness of what the composer's vision in any quantitative sense. My normal procedure was to hear a good piece somewhere, then listen to many different renditions of it, getting the sheet music, and then playing everything like I thought it "ought to" be played. I never performed and didn't have to need to meet the audience's expectations, meaning I was totally free to interpret the music in any way. I've butchered countless pieces, and I'd dare to say I've also created brilliance out of some. I'm intimate with music and I often find myself listen to renowned masters of the art play a rendition of some of my favorite pieces, and my genuine thought is; "He doesn't get it." Some of them try to follow the composer's (written) vision to a tee, some try to be valid in other ways while diverging from "the form." Also, all this accurate preservation of "the true intent" of the composer seems to be mainly a Western thing. Many other cultures rely on pattern-based improvisation with their own sets of rules. With this kind of thinking, I don't see easiness as an "erroneous ground" as it can actually help people get to musicality faster if you just show them how to make the correct sequence of sounds and let them imagine the rest. Who knows, the next thing they might do is to improvise around the theme (granted they have the technique to experiment).
Standard notation is the 'lingua franca' among musicians. Show TABS to a flautist or violinist and they have no idea what to play. With the exception of Early Music, TABS are useless.
Exactly. I guess the fact that we have a huge amount of genres of music that include guitar made that naturally people rescued the simplicity of tabs for those who feel a bit scared of music notation. But yes, its funny that if you want to learn any other instrument it's out of the question whether you learn to read in the 'normal system' or not, and in guitar we have always the question 'but do you want to read sheet music or you want to stick to tabs'?😂 little perks of playing an awesome instrument i guess 🤷🏻♀️😅
This is a good point. If you read tablature only, you will not be able to communicate musically with other instrumentalists-at least not effectively. Tablature is absurdly specific and suffocatingly insular.
Nice to see we have such a gentile community here......I feared we might need peace keeping forces.....thankfully world war III didn't erupt......but all in all.....whatever gets you through the night......as for myself......guess I lucked up ......was taught (forced really😡😡😡grrrrr.....ha ha....but really thankful I was😉😃😁) to read sheet music at 11.....and it stuck.....unlike the art of happily doing dishes ( I have been known to fly them out the window into the backyard and just buy new one's)......Oh god.....you had to remind me......I bought strings weeks and weeks ago for my guitars and there still sitting right here......glad to see I'm not the only procrastinator here.....so good at procrastinating......I broke a string on my favorite classical weeks ago and almost cry everyday..... I know!!!!.....Merce....let's have a race and see who gets it done first.....that way we'll both get it done sooner perhaps😃😄😉.....but you say...."GO!!!".....yes.....see I'm procrastinating already🤣😆🤣!!!!! Always good to answer random questions ....might cover aspects we don't think of..... as we all don't think the same thankfully ( there might be mountains of broken dirty dishes all over the earth😛😜😝😲😕!!!!) As always....Love and Respect💖🎸💖🎼💖🎸💖🎼💖🎸💖🎼💖SM
hahahaha the picture of you smashing the dishes out... it kind of inspires me to do the same! LOL! 😆 By the way, I accept the challenge, lets see who procrastinates the longest changing the strings... be careful, I am good on that, and the guitar in the video is not my main guitar so... good luck hehe 😈 Wish you an awesome Sunday Stephen!
I'll venture that the majority of electric guitarist especially Rock and Metal musicians aren't able to read note, and success in Rock and Metal usually has almost nothing to do with that skill. Eddie Van Halen is the best example that don't know how to read note, much of what Eddie played too technical that couldn't even be written with traditional music notation - only guitar tablature can properly instruct someone on how to play Ed's stuff. There at least 65 electric guitar techniques alone right now, not include like other tool yet like whammy bar, whammy pedal and other effect pedal that provide the difference technique and sound, There also one great composer who can't read note is YANNI. His compose is quite complex and bizarre. Kind of Frank Zappa or Jimmy Hendrix of orchestra.
so very true, and a very insightful point of view! Indeed sometimes music comes before notation and for such guitarists tabs is the best way to go about it! Thank you for your input, I found it very valuable to not forget the other side of the coin! 🤗
Gonna have to disagree on the tabs argument that they are bereft of anything besides numbers on corresponding strings. While there are a lot of bad tabs out there, there are just as many good ones that include the sheets above the tabs with all the markings, positions, phrasings, articulation, etc. There is a ton of standard repertoire on sites like Classical Guitar Shed that are written this way, and include tutorials within their sites on how to read the sheets properly. Unfortunately, the bad tabs are often the face of the franchise when it comes to this argument, and that very notion of sheet reading being necessary ultimately serves as deterrent to those coming from a Rock/Metal background who would love to learn Classical and Flamenco guitar, but are used to, if not dependent on tabs, Guitar Pro, and other tools of that world to learn their music. So, as an influencer, why not teach prospective players what to look for in good tablature, and where to find it rather than demanding people adhere to an off-putting, outdated, and quite frankly draconian tradition?
what is so off-putting and outdated about sheet music? Millions of musicians around the world happily use this draconian system. It's just a method of communication, in this case music. It's only really guitarists in certain styles (rock / metal / country / blues or whatever) that have a big thing for tab and an allergic reaction to sheet music, locking themselves in a box.
@@jasongultjaeff9397 perhaps I should preface this rebuttal with the fact that I'm a player who does know how to read music, and can also read for the guitar. However, I do have an extensive background playing Rock and Metal, and know all too well how my fellow guitarists in that world prefer to approach the instrument. So, think about how many combinations of note values you have to memorize to read sheet for the guitar. Most modern electric guitars have 24 frets, so that is 20 positions x 6 strings with 4 notes per string (6 × 4 × 20 = 480). That's 480 combinations of note values to memorize. Classical guitars with 19 frets will have 360. Now, compare that number to a piano, which has only 88. That's a very intimidating journey, even for a seasoned musician. Tabs give the player a much easier way to visually organize the written copy. Historically, multi-string fretted instruments (guitar, lute, theorbo) were written in tab before the musical elitists of the ~1700s demanded everything be written in standard notation. An attitude which has cancerously persisted into modern times. And while learning to read score is an important part of music, and should be learned, it is no longer a requirement for the average person to pick up.the instrument and play. So why keep the barrier, and make Classical music unobtainable for the average guitarist? That doesn't make any sense. This isn't the 18th, 19th, or even early 20th Centuries anymore. Very few guitarists nowadays have a desire to read standard notation when 90% of everything out there for the guitar is written in tablature. And therefore, it is Classical guitar that needs to adapt and make itself accessible to everyone living in the modern era in order to keep itself from becoming a dying art. Not the other way around.
Well, I came from a rock and metal background, but made the switch to classical, which meant learning to read standard notation from the basics and it's the best thing I ever did for my playing. Sure, it took some humility but was well worth it. It's only improved my playing with no negatives. I feel with your second paragraph misses the point that sheet music for classical guitar is often annotated with hand position and string numbering within the position for notes (e.g I, II, III, IV, etc and a 3 or 5 might indicate that a certain note is played on that corresponding string within the position). I've got sheet music that covers crazy fast transitions up and down the neck (Villa-Lobos for example) and it all works fine. Advanced players may work their own fingerings out, which is great. Importantly, outside of timing and note values which tab does poorly or not at all, I find the flow of sheet music for fast and complex music so much better. You can visually see the music go higher or lower, etc. This is better visually than 15, 17, 18, 12 etc, etc on a tab. Personally, classical can get very complex and sheet music can potentially give you the information you need. I think it gets more complex than the most complex rock and metal, which is often very fast, but repetitive. It might not be the 18th, 19th & 20th centuries anymore, but I can still read Mary Shelley's Frankenstein or Bram Stokers Dracula or HG Wells the War of the Worlds. The writing may seem outdated with old turns of phrase, etc, but I can still read it. Their ideas are still being communicated as the language (in those examples, English) is the same. It's the same with sheet music. Older and idiosyncratic systems of Tab may still be out there, but they will not be common. The work will be transcribed to modern sheet music or converted to modern tab. In the future, modern sheet music I'm sure will more or less look the same, but modern tab stay the same? Or will it change as the guitar and the players and the technology changes. That is all debatable, but the point I'm making is a standard notation communicates ideas better over time and around the world in my opinion. Lastly, where I live, classical guitar seems to be doing ok, superficially perhaps not popular (but is jazz, blues, rock, metal?) but has a loyal following, often made of players of varying levels. It seems quite healthy in its own way. Your experience may differ, but the last classical guitar performance I went to had a larger audience than the last local metal concert. :)@@CascadianExotics
I use the standard notation to help inform what ever may be missing in the TAB, rhythms, articulations. You can also just write in fingerings, barre, etc. alternate tunings, capos also make standard notation a nightmare to sight read.... TAB wins! ...with the help of standard notation.
Why classical guitarist hate tabs? Really answer : Because after spending years of perfect their sight reading, they can't stand all the noobs can play in 1 go with tabs. All of the cons of tabs can be fix if you get more detail tabs. You are talking about basic tabs, which are not very popular now
Oh my god!. This argument again? I read standard notation. I compose (classical guitar music) in TAB. Why? Because it works. There is nothing that is written in standard notation that can't be duplicated with a version of tab. With Tab, I don't have to draw little circles above the staff to indicate which position I'm playing from. I don't have to worry about accidentals -I know what key I'm playing in. When I am finished composing a piece, I then put it to standard notation. If I am learning a piece in standard notation where there is a difficult and confusing few bars, I will write it out on staff paper in TAB until it is burned into my brain and hands. Anyone who wants to become more than just a classical guitarist "enthusiast" should definitely learn standard notation though. But in my opinion TAB definitely has a place in todays world for classical guitar. Classical guitar is difficult and IMO anything that can accelerate the process even just a bit is a good thing. Learn both but lean heavily on learning standard notation is my shout out loud. But don't be so quick to poo poo TAB. Peace friends; now go practice!
@@rjlchristie Sometimes.... I could cut off that wonky thread with my teeth, or maybe just reach into my tool box for a pair of scissors and do it ez squeezy with a whole lot less effort with the same result (maybe even better?). I have been having this discussion with musicians for years; most who are a whole lot better players than moi lol. It never resolves 😅! Anywho... I respect your opinion friend, after all , we are just talking here. Peace to you and best wishes for your future endeavers! -R
@@robertd3564 "There is nothing that is written in standard notation that can't be duplicated with a version of tab." that so inaccurate it could be regarded as disingenuous. I have never seen contrapuntal and polyphonic textures rendered accurately in tab. Tab notations by their nature do not make clear distinctions between voices nor notate note duration within such textures beyond a rudimentary level. Perhaps you may have an example of such, if so, enlighten us and demonstrate that it is not an aberration, because such a system is not in general use. Your thread cutting example, although asinine, is just an example of choosing the best tool for the job. Historically, tab fell out of general use because it was not up to the job or at the very least was inferior to standard notation at conveying the creator composer's intent. Moaning about string indications etc clutter up standard notation is equally asinine. Such markings are unnecessary in standard notation and in most cases only supplied as a marketing tool to sell the product to people who haven't yet attained a sound working knowledge of the instrument. On occasion positional markings and such like have a use for reasons of sonority or technical execution. No big deal and no impediment to reading a standard score. I'd be interested to know whether you have a market for your "classical guitar music" rendered in tab.
@@rjlchristie You have never seen contrapuntal and polyphonic textures rendered accurately in tab because most tab is crap. It doesn't have to be though. We are not talking about music theory here, we are talking about reading music. What is notation anyway? -it is heiroglyphics on paper used to express musical concepts. Numbers or dots on paper? Whats the difference when you think about it -but you don't THINK, you just blah blah blah. What is it about some people that are so hell bent about being 'right' that they don't LISTEN? What part about "lean heavily on standard notation, but don't be so quick to poo poo TAB" don't you understand? TAB HAS IT"S PLACE. The garbage tab you find on the internet is just that. The tab you find in music books that has standard notation written above it on a separate stave is better. Standard notation is just that -standardized. Tab isn't (but it should be). Nobody bothers to flesh out the tab because all the info you need is contained within the standard notation. The version of tab I use is a kind of hybrid and contains all the info you need for a piece of music. Crescendo
@@robertd3564 Tab is inferior on most respects to standard notation - even if it gets the note duration extras that you attempt to tag on, in an effort to emulate one of the core elements that is inherent within standard notation. Varying scordatura don't justify using tab systems ether. Feeling you need one just advertises that you are unfamiliar with your instrument and the tuning used. Yes, there are people that are more far more qualified than you in regard to classical guitar and the demands it makes on its notation systems. Having a university degree in performance and a 35 year background in teaching and public performance might make me one of them. Being tab dependent is similar to painting using a Paint-by-Numbers pack. It is a fair to conclude from your comments that you have a limited appreciation of performance of contrapuntal textures and possibly of polyphonic movement in general. Tab's inherent weakness in this area is one of the primary reasons it was superseded. BTW, the subject of correct rendition of contrapuntal texture, particularly in Baroque lute music is very involved: e.g. what is implied, what is not, what is executable, what is not. It does not come down to either side of a debate over tab vs std notation. I have no objection to using tab for and on the lute, it was after all, the historical practice. However, tabs shortcomings introduce idiosyncratic peculiarities that are not strictly correct. These can even be quite charming. The same effects can easily be incorporated into a std notated transcription for guitar and in doing so such discrepancies also become easily identifiable, a bonus for an educated musician. When contrapuntal anomalies appear in a tab score they are effectively hidden. Those paint-by-number players who just place a finger on an indicated fret and think the job is done are never going produce fine music.
So,.....if 'interpreting works from composers', sure you need notation to help understand and interpret correctly, but most of the great works have been done x1000. It's not like we are all individual archaeological scientists dusting prints on a fossil all by ourselves, trying to figure out these mysterious clues that can only be solved with our notational decoder ring. Play music, does it sound good? Does any set of ears really care how they got there?
Well, I guess it depends on the level of precision/detail you are aiming at with your playing. Tabs lack a lot on this 'details' which is nothing wrong for some type of music as it is not intended to go to this direction, in fact, lots of electric guitar music is more comfortable to work with tabs. Yet, for some other kind of music, standard notation is better as it includes the very basic information we need to know, and from this starting point, there is a lot of room for changes and freedom for you to play (eg, fingering, color, technical changes, positions, etc...). For the music I play (classical guitar) I wouldn't rely on 'copying other players by ear' without knowing the score as then you are forever stuck to imitate other guitarists voice, artistry and mistakes, which I would find very poor and boring as a musician 😂
@@MerceFont I agree most tabs are pretty sparse on details and should often be augmented with many things we use in standard notation. Also, don't discount imitation. It's just another tool to interpretation and can still lead to originality and creativity. The strict classical canon is a pretty restrictive zone for creativity and new ideas. If I had started with classical guitar I probably would have taken the time to read at my current level (g5, g6), but I arrived after decades of electric guitar and bands. I can't put that genie back in the bottle now.
Everything that was said about "tabs" is directly referring to the "tabs" that you're offered by a simple google search. The sheet music is usually just as bad in these cases. I have developed my own tab writing style over the course of 25 years that is a result of combining the best attributes of tab styles from guitar publicationsm. I.e. The Japanese Young Guitar Magazine has published accurate hand-written tabs for over 50 years. Other mags such as Guitar Player in the 80's always had tabs in the publication, such as hand-written tabs by Steve Vai. Well written out tabs for classical guitar is almost impossible to come by. "Complete (pro) tabulature" - as I like to call my style - includes everything that you mentioned in this video as usually lacking. I play piano and read music, but for guitar I completely translate it in my head into the motions of playing. If you know the names of every note on the fretboard, seeing a tab "number" on a certain string translates immediately into the note - they're supposed to work together (note name and placement on fretboard), so this definitely is a good way to develop the working knowledge of music theory on the guitar. Playing from tabs you make it possible to see the shapes on the fretboard. Good fingerings can better be figured out (literally) using tabs. Once it's worked out, you can add all the other information, all the rhythms, right and left hand fingerings, the dynamics, the articulation, agogics, everything in a much more readable format. Once you're done with it, practice is a sinch as your practice time isn't dedicated to anything other than learning to play what you have already figured out.
I learned to read bass clef(being a bassist and all) but tabs were and have been a big help in starting to learn guitar. Especially when attempting to tackle classical pieces. Tabs with standard notation really helps me get a complete picture of what is to be played and I have enough experience as a musician that I can alter as needed.
Indeed Tabs are very direct, so for many beginners it does feel less intimidating for some reason :)
"The beauty of the classical guitar resides in it's soft, persuasive voice and it's poetry cannot be expressed by any other instrument."- Segovia
I have been a musician for fourty years and I always learn something new from you. You can imagine how much I appreciate your videos.
im team both, i find transcriptions that use both tab and sheet music at the same time nice as it lets me both see the finger placements that the person intended while also telling me the notes and making it easy to find other placements i prefer when playing :D
Merce: WHY Classical Guitarist HATE tabs?
Me: Spend hours manually translating sheet music to tabs so I can sight read without putting in the effort of learning to properly read sheet music above first position... 😆
hahaha your comment made me laugh so much Ryan! my god so many hours into 'translating'.... I with I could have avoided this for you. 1 coffe and 10min to explain how it works is all it takes for you to read the entire fretboard 🤓
Always ready for another Merce Font video....
Yaay!!! Coming very soon!! Actually I got too many ideas and topics to bring to the channel, so sit down, relax and get ready for more stuff! 😊
I have been playing guitar for 6 years, and classical guitar for 3. I have done it all through tabs, but also with the inclusion of reading the phrasing and dynamics with the sheet music above. I am a very accelerated musician that also plays saxophone and many other instruments. I just never could read normal sheet music for guitar as well as I can read the tablature. I truly feel using both is the best way. I have made my way now to where I feel comfortable playing more advanced pieces like Capricho Arabe. So I’d say it’s going pretty good.
Hey Merce,
Great portion on TABS. Everything you say is spot on and something that many people over look. I made a video on TABS as well from a more “music” based perspective and the fact that we ended up with different answers totally shows how much tabs leave out. But for learning rock songs I’m totally team tabs 🤘
Hi John! Thanks! Indeed for songs it becomes easier to go for tabs as rarely one finds sheet music for single songs, you always need to buy an entire book or collection that include the couple of songs that you want to play, so yeah, I see also from my students that for electric guitar stuff it becomes too difficult to find sheet music and tabs becomes the way to go... XD
Love it! Awesome video. I think you actually can have a lot of the information shown on tab such as stems coming directly out of the notes, phrasing, articulation, expression, dynamics, all of that is doable. You often don't see it though, usually it's just numbers and measures with the sheet music above. You are spot on about fingerings, with tab the player will have a harder time understanding all of the different locations for an individual note, and thus the different fingerings for various phrases. My biggest complaint about tab is that there is no information pertaining to triads/chords. The reader will likely not learn to see harmonic information in the score unless they simultaneously are studying triad and arpeggio shapes intensely. Might as well just be learning to read notation at that point. I confess I use both quite a bit, tab coming in handy especially for reading and transcribing rock guitar solos with bends and tapping and such. Once again I thought your video is great, we gotta get more guitarists reading and stop all those bad jokes about us!
I love tabs, and not ashamed to admit it!
hahahaha of course! nothing to be ashamed of! Different systems that work for different approaches and purposes! By the way, your comment literally seems like you have already watched the video before premiere! hahaha You'll see what I mean when it gets published... 😃😆
i'll watch with my arms folded, prepared to be offended at my TAB affront to the 'classical' cool club. Be kind! We are family!
haha!
Im comming out of the closet too sister ! I use tabs and im not ashamed or scared of TABophobics !🎗
#tabs for life. I'll use tabs til I get it down, then listen to various recordings/other people play to get the nuances I was missing. I think I'm too stubborn to learn to read sheet music
Merce!! Great video, so well done! and with some nice humor. Cheers!!
Tab is for begginer, if you want much deeper approach or to get to under on what your doing, eventually you will study reading notes
Can you play Asturias ? I can and I'm from a council estate. They only have tabs where I'm from
I'm an amateur guitar player & use both tab and sheet music for playing. Quite often standard notation doesn't work for me. It rarely indicates proper location on the fretboard for notes or chords. A standard C note or chord can be played in numerous locations. Utilizing both Tab & notation gets me all the details I need.
Thanks! That's an interesting topic you bring up in here. You are right, in music notation you can have scores that are all full of fingerings and indications and others that have just the bare minimum. Many times because it's given by understood the fingering that needs to be used in certain passages, so editors leave them out. But I can imagine that this can become an issue for many players.
On the other hand, is also great to have freedom of choice as a player (I prefer a score with no fingerings so I can make my own thing) and not be conditioned with the position choices, jumps, color, fingering possibilities, resonances, melodic consequence, etc... but that's something one learns as you go and a good teacher should slowly open your eyes to all those options so that one day you get to decide everything on your own :)
Either way, thanks for the remark!!! I wish you an awesome weekend! 😊
Merce
Thank you very much for the great answers. I would make one suggestion regarding advice on taking up classical guitar, having bought a guitar you need a good teacher. Sheet over Tab always.
Great suggestion! So very true but also a bit tricky because when you are a beginner is hard to tell if you get a good teacher or not. I relied a lot on my intuition and feeling of progress and proper guidance on that. A good teacher should make your practice at home understandable and achievable and then everyone needs to build up the skills to know when is time for a change or when something isn't working. But most of all, you need to put in the work first. One can have the best teacher in the world but will never get results if you don't keep up with the work :)
Thanks for your comment Frank! Best wishes to you!
I went to music school and earned a degree in music theory, so reading sheet music is no problem. In fact in most cases I dislike it when there are both notes and tabs on the same page. That said, I find tabs helpful when working with a piece where 2 or 3 of the stings have been tuned differently, for example C-E-C-G-B-E. I can more quickly find the correct fret until I get the piece memorized and don't need the paper anymore.
Hi Carl! That's so true, when the tuning is changed it is indeed such a mental work to replace all the notes in the new frets in your mind... Your solution will be a big temptation to many readers here.... 😳😂
Molt bon video fet amb molt d'humor 😝
Wow. Your video/audio production skills get better and better! I love this format. Parece que el exceso de tiempo durante la pandemia ha presentado mas oportunidad para practicar sus habilidades - en ambos casos - la musica y la produccion.
I think tab is fine
typically I will have heard the music I want to play enough that I don't need the other information, rhythm and expression whatever else
fingering shouldn't take too long to figure out with a bit of experience
Great channel!! :)
Thank you so much!!!!
I taught myself how to read music with Frederick Noad's first book of guitar. I was sixteen and played on and off until I was 49 and in four years since I have improved, making me 53. Mel Bay is a good book to learn how to read music too. I learned first position and didn't worry about fingering. I now play first and second position pretty well. I only played pieces in the key of c and g until four years ago. I now play in c, g, d, a, e, and f. I don't know what all the symbols mean on sheet music being self taught, but I get by. I would recommend getting a teacher if you want to learn though I discovered that finding out how something is played instinctively is very nice.
Occasionally one encounters published music in tablature only, which is certainly annoying, but I’m also annoyed with published music with both standard notation and tablature. Now you might suppose that rather ungracious of me. Why not live and let live, just ignore the tablature if I dislike it? Because there are several glaring problems with this approach. The most egregious is that publications that do this invariably leave out essential information from the standard notation version: fingerings, expression marks, etc. In standard guitar notation if you want to specify that a particular note is to be played on a particular string, you write the string number with a circle around it. In tablature you are FORCED always to specify the string even when it’s arbitrary or a matter of no consequence. Thus the reader cannot tell how seriously to take an editor’s recommendations. The most obvious problem, perhaps, is just that it clutters up the page. There are more page turns, and it’s harder to read, jerking from one to the other.
I am in the tab camp...Sorry Merce 😂. I am more of a rock and roll/country Stratocaster guitarist so tabs are my best buddies. I understand 0 theory, so obviously that rules out learning to read music
makes sense, for certain type of music you will find many more scores in tabs rather than sheet music, I guess the only thing is to find reliable tab source to practice from :)
@@MerceFont Yeah Ultimate Guitar tabs is probably the best, certainly the most reliable anyway. Of course you do get some diabolical tabs added by some idiots who are clearly doing it to annoy everyone else
Because I learned to play piano and read sheet music, it is not at all difficult for me to read the sheet music (I am not saying I am in any way good or efficient in sightreading though 😩). However when it comes to guitar and the music happens to provide both tabs and sheet, I just can’t take my eyes from the tabs! You can argue that playing piano requires reading both treble and bass clef at the same time while playing classical guitar requires reading only one clef, but still I look for tabs intuitively👀 It’s an interesting phenomenon that I want to think about more deeply, hahaha🤣
And I like your mentioning how some great musicians can’t read the music. I can see that! I thought of some people I knew from a choir who are the very best singers among the choir members. They have the best voice and present the musicality really well but they just never acquire the ability to read the music!
I can recall to this temptation quite well! hahaha Indeed reading sheet music requires a bit of getting used to it. I also started of with tabs and in the beginning the simplicity of tabs makes you easily choose them over sheet music. In my case, the fact that I found constantly mistakes or things that made little sense in the tabs make me want to know better music so at the end I realised how much more I got from normal notation.
I had some experience with singer on that and is indeed a funny thing that if one is blessed with natural skills and a beautiful tone of voice many relay only on this and put aside to really dig deeper into music. Knowing less about music it doesn't make their voice sound worse but you can feel that they might struggle a lot more getting interpretational freedom and skills to adapt to different music they sing (I'm speaking here more on the classical side of singing).
All that just makes you realize how rich and full of possibilities music is, there is space for everyone, all styles and approaches 😃
Your explanation is perfect 😊
Thank you! 😃
I think sheet music is better because it has fingerings, dynamics, rhythms, it can translate to other instruments, and because very complicated pieces will be easier to read and put onto paper.
That's also a big point here. Once you know the music with the sheet music, you can also transport it from key, instrument or ensemble. It empowers you quite a lot more as a musician than only knowing where to put your fingers 😃 I guess that's also why it might be a bit harder to learn but for me it's totally worth the 'effort' 😊 Thank you for your comment Philip!!!
@@MerceFont no problem :)
Although I use standard notation myself, tabs can be useful at times.
Also most of the drawbacks about tabs that she mentions (missing information) is only because tab creators do not put that info on the tab. They can certainly add left-hand fingering, phrasing dynamics, etc., just as they do with standard notation.
I would say the main problem with tabs is the poor quality and the tendency to have a program create the tab, putting most notes in the 1st position and using open strings wherever possible.
Tabs plus net, is very good. As a kid, tabs were discouraged because it wasn't 'musical'. (Closer to learning typewriting than music so we were told.) Even then, if we were to get in to tabs (which was how most pop and rock were transcribed then along with chords, so we did), our teacher advised that we drill in the concept of efficient fingering of classical and not allow the 'pinky to sleep', lol. Today, I find it faster to get the mechanics with tabs and use clips of proper guitarists and tutorials to learn to play the musical information and to get ideas on the fingerings missing on the tabs.
I started acoustic guitar in 1967, classical guitar in 1974. There were no tabs, at least I was not aware of them. To one like me who started on music notation, learning tabs is like learning a foreign language. But I'm an old curmudgeon; I'm not going to throw a temper tantrum. If you need them, use them. But beware that if you start with tabs exclusively, then regular notation will become your foreign language.
Besides when you get to the pearly gates, would you dare admit to Andres Segovia that you used tablature? He would get so angry!! 😂
I'm a student of classical guitar, my teacher determine me to rely on the notes. I also play melody on electric guitar with my band and when I need to find out a new song I go with the tab. So, both of them are useful for me. Anyway, there are some classical guitar composed songs that also included with tab. I found it on another channel.
yes, tab can be very helpful in many situations indeed! I think its always best to know both! But as musical source of information, sheet music still is a more complete means of communication within composer-interpreter. Far from perfect but yet more exhaustive than tabs for many things.
@@MerceFont Definitely exhausting. 😁
Learning a classical guitar piece is very challenging but the result is very satisfactory. thanks for the reply
Excellent. Love the content! 🔥
Glad you enjoy it! :)
Me gustó cuando los muchachos rompían todo!! 😅jajajj!! Buenísimo Merce👍👏👏☝🍻🎉🎸🎶
hahahah gracias Leandro! ahora los chicos están limpiando todo lo que destrozaron.... 😂
@@MerceFont ¡¡a sí es!! (no hagan esto en sus casas niñ@s😉) "...ellos limpiaron todo y fueron felices con las partituras; FIN" 😅👍🌟⭐🌟⭐🌟👏👏👏🙏🎸🎶💃
@@RodrigoDe2 hahahaha
I play tons of lute music in my guitar, tab is the standard for lute music. I’m very grateful to have tablature for this reason.
I came a little late to see the video, but about the steel strings guitar, I'm totally agree, it also depends on what colour or what kind of sonorities are you looking for, however, the "Western guitar" has a different purposes and intentions #teamsteel haha just kidding. Thanks to share all this knowledge dear Merce :) abrazos!
exactly, different guitars came to exist for different purposes! Thank you for writing it so clearly! un abrazo Dario!! 🤗
I only read tabs and cant read normal sheet music. Being able to read tabs will help alot reading old fac simile's in french tabulatur for example :)
That's a sick blouse (shirt? Idk what it is called). Also, do you have plans for a tremolo tutorial?
hahaha thanks! Yes I will be doing some tremolo tutorial, already many people asked, to I'll try to bring it to the channel soon :) Always listening to your feedback 🤓
What's the best way for an older beginner guitarist to help with stiff and small fingers? Should I switch to a guitar like a cordoba fusion 12 that comes with a smaller neck for my small hands?
Can you please do tutorial on reading basic notes to play on guitar? Much appreciated, thanks. 🙏♥
There are hundreds of methods that can run you through the basics, but if you prefer the video format, I can indeed work on such a video for the future :)
TeamTabs all the way!
Vengan de a uno
Jaja loved this video Merce!! You are the coolest 😎
hahahaha aqui la gente es muy pacifica asi que estas a salvo! :D un abrazo y feliz navidad Mariano!
In the accordion world we have a form of tab notation called a griffschrift. In the harmonica world there is a notation using numbers, it's used a lot in China. The advantage of these systems is that they are less intimidating for beginners than the seemingly mysterious dots of musical notation. The disadvantage is that most people who learn these systems never understand what notes they are playing, and how that relates to the key or the structure of the music. And that's OK, if you're happy with that. But it means you will have difficulty to improvise, you will probably never learn to transpose, and even playing by ear and picking out tunes will be a sort of random thing. If you can read notation then the whole world of music opens up to you because you can take music sheets written for other instruments or even just fakebook "melody and chords" notation and use it to make your own arrangements.
There's a phrase in engineering "nothing beats knowing what you're doing", and it's just the same for music. If you know what notes you're playing and how they relate to the key you're in then that has to be a huge advantage over just hitting memorized patterns of physical movements.
For music after Bach, I'm sure it makes little sense to use tabs as something else than an aid to get you to memorize the music, or to remember fingering, and so on. But interpreting the music as well, I think, can be a lot easier if you just have the fingering to go with, while remembering the music (and then working with figuring out the fingering). Because as detailed as the scores will be, you're never really getting a perfect match between what is written and what the composer wanted (with the exception of Schoenberg?). Sheet music is, after all, a way to map music that was composed fairly accurately, not a way to accurately portray what the music should sound like.
So if you look at Brescianello's manuscripts, for example, you sort of see why tabs and a combination annotation was used very quickly: it's made this way so you should understand how to use the fingering to get to be able to play the music at all: i.e., the pieces are composed for a stringed instrument while the guy was sitting with an instrument, probably. And then he's put down the method for how to play it, rather than just the notes.
Different approach, and it can be very useful. So basically: both.
I've used tab in most of my guitar learning with the help of Guitar Pro 7. Its very helpful and not really expensive software. Currently I'm studying Cavatina using it. I also found out that classical guitarist playing Cavatina have also their own way of interpreting the music which is not exactly the way John Williams played it, take Anna Vidovic version for example.
Dude cavatina is no joke u wil soon find out what a torture that piece is on the left hand let me know your progress and till then give lots of love to your left hand thumb
very true! it sounds so sweet and charming but is not easy at all!
Amen !
The tabs thing...
It seems I am limited because I can't get the timing from sheet music, I need to hear the music... having heard it I have the phrasing so the tabs are fine.
You say about fingerings and approach... well the sheet music doesn't give fingerings or frets so you have the same problem. Its solved by experience... also given the notes repeat around the fretboard often I might decide rather than playing a note in one position I might play it on a different string to make something smoother. Tabs aren't always perfect but take a lot of work out of playing something by ear.
I'd also note that some musicians are good readers, others play entirely from memory/ear. Its only an elite group that can do both equally well. I'd fall into the second camp and don't have much interest in joining the first camp... my time studying would be better spent on music theory and I am too lazy on that also... I just like playing.
Look lets talk frankly ok ?
I can play any song by listening to it played nor only by one artist but many
So i can get the timing and dynamicks.
Fingering is second nature if it hurts its probably wrong. In truth using notations and tab in combination is a good way for a student to learn in the begining years
yes, many do use a combined system and that can be very helpful indeed!
I don`t hate tabs I just don`t use them much...they are very helpfully for figuring out complicated sections..I should probably refer to them more often..the Segovia scale book has tabs..if it was good enough for him it`s good enough for me
indeed tabs are not bad per se, they can be very useful from time to time :)
I can just not focus on this when im hearing the Dankpods music in the background
Classical guitarists know how to read notes. Therefore there is no need for TAB. However, I found that some arrangers are not very meticulous with their arrangements. There are occasions where the positions are not shown. When that happens the TAB is helpful, if it provided.
Two reasons why classical guitarists hate Tabs. First, you should always figure out your own fingerings and I often play the same phrase in different positions to vary the tone. Secondly, it takes up twice as much space so a two page piece suddenly has a totally unnecessary page turn.
I love classical guitar
Tabs vs Notation? I use both. If the piece was originally written in tablature (like lute music) I will read from tabs. But notation is too useful not to learn.
I'm new a solid year in .... maybe my mind just don't like it, but I hate tab. I'm better off noodling... not good practice, but staring at a tab for hours makes me want to get a flame thrower and toast my sheets of tab to ashes LOL. I feel like i am a robot connecting dots! It never sounds good. I know it's probably a necessary evil... lol
Greetings Ms Font I have a question, how many people you know are able to sight read ANY musical score on the spot at real time? Some people who play for the orchestras claim that they can sight read on the spot. Frankly I don't believe them unless they prove it in front of me coz I find this impossible for the average eyes and brains. Besides modern music could be technically crazy. However if you say thats its possible for the average musician to sight read anything on the spot at real time please justify.
Hi Hulio! Well, orchestral players are very much used to sight read. The good thing for them is that usually (not always but very often) they have only one voice and they practice reading new parts on a very regular basis. So, yes, they can sight read a large part of repertoire without much trouble. Sight reading thought doesn't mean play it amazing. They can just follow through all together but from here to make an ensemble sound great there is a lot of work to do. High complexity pieces, sight reading gives a too poor of a result even for a rehearsal, so they often do it on pieces they see that's on their reach to read comfortably.
On the other hand you've got harpsichord players, piano players (mostly the ones whose job is to accompany singers, violinists, flutists, etc...), organists, etc... they are also super good at sight reading and I find this even harder because they've got sometimes really big chords and several voices to read all together.
Maybe, the 'solo repertoire' is the hardest to sight read because of the technical difficulty (solo repertoire was aimed for virtuosos), but on a slow tempo every player should be able to do it. If you get to practice sight reading on a regular basis you get progressively faster. It's not rocket science, just practice practice practice ;)
If you want something brain challenging check the harpsichord players who used to improvise figured bass on baroque music. That's really a crazy mental music workout!!! hahaha!
Merce Font .Eu toco por acordes cifras até sei o significado de campo harmônico etc.Porem o que eu mais queria é saber sobre a escrita musical entender e praticar acho bonito mais me esbarro na dificuldade de encontrar na internet pessoas que ensinam de fato sobre partitura e não fiquem enrolando.Sou do Brasil .Abraços e até a proxima.
Hi Nilson! I googled translated your comment, so hopefully you can understand my answer as well :) Yes, many people focus on chords, or technique, or any other concrete aspect of music making. if you are looking for a teacher that will guide you on the overall picture of music (structure, harmony, melody, compositional choices, etc...) you should maybe find a guitar teacher that knows well guitar and knows all the 'theory' behind the music so that he/she can coach you on that 😊
@@MerceFont Obrigado por responder: A questão é o tempo como eu trabalho o fator disponibilidade fica dífícil ,estou procurando na Internet mesmo porque os horários são flexiveis ,já encontrei alguns mais a maioria é de lingua estrangeira e fica díficil a compreensão.Obrigado e continue postando videos abraços Merce.
Tabs are my comfort zone, but im learning how to read sheet music! Currently I use both! Tabs to quickly memorize the left hand, and then use sheet music to know the rhythm and the right hand.
That's also a smart approach Cody! It might make the transition from one to another very smooth and complete, thanks for writing!
1) The term “sheet music” does not mean music written in standard notation in contradistinction to tablature. It refers, rather, to music published in single sheets, in contradistinction to folios. Individual hit pop songs are traditionally published as sheet music, that is, in single sheets. 2) If you want to use both standard notation and tablature, just be aware that you are normally allowed to play a given note on any string you like, but you can’t change the note itself without changing the actual music. The solutions proffered in tablature versions are often poor solutions. Take them cum grano salis.
As a lifelong classical - rock (and somewhat jazz) guitarist; 1. There's an impedance mismatch between tabs & classical guitar. 2. And there's an impedance mismatch between rock/folk/jazz/country-etc. and sheet music. Whazzat mean? The world of classical composition starts and ends with notation. But the world of non-classical music is more an aural (play-by-ear) tradition - which is "practically" impossible to notate - with (often) an underlying triplet feel that would make notation really (REALLY) hard to read - but which - cake to play by ear
Very interesting comment JS! Indeed non-classical music has all these 'flows' or 'grooves' as you mention that would make the score a huge mess to notate to the exact precise value. But you a funny thing? There is exactly the same problem with classical music. Baroque music coming from different regions was performed SOO different than notated, but, as they knew how it was supposed to sound, they just notated a straight line of 16th notes and then performers would to their thing. Different 'grooves' were performed different depending on the musical context and the type of dance that was. In fact, that remains valid (but with very different outcomes/feels) with later music (classical, romantic). The fact that is notated shouldn't mean that you have to follow it as if you were a machine just reproducing the sounds. Notation is our most effective system to pass on the composer idea indeed, but far from precise. Therefore it takes knowledge to understand how every figuration and music style should, or is/was intended to sound like. Thank you for bringing up such topics, is always interesting to read other people thoughts! 😊
@@MerceFont Ah musicology - I wonder how many classical guitarists even at your world-class-level have studied that? To your point, the "Viennese Lift" - that orchestral players do, for Strauss - that provided this: wdced.com/2012/11/perfect-10-the-viennese-waltz-by-marianka-swain/
@@jsguitargeek1432 "Ah musicology - I wonder how many classical guitarists even at your world-class-level have studied that? "
At a professional level their training is badly deficient if they are not at least aware of what Srta. Font relates.
The only thing I hate about tabs is that it kinda hurt my ear training
😂😂😂😂
What is the best way to learn the notation please?
The best way? - Learn with a competent teacher and start to read notation from the very beginning of learning your instrument.
But that is not always possible for everybody.
If you already have some playing skills and are now first coming to standard notation then be prepared to have the patience to go back to basics of playing, relearn how to walk before running.
Get a good teacher or at least use a recommended published guitar method that allows you to progress step by step. No shortcuts. Read as much music as you can at the appropriate level you are at.
Provide you the " le primera lecciones of guitarra" of Julio Sagreras book. In this book Julio guide you study after study, note by note teaching you, learning you. An other good method is "La chitarra volante" From Paradiso
Merce, me encantan tus vídeos.
Muchas gracias Miguel!!! un abrazo!
What do you think about"Alip ba ta" sister?this guy is a very popular finger style guitarist on RUclips,many reaction on Alip video said this guy is a genious,,
hi Jia! I didn't know him, so I searched his channel and he is indeed a very talented player. I have no clue about his background, but if he never got real training with a teacher or not, but either way, he is incredible natural with the instrument and has a very well curated approach to music! ⭐️ Thanks for discovering me something new Jia! :)
@@MerceFont guitarist "queen" has apreciate Alip skill and upload Alip video on his Facebook , Helloween band apreciate Alip too,many top guitarist arround the world blown away by Alip skill!
@@MerceFont cant you imagine,only forklift driver,self taught skill,cheap guitar,and smartphone camera,no fancy and expensive tools at all included!
how can you possibly be part of the world of music, which includes instruments other than the guitar, if your idea of "writing" music is drawing a picture of your instrument (essentially tab)? Interestingly, guitar chamber music (guitar with other instruments) first started to flourish (early 19th c.) once guitar music started being written with the same system (regular notation) as other instruments. Besides, music is essentially pitches & durations - which is the essence of Western notation (not tab). And notation, minus fingering, allows for someone's or perhaps your own (if you're qualified) fingering to be used or tried/modified.
There are those who will always choose and defend an inferior system on the erroneous grounds of it being easier and do so without even understanding the concepts involved, this is because the full picture is revealed best to those who master the more comprehensive system or both systems.
Why is easiness an "erroneous ground?"
@@Anriuko The role of a comprehensive musical notation is to communicate musical information in a manner that allows for as much information as possible required to perform it accurately, communicating the writer's intent. It also allows for harmonic and theoretical information about the music to be communicated at a glance.
Tablature is greatly inferior to standard western musical notation for that purpose. It allows only a miniscule fraction of the musical information to be conveyed. Those promoting it over standard notation are the ones making the assumption that easier is superior for this purpose., an erroneous equivalency.
Guitar and lute tabulatures (earlier spelling) have been used for six centuries.
For solo guitar music they went obsolete circa late 18th century as they simply weren't up to the demands of modern music.
They are having a bit of a resurgence due to popularity of electric guitar and the often musically illiterate self-taught folk and rock music styles, all accelerated by mass electronic communication.
I hope you found that helpful.
@@rjlchristie Apologies for being so slow to respond to your well thought-out answer. In terms of the capacity to convey accurate musical information, the standard sheet music is superior. I agree there. I guess where we would disagree is how important is that accuracy for a musician. I'm self-taught on piano, relatively recently picked up guitar a few times, and I've never been that interested in the exactness of what the composer's vision in any quantitative sense. My normal procedure was to hear a good piece somewhere, then listen to many different renditions of it, getting the sheet music, and then playing everything like I thought it "ought to" be played.
I never performed and didn't have to need to meet the audience's expectations, meaning I was totally free to interpret the music in any way. I've butchered countless pieces, and I'd dare to say I've also created brilliance out of some. I'm intimate with music and I often find myself listen to renowned masters of the art play a rendition of some of my favorite pieces, and my genuine thought is; "He doesn't get it." Some of them try to follow the composer's (written) vision to a tee, some try to be valid in other ways while diverging from "the form." Also, all this accurate preservation of "the true intent" of the composer seems to be mainly a Western thing. Many other cultures rely on pattern-based improvisation with their own sets of rules.
With this kind of thinking, I don't see easiness as an "erroneous ground" as it can actually help people get to musicality faster if you just show them how to make the correct sequence of sounds and let them imagine the rest. Who knows, the next thing they might do is to improvise around the theme (granted they have the technique to experiment).
#teamtabs. Fight me
tabs don’t work, hard to mentally hear
I like think the best tabs are on songsterr
The question has not been well posed. It is not tabs OR sheet music, it is tabs and sheet music that contains the most information.
Team Sheet Music!
🙌🏻
#sheetmusic all the way! 🙂
Just found this and gotta ask. Nails or no nails? #TeamSor or #TeamSegovia lol
Standard notation is the 'lingua franca' among musicians. Show TABS to a flautist or violinist and they have no idea what to play. With the exception of Early Music, TABS are useless.
Exactly. I guess the fact that we have a huge amount of genres of music that include guitar made that naturally people rescued the simplicity of tabs for those who feel a bit scared of music notation. But yes, its funny that if you want to learn any other instrument it's out of the question whether you learn to read in the 'normal system' or not, and in guitar we have always the question 'but do you want to read sheet music or you want to stick to tabs'?😂 little perks of playing an awesome instrument i guess 🤷🏻♀️😅
This is a good point. If you read tablature only, you will not be able to communicate musically with other instrumentalists-at least not effectively. Tablature is absurdly specific and suffocatingly insular.
#SheetMusic claramente pa
I'm team sheet music, because i play a lot of other instruments
Nice to see we have such a gentile community here......I feared we might need peace keeping forces.....thankfully world war III didn't erupt......but all in all.....whatever gets you through the night......as for myself......guess I lucked up ......was taught (forced really😡😡😡grrrrr.....ha ha....but really thankful I was😉😃😁) to read sheet music at 11.....and it stuck.....unlike the art of happily doing dishes ( I have been known to fly them out the window into the backyard and just buy new one's)......Oh god.....you had to remind me......I bought strings weeks and weeks ago for my guitars and there still sitting right here......glad to see I'm not the only procrastinator here.....so good at procrastinating......I broke a string on my favorite classical weeks ago and almost cry everyday..... I know!!!!.....Merce....let's have a race and see who gets it done first.....that way we'll both get it done sooner perhaps😃😄😉.....but you say...."GO!!!".....yes.....see I'm procrastinating already🤣😆🤣!!!!! Always good to answer random questions ....might cover aspects we don't think of..... as we all don't think the same thankfully ( there might be mountains of broken dirty dishes all over the earth😛😜😝😲😕!!!!) As always....Love and Respect💖🎸💖🎼💖🎸💖🎼💖🎸💖🎼💖SM
hahahaha the picture of you smashing the dishes out... it kind of inspires me to do the same! LOL! 😆
By the way, I accept the challenge, lets see who procrastinates the longest changing the strings... be careful, I am good on that, and the guitar in the video is not my main guitar so... good luck hehe 😈
Wish you an awesome Sunday Stephen!
A Gentleman is a person who can play accordion but doesn't!
I'll venture that the majority of electric guitarist especially Rock and Metal musicians aren't able to read note, and success in Rock and Metal usually has almost nothing to do with that skill. Eddie Van Halen is the best example that don't know how to read note, much of what Eddie played too technical that couldn't even be written with traditional music notation - only guitar tablature can properly instruct someone on how to play Ed's stuff. There at least 65 electric guitar techniques alone right now, not include like other tool yet like whammy bar, whammy pedal and other effect pedal that provide the difference technique and sound, There also one great composer who can't read note is YANNI. His compose is quite complex and bizarre. Kind of Frank Zappa or Jimmy Hendrix of orchestra.
so very true, and a very insightful point of view! Indeed sometimes music comes before notation and for such guitarists tabs is the best way to go about it! Thank you for your input, I found it very valuable to not forget the other side of the coin! 🤗
I love reading shitmusic. It's my favorite type of music.
😂😂😂😂
Gonna have to disagree on the tabs argument that they are bereft of anything besides numbers on corresponding strings. While there are a lot of bad tabs out there, there are just as many good ones that include the sheets above the tabs with all the markings, positions, phrasings, articulation, etc. There is a ton of standard repertoire on sites like Classical Guitar Shed that are written this way, and include tutorials within their sites on how to read the sheets properly.
Unfortunately, the bad tabs are often the face of the franchise when it comes to this argument, and that very notion of sheet reading being necessary ultimately serves as deterrent to those coming from a Rock/Metal background who would love to learn Classical and Flamenco guitar, but are used to, if not dependent on tabs, Guitar Pro, and other tools of that world to learn their music. So, as an influencer, why not teach prospective players what to look for in good tablature, and where to find it rather than demanding people adhere to an off-putting, outdated, and quite frankly draconian tradition?
what is so off-putting and outdated about sheet music? Millions of musicians around the world happily use this draconian system. It's just a method of communication, in this case music. It's only really guitarists in certain styles (rock / metal / country / blues or whatever) that have a big thing for tab and an allergic reaction to sheet music, locking themselves in a box.
@@jasongultjaeff9397 perhaps I should preface this rebuttal with the fact that I'm a player who does know how to read music, and can also read for the guitar. However, I do have an extensive background playing Rock and Metal, and know all too well how my fellow guitarists in that world prefer to approach the instrument.
So, think about how many combinations of note values you have to memorize to read sheet for the guitar. Most modern electric guitars have 24 frets, so that is 20 positions x 6 strings with 4 notes per string (6 × 4 × 20 = 480). That's 480 combinations of note values to memorize. Classical guitars with 19 frets will have 360. Now, compare that number to a piano, which has only 88. That's a very intimidating journey, even for a seasoned musician.
Tabs give the player a much easier way to visually organize the written copy. Historically, multi-string fretted instruments (guitar, lute, theorbo) were written in tab before the musical elitists of the ~1700s demanded everything be written in standard notation. An attitude which has cancerously persisted into modern times.
And while learning to read score is an important part of music, and should be learned, it is no longer a requirement for the average person to pick up.the instrument and play. So why keep the barrier, and make Classical music unobtainable for the average guitarist? That doesn't make any sense.
This isn't the 18th, 19th, or even early 20th Centuries anymore. Very few guitarists nowadays have a desire to read standard notation when 90% of everything out there for the guitar is written in tablature. And therefore, it is Classical guitar that needs to adapt and make itself accessible to everyone living in the modern era in order to keep itself from becoming a dying art. Not the other way around.
Well, I came from a rock and metal background, but made the switch to classical, which meant learning to read standard notation from the basics and it's the best thing I ever did for my playing. Sure, it took some humility but was well worth it. It's only improved my playing with no negatives.
I feel with your second paragraph misses the point that sheet music for classical guitar is often annotated with hand position and string numbering within the position for notes (e.g I, II, III, IV, etc and a 3 or 5 might indicate that a certain note is played on that corresponding string within the position). I've got sheet music that covers crazy fast transitions up and down the neck (Villa-Lobos for example) and it all works fine. Advanced players may work their own fingerings out, which is great.
Importantly, outside of timing and note values which tab does poorly or not at all, I find the flow of sheet music for fast and complex music so much better. You can visually see the music go higher or lower, etc. This is better visually than 15, 17, 18, 12 etc, etc on a tab. Personally, classical can get very complex and sheet music can potentially give you the information you need. I think it gets more complex than the most complex rock and metal, which is often very fast, but repetitive.
It might not be the 18th, 19th & 20th centuries anymore, but I can still read Mary Shelley's Frankenstein or Bram Stokers Dracula or HG Wells the War of the Worlds. The writing may seem outdated with old turns of phrase, etc, but I can still read it. Their ideas are still being communicated as the language (in those examples, English) is the same. It's the same with sheet music. Older and idiosyncratic systems of Tab may still be out there, but they will not be common. The work will be transcribed to modern sheet music or converted to modern tab. In the future, modern sheet music I'm sure will more or less look the same, but modern tab stay the same? Or will it change as the guitar and the players and the technology changes. That is all debatable, but the point I'm making is a standard notation communicates ideas better over time and around the world in my opinion.
Lastly, where I live, classical guitar seems to be doing ok, superficially perhaps not popular (but is jazz, blues, rock, metal?) but has a loyal following, often made of players of varying levels. It seems quite healthy in its own way. Your experience may differ, but the last classical guitar performance I went to had a larger audience than the last local metal concert. :)@@CascadianExotics
If you want to play classical, learn to read, if you only want to play Metallica songs on your electric guitar tabs are fine.
I use the standard notation to help inform what ever may be missing in the TAB, rhythms, articulations. You can also just write in fingerings, barre, etc.
alternate tunings, capos also make standard notation a nightmare to sight read.... TAB wins! ...with the help of standard notation.
'TAB wins! ...with the help of standard notation' hahahaha thats cheating!!! hahaha well no, actually if it works for you thats all it counts 😊
@@MerceFont hey! they've been tab'in for centuries now, don't hate the playa that knows how to make it a viable shortcut. :-)
@@brookeaday9423 hahaha no hate, if it works it works! :)
Why classical guitarist hate tabs?
Really answer : Because after spending years of perfect their sight reading, they can't stand all the noobs can play in 1 go with tabs.
All of the cons of tabs can be fix if you get more detail tabs. You are talking about basic tabs, which are not very popular now
Im team lute tabs
You don’t need tabs or know how to read music to play guitar. Period
Oh my god!. This argument again? I read standard notation. I compose (classical guitar music) in TAB. Why? Because it works. There is nothing that is written in standard notation that can't be duplicated with a version of tab. With Tab, I don't have to draw little circles above the staff to indicate which position I'm playing from. I don't have to worry about accidentals -I know what key I'm playing in. When I am finished composing a piece, I then put it to standard notation.
If I am learning a piece in standard notation where there is a difficult and confusing few bars, I will write it out on staff paper in TAB until it is burned into my brain and hands.
Anyone who wants to become more than just a classical guitarist "enthusiast" should definitely learn standard notation though. But in my opinion TAB definitely has a place in todays world for classical guitar. Classical guitar is difficult and IMO anything that can accelerate the process even just a bit is a good thing.
Learn both but lean heavily on learning standard notation is my shout out loud. But don't be so quick to poo poo TAB. Peace friends; now go practice!
"IMO anything that can accelerate the process even just a bit is a good thing."
Short cuts lead to long delays.
@@rjlchristie Sometimes.... I could cut off that wonky thread with my teeth, or maybe just reach into my tool box for a pair of scissors and do it ez squeezy with a whole lot less effort with the same result (maybe even better?). I have been having this discussion with musicians for years; most who are a whole lot better players than moi lol. It never resolves 😅! Anywho... I respect your opinion friend, after all , we are just talking here. Peace to you and best wishes for your future endeavers! -R
@@robertd3564 "There is nothing that is written in standard notation that can't be duplicated with a version of tab."
that so inaccurate it could be regarded as disingenuous.
I have never seen contrapuntal and polyphonic textures rendered accurately in tab. Tab notations by their nature do not make clear distinctions between voices nor notate note duration within such textures beyond a rudimentary level. Perhaps you may have an example of such, if so, enlighten us and demonstrate that it is not an aberration, because such a system is not in general use.
Your thread cutting example, although asinine, is just an example of choosing the best tool for the job. Historically, tab fell out of general use because it was not up to the job or at the very least was inferior to standard notation at conveying the creator composer's intent.
Moaning about string indications etc clutter up standard notation is equally asinine. Such markings are unnecessary in standard notation and in most cases only supplied as a marketing tool to sell the product to people who haven't yet attained a sound working knowledge of the instrument. On occasion positional markings and such like have a use for reasons of sonority or technical execution. No big deal and no impediment to reading a standard score.
I'd be interested to know whether you have a market for your "classical guitar music" rendered in tab.
@@rjlchristie You have never seen contrapuntal and polyphonic textures rendered accurately in tab because most tab is crap. It doesn't have to be though. We are not talking about music theory here, we are talking about reading music. What is notation anyway? -it is heiroglyphics on paper used to express musical concepts. Numbers or dots on paper? Whats the difference when you think about it -but you don't THINK, you just blah blah blah.
What is it about some people that are so hell bent about being 'right' that they don't LISTEN? What part about "lean heavily on standard notation, but don't be so quick to poo poo TAB" don't you understand? TAB HAS IT"S PLACE.
The garbage tab you find on the internet is just that. The tab you find in music books that has standard notation written above it on a separate stave is better. Standard notation is just that -standardized. Tab isn't (but it should be). Nobody bothers to flesh out the tab because all the info you need is contained within the standard notation. The version of tab I use is a kind of hybrid and contains all the info you need for a piece of music. Crescendo
@@robertd3564
Tab is inferior on most respects to standard notation - even if it gets the note duration extras that you attempt to tag on, in an effort to emulate one of the core elements that is inherent within standard notation.
Varying scordatura don't justify using tab systems ether. Feeling you need one just advertises that you are unfamiliar with your instrument and the tuning used.
Yes, there are people that are more far more qualified than you in regard to classical guitar and the demands it makes on its notation systems. Having a university degree in performance and a 35 year background in teaching and public performance might make me one of them.
Being tab dependent is similar to painting using a Paint-by-Numbers pack.
It is a fair to conclude from your comments that you have a limited appreciation of performance of contrapuntal textures and possibly of polyphonic movement in general. Tab's inherent weakness in this area is one of the primary reasons it was superseded.
BTW, the subject of correct rendition of contrapuntal texture, particularly in Baroque lute music is very involved: e.g. what is implied, what is not, what is executable, what is not. It does not come down to either side of a debate over tab vs std notation. I have no objection to using tab for and on the lute, it was after all, the historical practice. However, tabs shortcomings introduce idiosyncratic peculiarities that are not strictly correct. These can even be quite charming. The same effects can easily be incorporated into a std notated transcription for guitar and in doing so such discrepancies also become easily identifiable, a bonus for an educated musician. When contrapuntal anomalies appear in a tab score they are effectively hidden.
Those paint-by-number players who just place a finger on an indicated fret and think the job is done are never going produce fine music.
So,.....if 'interpreting works from composers', sure you need notation to help understand and interpret correctly, but most of the great works have been done x1000. It's not like we are all individual archaeological scientists dusting prints on a fossil all by ourselves, trying to figure out these mysterious clues that can only be solved with our notational decoder ring. Play music, does it sound good? Does any set of ears really care how they got there?
Well, I guess it depends on the level of precision/detail you are aiming at with your playing. Tabs lack a lot on this 'details' which is nothing wrong for some type of music as it is not intended to go to this direction, in fact, lots of electric guitar music is more comfortable to work with tabs.
Yet, for some other kind of music, standard notation is better as it includes the very basic information we need to know, and from this starting point, there is a lot of room for changes and freedom for you to play (eg, fingering, color, technical changes, positions, etc...). For the music I play (classical guitar) I wouldn't rely on 'copying other players by ear' without knowing the score as then you are forever stuck to imitate other guitarists voice, artistry and mistakes, which I would find very poor and boring as a musician 😂
@@MerceFont I agree most tabs are pretty sparse on details and should often be augmented with many things we use in standard notation. Also, don't discount imitation. It's just another tool to interpretation and can still lead to originality and creativity. The strict classical canon is a pretty restrictive zone for creativity and new ideas. If I had started with classical guitar I probably would have taken the time to read at my current level (g5, g6), but I arrived after decades of electric guitar and bands. I can't put that genie back in the bottle now.
#SHEETMUSIC
🐨
#teamtabs
I hate Tabs and i’m not a classical artist
Great explanation of the TABS v sheet music.
Although the biggest reason is musicians that play other instruments won't make fun of you! /s
musicians that play other instruments aren't nearly cool enough to make fun of me. haters!
ahhahahahaha
😂 well, that can be a motivation to learn sheet music as well hahaha
Please stop calling standard notation “sheet music”. That is not what the term “sheet music” means.
are you French??
Nop monsieur, I'm catalan ;)
Everything that was said about "tabs" is directly referring to the "tabs" that you're offered by a simple google search. The sheet music is usually just as bad in these cases. I have developed my own tab writing style over the course of 25 years that is a result of combining the best attributes of tab styles from guitar publicationsm. I.e. The Japanese Young Guitar Magazine has published accurate hand-written tabs for over 50 years. Other mags such as Guitar Player in the 80's always had tabs in the publication, such as hand-written tabs by Steve Vai. Well written out tabs for classical guitar is almost impossible to come by. "Complete (pro) tabulature" - as I like to call my style - includes everything that you mentioned in this video as usually lacking. I play piano and read music, but for guitar I completely translate it in my head into the motions of playing. If you know the names of every note on the fretboard, seeing a tab "number" on a certain string translates immediately into the note - they're supposed to work together (note name and placement on fretboard), so this definitely is a good way to develop the working knowledge of music theory on the guitar. Playing from tabs you make it possible to see the shapes on the fretboard. Good fingerings can better be figured out (literally) using tabs. Once it's worked out, you can add all the other information, all the rhythms, right and left hand fingerings, the dynamics, the articulation, agogics, everything in a much more readable format. Once you're done with it, practice is a sinch as your practice time isn't dedicated to anything other than learning to play what you have already figured out.