This totally makes sense. But how do you learn the “musicianship” if all we’ve ever used is tablature? I know my basic chords a few of the major scales, and I can even tell you how many sharps a few keys have. So it’s not a lot of theory. But I can read tabs with the best of them. So how do I go from a low level of musicianship to understanding it well enough to work out my own songs? What I need to learn specifically is a mystery to me.
It's a connection to the guitar which we need to develop. The first step is generally being able to find the tonal centre - the note which feels like its the root of the key and resolves tension. You can do it by closing your eyes, play along to any song and play any note on the low E string and make a concious decision to take it higher or lower until you find the right one. After trying them all, you may find 3 which all 'kind of' sound right to you. Shoot an email to scott@scottguitarteacher.com and I can give you more details.
But how do we learn to play the song "right"? Some of us (who may be used to piano) are the type who like to play to the sheet music which we feel is "correct" notes, so playing all willy nilly without tab will be hard!
Playing from Tabs doesn't mean it'll be right. It's a minefield of misinformation and badly transcribed music. Start by working out simple tunes, nursey rhymes, christmas tunes and then progress to chord progressions. Let me know what genres of music you want to play and I can give you more specific direction on what themes are important to identify.
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This totally makes sense. But how do you learn the “musicianship” if all we’ve ever used is tablature? I know my basic chords a few of the major scales, and I can even tell you how many sharps a few keys have. So it’s not a lot of theory. But I can read tabs with the best of them. So how do I go from a low level of musicianship to understanding it well enough to work out my own songs? What I need to learn specifically is a mystery to me.
It's a connection to the guitar which we need to develop. The first step is generally being able to find the tonal centre - the note which feels like its the root of the key and resolves tension. You can do it by closing your eyes, play along to any song and play any note on the low E string and make a concious decision to take it higher or lower until you find the right one. After trying them all, you may find 3 which all 'kind of' sound right to you. Shoot an email to scott@scottguitarteacher.com and I can give you more details.
But how do we learn to play the song "right"? Some of us (who may be used to piano) are the type who like to play to the sheet music which we feel is "correct" notes, so playing all willy nilly without tab will be hard!
Playing from Tabs doesn't mean it'll be right. It's a minefield of misinformation and badly transcribed music. Start by working out simple tunes, nursey rhymes, christmas tunes and then progress to chord progressions. Let me know what genres of music you want to play and I can give you more specific direction on what themes are important to identify.