Tabs

admin · Post by **admin** » Fri Aug 25, 2006 5:49 am

If you build a tab ... they will come.

longhouse · Post by **longhouse** » Fri Aug 25, 2006 7:14 am

Tabs, like any information, are only worth the quality of their content.

Bad information can lead you astray (and away from your goal). Good information is always beneficial.

Tabs are another great tool to use in unlocking facets of music. But they are only one tool. You must also develop your ears and learn to improvise. Theory and sight-reading are great too -but not necessary requirements for everyone.

Cheers!

admin · Post by **admin** » Fri Aug 25, 2006 7:29 am

Great comments Noel.

I am reminder of a story about B. B. King. A fellow musician was said to have asked of BB, what chords are you playing in that song.

As the story goes, BB replied, "I don't no, I don't know no chords."

Whether true or not, the value of a good ear cannot be emphasized enough.

captsandwich · Post by **captsandwich** » Fri Aug 25, 2006 8:07 am

Peter, I believe that was Bono and the Edge he was talking to when the were doing When Love Comes to Town for a live show, maybe Rattle and Hum even.

winston · Post by **winston** » Fri Aug 25, 2006 8:19 am

I switched to playing totally by ear and "feel" in 1965.

My ability to sight read and write music notation has suffered as a consequence. My ability to play guitar however, actually improved dramatically within a few short weeks of the switch.

I can see how tabs can provide a good starting point if you are unable to find it on your own. I am not sure that they will do much for me since I can usually pick out my parts fairly quickly just by listening to the arrangement.

westtexasrickenbacker · Fri Aug 25, 2006 8:41 am

I like tabs as a short cut to when you don't have the recording. Well, let me add, my ear isn't that great, so tabs are very helpful. However, many of them are notated quite badly.

This is a good website: www.activebass.com

Good for instruction and practice mostly.

squirefan01 · Post by **squirefan01** » Sun Sep 03, 2006 5:33 pm

I have compiled a library of tabs, all from the net. I use www.bassmasta.net, www.fretplay.com, etc, which have some good ones and some really really bad ones.

I guess I got lucky when I first started looking for these, and found some good ones. For instance, the timing of this one (Beatles - A Day in the Life) was excellent I thought....

http://www.fretplay.com/tabs/b/beatles/a_day_in_the_life-btab.shtml

...I'd be interested to hear more experienced players' thoughts on this example.

Other times there is no feeling for how the notes flow at all, or they are just dead wrong.

So do you guys try to do your own tabs then, using the software mentioned above, and not bother with anybody else's?

jdogric12 · Post by **jdogric12** » Mon Sep 04, 2006 4:45 am

On a few rare occasions my eyes have peeped a tab or two, usually while thumbing through a guitar mag on a friend's coffee table.

They are no replacement for the elegant hundreds-of-years-old notation system we already have in Western music, but it offers some things traditional music notation does not.

First, it is pretty simple to understand in comparison, and great for those who have neither the time nor desire to learn the more complicated traditional system.

Second, it is custom made for the guitar. So you have things like fret numbers on specific strings and bends and shakes and so on. When I see a quarter note on the top line of the treble clef, I have no idea whether I should play the D string on the 15th fret, or the G string on the 10th fret, and decide on my own, sometimes missing out on a much easier fingering simply because I didn't think of it.

I don't see myself ever embracing tabs, but I'm not going to be some kind of Puritan and dog them. If I ever need to learn Jimi Hendrix's version of the Star Spangled Banner, I won't be reading it from a treble clef!

paulv63 · Post by **paulv63** » Mon Sep 04, 2006 6:55 am

I find tabs to (as Brian says) get in the ballpark. On many occasion they are wrong.

wayang · Post by **wayang** » Mon Sep 04, 2006 11:56 am

I did half a tab at the 1992 Icestock...

What a day.

expomick · Post by **expomick** » Mon Sep 04, 2006 7:20 pm

Just one calorie!

Gotta agree...tabs often get me close to what a song should be, then I gotta fumble for the rest of it...often wonder what a person was listening to???

westtexasrickenbacker · Wed Sep 06, 2006 9:15 am

I'll have to check out Fretplay.com

I have bassmasta.com bookmarked. It is very hit and miss. Mostly miss.

Glad to have at least a little bit of an idea how the bass goes when it's an obscure song, I don't have the recording, and have no idea what the original bassline was, so I like tabs a lot in that regard.

Much more quickly accessible than sheet music, too!

firstbassman · Post by **firstbassman** » Wed Sep 06, 2006 10:08 am

Put me on the side of “they are helpful but often wrong.”
They are especially helpful when I need to learn an old signature bass lick. Often the bass in old (i.e.; 60s) records was buried in the mix. And I’m trying to learn it off of a 96 bit rate mp3 that somebody made from an old scratched LP. At least the TAB gives me a framework and usually gets me started in the right place. And then I can figure out the rest by myself.

For guitar chords on old folk songs – sometimes I wonder what the person was listening to . . . the simplest songs! I remember, when I was first learning to play, I found two online TABs for Kisses Sweeter Than Wine, and Will The Circle Be Unbroken. I tried following the chords and they didn’t sound ANYTHING like the songs. I finally went to my guitar teacher and it turned out the chords were completely off … in any key.

Oh, and about: “As the story goes, BB replied, "I don't no [sic], I don't know no chords."

I’ve also heard that story. And BB might have said it. But I have a three-video set of “Instructional” BB King stuff and he knows his chords just fine. I wish I didn’t “know no chords” like him.

admin · Post by **admin** » Tue May 08, 2007 2:14 am

Brian: Did you move ahead with Guitar Pro?