Re: Educate Me - What Key is This?

Jim Carr wrote:
jeffb wrote:

Don't you enjoy improving? Everyone should have a hobby they've given themselves permission to suck at but for me it ain't playing the bass and if it is for you just say so and I'll leave you alone in the future.

Please consider ignoring me anyway, because that's just a rude comment to make in a friendly discussion.

No, that wasn't rude, it was blunt. Calling you a fucking crybaby would be rude. But since this is a "friendly" discussion I won't.

My problem with tab is that it doesn't show rhythm so you need the recording to learn the tune *anyway*.

First, just about any tab you *buy* includes standard notation, so there's your rhythm. Second, the free Internet tab examples I gave had accuracy to the eighth note. I've seen it written to the sixteenth. So, save for some things like triplets, tab notation *can* tell you what you need to know without the recording.

If you can decipher the rhythm provided with tab why'n the hell not just use standard notation? Reading rhythms is the hard part of that. Think about it for a second....no, really.

And if you had any experience with standard notation you would have come back at me with the fact that not all of that is very accurate when it comes to the kind of music you're using tab for.

Most importantly even if you have standard notation, you've probably got a recording anyway.

Not at all true. I've learned a lot of standards from fake books without a recording.

If you have the recording and you cop it WITHOUT the tab your ears will improve and that will have a noticeable positive impact on things like your ability to improvise and to learn tunes faster and more accurately.

That's not in dispute. It also applies to standard notation. Actually, more so because in some cases the tab has no rhythm like you said. The
least amount of mental effort is standard notation with a recording. Tab requires more effort. No notation at all requires the most.

Wha? Stop thinking standard notation WITH a recording...that's not how it works. With standard notation you don't NEED a recording. And quite honestly when I learn a tune I don't want Sonny Rollins' interpretation of it I want to know the composer's original intent and I'll give it MY interpretation.

No matter *which* method you use, you learn something. But you will learn any given piece faster with accurate tab to go along with the recording and/or standard notation. For some people *that* is fun. They enjoy learning

Tab is a crutch. If you have the recording you are more likely to become a better musician by copping it with just ears than looking at the tab...tab effectively shuts down your ears and does the work for you. Not so with standard notation because you don't typically use a recording.

>This last is important to
consider because what little tab I've seen has been horribly inaccurate.

So, you're not really talking from the voice of experience. Drop $75 on The Complete Beatles Score and tell me how inaccurate it is.

Why the *** would I be THAT familiar with a written form that has no benefits to someone who reads? A form you NEVER see on gigs? I've seen it and once or twice used it out of a Guitar Player mag when I was a teenager for but quickly got frustrated by its limitations and moved on.

I'm not really saying drop the tab and learn to read I'm saying drop the tab and learn to hear...like I keep saying over and over you gotta have the recording to make tab work. Please tell me this isn't really a difficult thing to grasp.


Who are all these people learning pieces without recordings? I've never had to learn a song for which I had no recording except in an improvising situation. I'm sure some pros sight read their music live in some cases, and for them they should do whatever works best.

*Now* who's not exactly speaking from the voice of experience? Learn to read and then you'll know just how useful it is. Like I said already I've learned a lot of jazz standards over the years from the book with no recording. You take for granted the availability of recordings. Even going back to when I was starting out in the '70's recordings and the technology to play them were not so easy to get as they are now. Go just a little further back and written music was the *only* way to learn something if you didn't have someone to show it to you.

But, as I have explained and given examples, there *is* tab that includes rhythm. Your failure to have seen it doesn't mean it doesn't exist.

And as *I* have explained if you use that rhythm you're already most of the way towards using standard notation. If using yer ears is like walking and using tab is like riding a bicycle and using tab with rhythm is like driving a car with bias ply tires why not put some radials on that car and use standard notation? Like I say though if you don't learn to read you have no business arguing this with me. Even if I'm not familiar with the current publishing standards of tab I can read tab and am qualified to make the comparison. You quite simply are not.
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