Home Forums Progress Review Tab is better than staff!

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    • #38395
      superblonde
      Keymaster

      I shared one of my recent songs elsewhere and got feedback from an ‘educated music person’ something along the lines of tablature being not worthy and no one writes music in that. So I made a meme to sum it up. These snide comments about tab seem to mostly come from non-guitar players who do not understand guitar techniques, or maybe don’t even hear guitar’s character properly, so to them, every note is just a note. Piano is boring with no special articulation, unlike guitar where the finger is touching the string and can do all kinds of different sounds.

      dont-use-tab

      There is a story I remember about Andres Segovia that goes like this. An elite guitar instructor teaches his students Segovia’s works for decades using staff notation. Students complain about the difficulty because Segovia’s stuff is ridiculously hard, and learn the specific neck positions and vertical patterns which make the playing possible with tons of practice. Years later a description of Segovia’s real playing with an interview is uncovered and the elite guitar instructor finds out he has been playing Segovia’s music incorrectly. Segovia specifically says: These lines must be played on the same string as a horizontal line, not a vertical pattern, they absolutely must be played horizontally on the neck, or the timbre will sound off. But because the elite guitar instructor always used staff, he never knew he was playing it wrong.

      Tab beats staff! Because staff has no real way to indicate neck position or string number. Both of these are especially critical for electric guitar to notate hammer, pulloff, slides, tapping, which staff doesn’t show. Of course I write with the staff visible and put notes on the staff and adjust string number and neck position as I go along, or I write directly in tab itself. With the tab visible it is far superior to staff alone, very simple.

      I finished a short thing in Logic DAW this week, which I wrote in Guitar pro and imported into Logic. Guitar pro is awesome. I wrote slides, hammers and pulls, wrote the guitar lead for specific neck position, and dialed in the dynamics to fit with GP’s distortion chain. Logic trashed all the markings on the import and reassigned wrong strings to my notes, and also trashed my dynamic markings too. Logic sounds bad, definitely not as good as Guitar pro, no dynamics, no proper timbre. I couldn’t get Logic to play a slide even though it supposedly has glissando. I conclude that GP7 beats Logic’s staff editor for guitar and for other instruments too because GP has proper articulations and tab editing. Don’t get me started on my tries of Sibelius, yuck.

      I'm an intermediate student of Metal Method. I play seitannic heavy metal. All Kale Seitan! ♯ ♮ ♭ ø ° Δ ♩ ♪ ♫ ♬
      And on the Seventh Day, Mustaine said: ∇ ⨯ E = - ∂B / ∂t ; and there was Thrash; and it had a ♭3; and it was good.

      Attachments:
      1. dont-use-tab.jpg

    • #38399
      rightonthemark
      Participant

      at about the 1:36 mark

      tab is really useful

      rock and roll ain't pretty; that's why they picked us to play it.

    • #38400
      superblonde
      Keymaster

      MAB’s metal guitar at 00:31!
      Maxxxx is definitely my #1 fave guitarist utuber.

      I'm an intermediate student of Metal Method. I play seitannic heavy metal. All Kale Seitan! ♯ ♮ ♭ ø ° Δ ♩ ♪ ♫ ♬
      And on the Seventh Day, Mustaine said: ∇ ⨯ E = - ∂B / ∂t ; and there was Thrash; and it had a ♭3; and it was good.

    • #38434
      Byron
      Participant

      Tab beats staff!

      Except you can’t take a piece of guitar tab and play it on another instrument….

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