The cursed blessing of tabulature

I'm a total beginner (again; aborted 1st attempt in high school--now I'm trying again at age 45). I picked up an instructional book/dvd last week that starts with the usual note progressions on strings 1 and 2 (E,F,G,B,C,D). The book showed only standard notation for the practice songs. It was slow going, but I was getting it.

Yesterday, I picked up a second instructional book/dvd that begins with essentially the same material, but includes both standard and tab notation. It was amazing to me how much faster I can play, with fewer errors, using the tab rather than the standard notation. The brain has much less work to do when playing tab. Just for kicks, I skipped to the back of the book and tried playing a few of the hardest songs. With tab, I could actually play them, albeit slowly and poorly. The standard notation, of course, looks like Chinese for the harder songs, because I haven't learned any of the chords in standard notation yet.

It was also clear to me that tab alone does indeed limit understanding of timing, among other things. Yet, it is VERY tempting to just ignore the standard notation and play the tab. I've always enjoyed immediate gratification. 8)

For the moment, I remain committed to at least trying to learn standard notation, but we'll see.

I've been thinking of buying Guitar Pro 5 because I understand it shows both tab and standard for GP tab files; good idea??

Yesterday, I picked up a second instructional book/dvd that begins with essentially the same material, but includes both standard and tab notation. It was amazing to me how much faster I can play, with fewer errors, using the tab rather than the standard notation.

That's true, you can go faster when you don't know SN using tab.

But that's also the huge danger, because it's easy to begin to think "Oh, I really don't need to learn this stuff, tab is just as good."

Yesterday, I picked up a second instructional book/dvd that begins with essentially the same material, but includes both standard and tab notation. It was amazing to me how much faster I can play, with fewer errors, using the tab rather than the standard notation.

That's true, you can go faster when you don't know SN using tab.

But that's also the huge danger, because it's easy to begin to think "Oh, I really don't need to learn this stuff, tab is just as good."

It's not really a 'danger' because you don't 'need' to know SN, as established it depends on what you want to do with the guitar. I just want to learn a few tunes to play at parties so an intro tab plus the chords and strum pattern are all I need.

It was also clear to me that tab alone does indeed limit understanding of timing, among other things. Yet, it is VERY tempting to just ignore the standard notation and play the tab. I've always enjoyed immediate gratification. 8)

Illustrates my initial point exactly - in fact I think the infamous TANSTAAFL-law has the answer again: Although it might look that way, there are really no easy shortcut to become a guitar-god.

However - having pondered this for the last week - I'm not sure if SN is necessary the way to go either. For most of us that is, we who want to develop as guitar players but are not aiming at playing any piece thrown at us, known or not togehter with a bunch of professional musicians.

What we need is to work with understanding our instrument - to practice, learn and understand what we play.

I see 3 obvious alternatives (possibly complimentary off course)
1) Develop playing by ear. In order to learn and progress you have to take it slow and easy, splitting it into pieces - hard work but you'll learn from it - at least that's my experience.
2) Use tabs but not don't fall under the spell of "immediate gratification" (Hope it's OK that I borrowed your term Comfycam - no offense?!). Use tabs as a means for learning - but don't stop when you know where to put your fingers. Which notes do you play, why ... etc.
3) Sheet music - well I think enough has been said about this allready...

oh - TANSTAAFL? "There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch!" ;)

Lars

When I was learning most tabs had chord names in them at some point. That's actually where I learned my first chords from.

I'm surprised that anyone could learn 100 songs without knowing the name of a single chord. Wouldn't learning each song be like going into an abyss? Seems like it would take a while. Knowing just a few scales greatly simplifies picking up songs from a tab, moreso considering accurate tabs are so rare.

But that's also the huge danger, because it's easy to begin to think "Oh, I really don't need to learn this stuff, tab is just as good."

Huge danger? I think at the age of 45 and probably not thinking in terms of a career as a guitarist, comfy is in no danger at all from using tab, instead of notation. He sounds intelligent enough to know the merits of each system and to choose the one that will be most useful for his aims.
The vast majority of guitarists have no desire to be professional guitarists - they are amateurs in the true sense of the word - i.e they do it for LOVE, not MONEY. Many are even unfamiliar with tab and just use chord sheets with no ill effects at all. They can experience the great joy of learning without pressure. If they feel inspired to learn a new skill such as reading notation, then it will be there waiting for them whenever they like. If they never feel that need, then they will be correct in thinking that tab is just as good - or simple chord sheets are just as good - for them.

Nexion - before someone else points it out - it is obviously possible to learn whole songs even with tab... - but I see your point excactly: it's very easy to get a "hey, I can play this, and I can play this too, and this..." approach to the playing. Kinda like it's too easy. Since the "standard notation" discussion has taken off in an unexpected direction - I'll rather say that learning songs by ear requires far more work, and therefore (may) gives something more than reading tabs.

Lars
I didn't say it was impossible to learn an entire song through tabs, I just said I never did.

I was just trying to show how difficult it was for me to learn how to play guitar only using tab. Hoping to help somebody else stray from making the same mistake that I did that wasted 7 months.

Nexion - sorry, didn't mean to ascribe to you a view you do not have. In fact we agree :)

and WOW! 85 replies and 1079 views in 4 days to my intial post sharing my loose and unstructured thoughts on tabs.

LaRS
All's well my friend.

Nexion - before someone else points it out - it is obviously possible to learn whole songs even with tab... - but I see your point excactly: it's very easy to get a "hey, I can play this, and I can play this too, and this..." approach to the playing. Kinda like it's too easy. Since the "standard notation" discussion has taken off in an unexpected direction - I'll rather say that learning songs by ear requires far more work, and therefore (may) gives something more than reading tabs.

Lars
I didn't say it was impossible to learn an entire song through tabs, I just said I never did.

I was just trying to show how difficult it was for me to learn how to play guitar only using tab. Hoping to help somebody else stray from making the same mistake that I did that wasted 7 months.

Nexion - sorry, didn't mean to ascribe to you a view you do not have. In fact we agree :)

and WOW! 85 replies and 1079 views in 4 days to my intial post sharing my loose and unstructured thoughts on tabs.

LaRS
All's well my friend.

It was also clear to me that tab alone does indeed limit understanding of timing, among other things. Yet, it is VERY tempting to just ignore the standard notation and play the tab. I've always enjoyed immediate gratification. 8)

Illustrates my initial point exactly - in fact I think the infamous TANSTAAFL-law has the answer again: Although it might look that way, there are really no easy shortcut to become a guitar-god.

However - having pondered this for the last week - I'm not sure if SN is necessary the way to go either. For most of us that is, we who want to develop as guitar players but are not aiming at playing any piece thrown at us, known or not togehter with a bunch of professional musicians.

What we need is to work with understanding our instrument - to practice, learn and understand what we play.

I see 3 obvious alternatives (possibly complimentary off course)
1) Develop playing by ear. In order to learn and progress you have to take it slow and easy, splitting it into pieces - hard work but you'll learn from it - at least that's my experience.
2) Use tabs but not don't fall under the spell of "immediate gratification" (Hope it's OK that I borrowed your term Comfycam - no offense?!). Use tabs as a means for learning - but don't stop when you know where to put your fingers. Which notes do you play, why ... etc.
3) Sheet music - well I think enough has been said about this allready...

oh - TANSTAAFL? "There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch!" ;)

Lars

Most insightful; thanks.

What I think I'll try to do is continue to learn with both. I can use Tab to get my speed and accuracy moving along on practice tracks, and then play the same track using only SN.( I'll probably need to use tape over the tab to keep from cheating though :wink: )

It seems logical that practicing with both methods would accelerate the overall learning process, IF one has the discipline not to abandon SN once a song is learned.

I also see how this would be very difficult (but not impossible) to do if you were already a good guitar player who learned using Tab alone. One would presumably have to go back to square one to learn SN. I think it would be quite humbling to have to play "Twinkle, Twinkle..." or the like to learn SN when you can already hammer out "real" music from Tab.

I'm glad I stumbled accross this site before I became a full-blown Tab addict. I may wind up there anyway, but if I do, at least I'll know the price of doing so.

But that's also the huge danger, because it's easy to begin to think "Oh, I really don't need to learn this stuff, tab is just as good."

Huge danger? I think at the age of 45 and probably not thinking in terms of a career as a guitarist, comfy is in no danger at all from using tab, instead of notation.

I make no assumptions about him or anyone else, other than to presume that as guitar players they might want to play with other musicians at some point in their life and that like most people they're musical tastes might change over time.

So yes, "huge danger" sums it up nicely.