I will say I’m better at sight-reading standard notation but that’s probably from years in my youth spent looking at the bass clef and doing sight-reading competitions regularly XD If I get lost or miss a note, it’s also easier for me to fall back into place, again likely from old practice stirring once more. I can get really lost hunting for numbers as I try to figure out where the hell I am on tablature. It sounds easy, just find the fret and get going again, but I have problems with things right in front of my face lol… maybe “modern tabs” with note duration will make it easier.
However, the number of bands that know or use standard notation is not huge, and so many of them in the genres I tend to listen to give standard E tuning the finger; tablature is a much easier way to learn their songs even if I’m on an extended range bass. I can almost translate on the fly on notation, but I’m not quite there, yet
Standard notation is also a ton easier for me on instruments tuned to “B standard” because the low B on a 5-6 string or a 4 detuned to BEAD (B0 I think) is beneath the second ledger line. I readily recognize lower ledger line notes and up to the F and G or so on the staff, start climbing above the staff and we’ve entered uncharted territory (for now) lol…
Respectfully disagee. You can see the interval relationships on the staff and see the chord construction/ stacks/ inversions with notation. Knowing what key you are in from the staff lets you identify identify chord progressions even if they are not written above the bar. Ton more info.
I will say that trying to learn Avenged Sevenfold’s song Hail to the King, with their bassist tuned C# G# C# F# is definitely an exercise in learning where the notes are on my fretboard (and hearing pitch) so I can play it at pitch on a bass tuned BEADG
Edit Aside from it just sounding right, I got ahold of the Guitar Pro file and GP lets you change the tuning and either keep the fingering (which would transpose the pitch) or change the fingering so that all the pitches stay the same it confirmed the fretting/fingering.
(Don’t bother me with TuxGuitar or Musescore; I didn’t find Musescore that great for tabs but fine for scoring; for guitar things Guitar Pro is just easier for me though I’m still using the trial…)
While true, you can also see intervals easily in tablature as well; a difference of three frets is always a minor third, four frets a major third, one string a fourth, etc.
On a staff you can of course see this as well, but you need more info than just the distance between the notes on the staff; you also need to look at the key signature and also know what the specific notes are, because the lines and spaces on the staff are not always the same interval apart; A->C is a minor third while F->A and C->E is a major third, etc.
I definitely agree chords and their variants are easier to visualize on a staff. I wouldn’t say it’s a ton more info though; it’s the same info, presented in ways that let you more easily visualize different things. I would never, ever want tablature for keyboards for example (which is where I spend most of my time these days, but still).
It’s kind of funny because this does vary by instrument in interesting ways. Chording instruments provide different visualization needs.
For keyboards, I cannot picture tablature ever being desirable, but I could be wrong there. But I doubt it.
For guitar it’s a real tradeoff, for chords both tabs and sheet music seem to me to kind of suck on their own. Six notes stacked either way is relatively poor for quick visualization, though less poor for sheet music. So on both, they are both generally augmented with chord charting, at which point either is very viable. For solos either works fine too, with tabs perhaps providing an easier means to learn complex solos and standard notated music an easier read once you know them.
For bass, where most people are not playing a lot of chords, either is fine IMO. Both provide roughly the same info and I am happy to find good examples of both.
That last part is a problem. Finding good bass sheet music is much, much more rare than finding good bass tabs. From a utilitarian standpoint, tabs are the vast winner here. I absolutely wish that were not the case, but it is.
Quality-wise, online tabs and online sheet music seem equally low quality for free stuff to me. Pro tabs and pro sheet music have been universally fine from the examples I have seen, though I am sure that is not a constant.
I’m in agreement with the pro tabs folks here. I’ve tried many times since I first stared guitar lessons at 12 years of age to understand notation, guitar, bass otherwise, I’m now 64 and still don’t get it. (but I can’t grasp the card game of Euchre either, so there’s some mental block going on up there in the ol’ noggin
Tab gets me in the ball park and my ears take me the rest of the way when trying to learn a song to play with.
To me this is another reason to look into the aspects of music theory a little bit more and just write your own Bass lines OR correct any online tab you may come across. Unfortunately, in this day and age of instant gratification, most are not willing to put in the time and effort to do this.
Tabs are for learning, notation are for practicing and each of us have our own method of communication form when performing because it’s too late for both.
I’d have the songs list, keys and sometimes the transition. You can’t read live of any sort unless you are a session player. The rest of us mere mortals needs to practice till it’s second nature and practice some more.
The adrenaline accompanied by live performance will impair your timing, hearing and seeing, if you don’t know it you are already screwed, lol. If the stage or venue is dark you are many times screws because you can’t even see the note you are supposed to start. One of my gig bass has glow in the dark side dots.
Yes definitely. On stage I have never sight read because I needed to, even for instruments I could sight read for. In cases when I had it, basically band in school, sheet music was more of bookmarks, a reminder of where you were in the song and what was coming up; but the song itself was memorized. The ability to sight read then was basically unused; I knew the song.
Later, in our band in college, same thing minus having any music. The songs were learned down cold. All we had was our setlist (which, frankly, was memorized too.)
Sight reading something I wasn’t already very familiar with never came into the picture while on stage for me. Not once.
Yeah. This is why I really don’t care about sight reading at full speed on bass. I can already read the music, so I can easily learn the song. Anything beyond that for me is mostly convenience more than necessity.
That would be very different if I were in a situation where there was plentiful sheet music for the genres I like, and I needed to play them on short notice. Like for session musicians, for example. But that simply is not the case for me (or, frankly, most of us).
My school’s band program was Serious Business By the time you get to grades 7/8 there were two bands to be in based on skill level, and high school had 3 bands as well as one of the largest, if not the largest marching band in the US (at the time). We had tryouts every year, and chair tests were pretty regular. Even the semester concert flyers listed all the members as well as denoting who was the principal (first chair) of each instrument. We had our own really large amphitheater (the theater people used it, too) on the high school campus, and the high school band hall was pretty much the entirety of a building on a multi-building campus.
We even hosted our own contests for bands around the region to come perform at XD
I remember when I wanted to join had to go in and be evaluated for an instrument I might be best at. You don’t have to play that, buy they recommend it. It was pretty wild.
Pianos, keyboards to a lesser extent, are fundamentally different than fretted instruments. Each note corresponds to one key. There’s only one way to play an E2 on a piano, where as guitar or bass has options. Tabs convey note and position. Pianos have no need for half the information, and tabs make no sense. IMO
I’ve only seen one pianist bend a string on a piano, though I am sure there are others.
The funny thing is that the tablature equivalent does exist for keyboards, it’s just that no one would use it as such.
MIDI note numbers correspond to keys directly when mapped to keyboards. This is actually how MIDI works - a timecoded stream of MIDI note messages is functionally equivalent to tablature for keyboards, and serve as part of the contents of MIDI tracks in sequencers or DAWs. But no one would want that for a human readable way to communicate music in the raw form.
The Piano Roll in DAW MIDI editors is the visual representation of this, and people can use that, and do. But it’s still not a good communication medium.
This on the other hand is extremely common on keyboards. Lots of different ways to modulate pitch.
I use standard notation on everything I’ve ever played except guitar and rarely on bass.
Yousician has a notation for keyboard that’s more like tab… you can’t really have tab for keyboard because it would have 88 lines with only a “1” on each and because every note on the staff has only one key that will play it, there’s little benefit to having tab.
Standard notation is good for chunking, especially for playing piano but on bass and guitar, standard notation does not do a very good job of representing patterns; it’s much easier to recognize a 5th/8th on tab than standard notation. If I see 2,3,5 that’s just as easy a pattern to follow as seeing the notes E, F, G on the staff. Once you know shapes on bass, you’re usually. not consciously playing the notes anyway and there’s really no time to think about that… all you need to do is think about the starting note. Start on a G, start on a C, it’s all the same, unlike piano
it confirmed the fretting/fingering.
By the time you get to grades 7/8 there were two bands to be in based on skill level, and high school had 3 bands as well as one of the largest, if not the largest marching band in the US (at the time). We had tryouts every year, and chair tests were pretty regular. Even the semester concert flyers listed all the members as well as denoting who was the principal (first chair) of each instrument. We had our own really large amphitheater (the theater people used it, too) on the high school campus, and the high school band hall was pretty much the entirety of a building on a multi-building campus.
and because every note on the staff has only one key that will play it, there’s little benefit to having tab.
