Sight Reading course on Sale

Theory
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If you can read music (tab or notation) and know what note to play on your bass then you will likely know the reverse. I.e. When you play a note, you know what it is in tab or notation. That is why it is an aide (not a requirement) to transcription/composition. Surely this is logical?

As for tab before notation, I was referring to bass. Notation came before tab for bass. Upright came before electric bass.

Both are useful though. Otherwise, happy to have a different opinion than others. Each to their own.

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Funny this came up. A couple of nights ago, I reached for the Hal Leonard book that came with B2B (50 first songs for bass). I was thinking, maybe it was time to learn a complete song. I was really crestfallen when I realized the entire book was TAB. I just don’t want to “think TAB.” I’ve been reading music for 25 years (for voice). TAB just doesn’t work for me. Too restrictive. Put your fingers here on this string on that fet. I’d much rather use standard notation and figure out how I want to play it with freedom to choose the string and fret I want.

I guess it really depends on your goals, learning style, and experience. Perhaps if I had not been sight reading for voice for so long, maybe I’d feel differently.

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I understand and I wish there were more sheet music resources for bass across genres I like, but depending on what you are looking to play, I would suggest getting used to this; the available tablature resources out there outnumber the standard notation resources for bass by a few orders of magnitude. You’d be shutting yourself out of a lot by sticking to only standard notation.

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My favourite is when they show the tab under the standard notation. Best of both worlds then. But Howard is completely right on this. If you want to learn other songs, you’ll likely need to learn/use tab unless you want to transcribe the songs yourself (which is a great learning tool).

If you only want to do originals then this is less of an issue. In fact, I’d wager there are quite a few songs that are just in the heads of their creators and have not been written down. And when you do write it down then you can choose the method you want. Personally, I’d recommend the tab+notation method as that is useful to the largest audience and anyone will be happy.

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Yes, it’s quite unfortunate indeed. I suspect that’s a byproduct of (a) the people transcribing the songs don’t bother to learn how to read/write music and/or (b) they’re feeding into the hungry market of players who don’t bother to learn how to read music and can only play if they are provided tablature.

The option for people like me who find playing from tab awkward, is to spend a bit of time transposing the song from tab to notation prior to learning and practicing the song. One advantage to this method is getting a head start on learning the song while transposing.

I also prefer those over the “tab only” transcriptions. The downside to those is the extra space taken up on the music sheets, and having to train ones eyes to skip the tab line when sight reading. You’re correct in saying, it’s the best of both worlds.

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One resource to check is sheetmusicplus.com. They are not going to have a lot of the most current music, but I have found scores there for bass (not tab) for many obscure songs there for both bass and sax. You may have to do some digging as sometimes the bass part is part of a larger band score. The quality is generally good.

The downside is…you actually have to pay for them (eeesh), but since we spend so much on gear, a couple of bucks to play a song we love ain’t so bad.

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There are a lot of valid points in this thread. The only thing I’d say is that coming from a background of having never read music in my life until 48 years old. TAB is a very low entry bar. It gave me the ability to make noise straight away and have fun.

I fully understand all it’s limitations but as a means of getting someone in the front door and making music on day one, it makes sense.

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This is exactly correct, and it was my entry point into learning to play bass as well. However by the time I finished B2B I had moved on from tab and was playing from music notation. As I have stated previously (and been chastised by a couple of people as a result), tab is a nice entry level learning tool, but just like riding a bicycle, the training wheels need to come off at some point.

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The other downside is that despite charging, just like with tab, the quality really varies. The first post-punk score I found there was fine, the second one I just looked at was clearly incorrect :rofl:

But at least they had some.

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I think ‘need’ may be a bit of a stretch for amateurs like us.
Tell that to Thom Yorke or hundreds of other professional musicians who can’t read music :slight_smile: It’s a useful skill but it doesn’t stop you playing music, being in a band or just having fun. I’m going to learn to sight read at some point but I could probably play the rest of my life without doing it and have a lovely time on Bass. Just my 2 cents.

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51

My apologies and a clarification @Barney …

When I say “the training wheels need to come off…” That’s really a statement that I had made to myself at the conclusion of my B2B training. Admittedly, my goals and ambitions are a bit loftier than most others’ are. If someone wants to spend the rest of their bass playing life with only the ability to play from tab, so be it. I just felt that I am not a complete musician without being able to play anything I want from a sheet of music. I’m quite content with knowing that I possess this skill, but perhaps other people are satisfied without it. Yes, they can make noise by following some unseen person’s instructions as to how to play it. That’s just not good enough for me.
I unapologetically push people as hard as I push myself, but sometimes forget that my bar is higher than most people’s.
For those who share my musical ambition, the Sight Reading course at TalkingBass is excellent, and I highly recommend it.

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Absolutely no apology needed. I just think that in 2021 it’s amazing that the internet exists with all it’s resources i.e YouTube etc for free that allows people to learn and play music. The bar to entry is lower than ever and that has to be a good thing.

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53

Yeah. And storytelling is not the same skill as writing a book. You can be (and from what I heard a lot of authors are) really bad at storytelling and still a great author.
You can be a great storyteller and take the whole audience with you into your story and still be bad at writing stories.

If you look for the right things - yes it does. If you see reading a book as taking a lesson and not just entertainment and analyze the stylistic devices, structure and arc of suspense then it will make you better at writing.
The same way stand-up comedians do according to Dave Chapelle. They watch other comics as taking a lesson and not (just) entertainment. They get better at their craft because they look to get better at their craft. We all have seen stand up but I bet most of us would bomb hard in any scenario where we have to do comedy stand-up for strangers.

Show me the author who doesn’t read any books, just writes them.

If it were just about tabs with timings in them then I might agree - it’s just a different notation. But with standard tabs without knowing the song there are so many unanswered questions, whereas when you are practiced in reading sheet music you can literally read the music off the sheet. That’s not possible with tabs without note durations. You have to listen to the song for that.

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I don’t know if anyone has mentioned this I just skimmed the topic but in ultimate guitar pro an app and website for tab mostly. You can go in the settings and put notation on so you get the tab and the score. I was blown away by this cause I thought if I learn how to read music where am I going to get the scores from so this is great. I just checked a few songs and all the ones I saw had the notation. So just a heads up. I pay 20 pounds a year for it.

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I don’t like tab usually translates to I’m not good at it and I don’t want to learn use it. If one finds tab so offensive, one can spend a bit of time and just write it out in standard notation and be done with the tab and it’ll still be way faster than transcribing it all by ear. For those people who seem to value their freedom so dearly, nobody is forcing anyone to play tab in the same position that’s written… if it says fret 7 on the E string, you’re free to play it on fret 2 of the A string. Written music is just training wheels for memorizing or improvising. :wink:

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Yeah, agreed. Tablature is just another tool for learning music. Shunning it is, frankly, not very enlightened of a choice; you’re simply shutting yourself out of potential available resources for no good reason. It’s as if your country had two writing systems and you refused to read things written in one of them.

Well, I live in a country with four writing systems. The term they would use here for someone who refused to read one of them by choice would probably be “willfully illiterate.” I actually feel bad that I am poor at reading one of them, not proud of it.

YMMV.

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@howard, some people just don’t like playing from tablature and prefer standard music notation; I happen to be one of them. We all have a right to our own preferences whether it be flat or roundwound strings, genre of music, whether to stand or sit when playing, and on and on. You just need to wrap your brain around this fact.
Those of us who prefer not to play from tab are not “shutting ourselves out” as you seem to think. Quite frankly, there is nothing stopping me or anyone else from learning any song we wish to learn by using other means such as writing our own basslines from chord charts, transcribing by ear, etc.
If playing from tablature is your preference, than so be it. Have fun with it. My preference is playing from standard notation, so just leave it at that.
This thread is about Mark Smith’s Sight Reading course, not an argument for tab vs notation. Either you have an interest in learning the skill of sight reading or you don’t. If you don’t, you don’t.

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You do realize that this describes someone playing from standard notation as well, right?

@sshoihet mentioned this above, but nothing about tab stops you from doing this.

They’re just 2 different methods of notation. They both work (with the previously mentioned caveat of tab without timing - that’s just crap :slight_smile: ) and as long as you’re comfortable with (at least) one of them, you’re in good shape for reading from written music…

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Right, exactly. They are both tools for communicating music. I am glad to use both. What I don’t get is the notion that once you learn one that the other is inherently bad.

There’s nothing wrong with either. They are conveying the same information, pretty much equally well (for modern tabs). Tabs convey slightly more info actually (the suggested fingering, with the note being indirectly implied) while standard conveys the note itself without fingering hints.

Standard is a slightly more elegant notation but since it represents probably less than 5% (and likely much less than that) of the available bass resources out there for learning songs, there’s no point in shunning tabs once you learn it.

Likewise, apropos to this topic - sight reading on bass. Sight reading is a useful skill if you find youself frequently with sheet music for bass to read. It’s kind of axiomatic. If you often have sheet music for the bass and the need to read it, sight reading will be a useful skill. If not, it will be a nearly useless skill. So this is very, very goal and situation specific.

Now. As for learning to read music in general - everyone should do it IMO. It’s not very difficult and it will serve you very well as a fundamental skill over time, even if not necessarily immediately for bass.

But sight reading for bass - definitely situational. A great skill to have - necessary in many cases - if you need it; music student, music pro, gigging with lots of bands, session musician, etc. On the other hand, it is useless as a practicality if you don’t regularly have the need (or genre-opportunity) to read sheet music.

For my own case I have played several instruments over the last 40 years. Of all the instruments I have played I have only sight-read at speed for one (trumpet), because I needed it at the time, and haven’t needed it again in decades. I remember almost nothing of that instrument at this point. I definitely don’t need sight reading for bass. I do kind of want to get there on keyboards though.

At the same time, I have used the ability to read music many times in that time period. I have definitely used it with bass in evaluating and extracting information from scores for other instruments to figure out basslines (even if the score did not contain the bassline.) Sight reading is not necessary to get value out of reading music.

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I also don’t mean to sound like I am harshing on Mark’s course here. I think Mark is a great instructor. One maybe nonobvious benefit I would call out for the sight reading course (which looks like a great course) is that from what I saw on the site, it looks like a really solid way to build fretboard knowledge. That’s a benefit even aside from sight reading.

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