Tab/Sheet Software?

I’d like to see flats/rounds combined with tab/sheet music in a topic please.

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To get back on course…

I have never liked any music notation software.
I find myself correcting things more than writing things, maybe I just needed more practice.
I also tried Notion on iPad that lets you write with the apple pencil and it converts it to printed notation. This works well if you write VERY neat and have not a lot of business in a bar - which means it doesn’t work well.

I like the old school write it out with a pencil method.

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I like Crescendo, but maybe you wouldn’t like it.

The only thing I use a pencil for is in my wood shop when marking cuts. My penmanship (pencilmanship?) is atrocious! If I wrote out a score in pencil, you’d never be able to comprehend it.

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You are asking for a brawl.

I’ll get the video camera ready.

Can we include a video of @EddieJones farting on his bass and producing perfect tones from the open E string?

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But which tuner should we use to insure it’s perfect?

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Tell that to 95% of the professional guitarists.

AFAICT, only classical (and related) guitarists use sheet music at all.

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Ok.

Dear 95% of all professional guitarists who apparently all use tab,

The tab system is a workaround for you all so you don’t have to learn to read music.
It’s a cop out, a quick cheat win.

Your pal.
John

That would be funny if it weren’t completely wrong. In fact, that’s almost Wolfgang Pauli style “not even wrong”.

Tablature is a very effective way for guitarists to communicate chord fingerings, which do land on specific frets in guitar. It’s simply more effective at communicating that than standard notation.

Only barre chords are movable shapes on guitar. The rest have fixed fingerings.

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We aren’t talking about chords.

Yes we are. We’re discussing effective ways of communicating audible music in a visible form.

You and Pam are taking a very, very limited view here. You don’t get to move the goalposts when these limits get pointed out, sorry :slight_smile:

It turns out that tablature is not remotely useless.

Does it suck for sight reading? Yes.

But sight reading sheet music is, frankly, a useful but tiny part of music as a whole.

Shunning effective ways to communicate music to others just seems silly to me.

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Sure we do, we have you to constantly point out when everyone is wrong. So it works out great.

Hey, if someone is going to make blanket statements of things that I think are wrong as if they are fact, I am more than happy to help out with contrasting opinions here :slight_smile:

Look, I prefer standard notation too for my primary instruments. I think everyone should learn it. I feel it is an important skill towards understanding and communicating music. But the notion that tab is useless or somehow bad is also just simply incorrect.

And if you look at it honestly, as a purely utilitarian skill, when it comes to learning songs, there’s a whole lot more tablature resources out there for many (probably most) genres than there is sheet music.

All that really matters is learning the songs here. At some point if you become a pro you will need to learn sheet music, but that’s due to it being the primary method of communication between pros.

Between the rest of us, tablature is the primary method of communication online (and likely printed) for bass. Shunning it seems inadvisable to me. And if I were producing materials for someone else, for bass I would absolutely provide both standard notation and tablature.

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That’s a question not an answer :slightly_smiling_face:

OK let’s try this.

Assume I want to learn Sax.
I sign up for 4(Four) 1 hour sessions, spaced one week apart, so roughly one month.
What will I be taught in each of those 4 sessions that will keep my interest in Sax?

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That’s the exact thing i was thinking about while i rode home tonight… what is the goal of written music (the medium that carries the message) and what are the interests of the parties involved (sender and receiver). I’ll probably share my thoughts tomorrow.

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Looking forward to hearing them.

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Week 1 - how to put together your sax, prep reed, assemble mouthpiece, reed and ligature. How to hold sax. Where to put all you fingers. How to make a sound through just the mouthpiece. How to play a note. How to disassemble and swab. Practice all this and long tones of that note. Learn where the note is on the staff and what a whole note is (uh-oh, here comes sight reading)
Week 2 - how to read & play 1-2 more notes. Practice long tones and pretend songs with these notes. Reshow how to put reed on properly (it’s tricky at first)
Week 3 - same as week 2 but add a couple more notes.
Week 4 - add a couple more notes and learn what a scale is and play it (hot damn…theory)

You may wish to stick to ukulele, Happy Birthday isn’t til month 3 sadly.
:yawning_face::sleeping::sleepy:

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Which week should you start practicing Sax Face and Sax Groupie Side-eye?

Wait what. Piano has 88 keys but each is represented by a note. Bass has same note on different strings. It’s not which finger, it’s which string to play. Sheet music do not show you the path to play but tab does. There are good tabs and bad ones. Free tabs are terrible probably auto generated and not made by musicians.

I’m all for accelerated learning of any kind. Reading notes is nothing special, I read it doesn’t automatically make me a better player, I just have the ability to “see” the music before I hear it. It’s by no mean translate to my ability to play, not one bit. I can read scale like nobody business but can I play it as well as I read it.

As an Asian, my parents shove me to music very early and it’s not All Cow Eat Grass, BS. I got to learn it the easy way, memorize the entire range. Like multiplication table, ouch!

Music is a language and notes are simply tools to make life easier. Notation is not a secret language or even a path to a better player. It’s a really nice bragging rights especially for casual bass player. How many notes are in “With or Without you”? 4 How many notes are in Billy Jean? Probably a dozen. What’s so special about the ability to read them?

In this way it takes more skills to write tabs because you need to understand the common paths and put the arrangements on to a piece of paper. It’s simply another tool. I don’t read tabs but I can see the the appeal and the ease of use. It’s not painting by number, by the way. Its a different representation altogether. Tabs are more fluid.

I endorse Victor Wooten method when teaching kids the music. I’m floored when one showed me the “secret finger tone” he discovered, that’s musician in the making.

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I’ll also admit this is overstepping a bit from me - the guitarists I know approaching that level all can read sheet music as well, and do use it to communicate with other musicians. So I was actually wrong to put it that way as well, and I apologize.

However, I also know if you asked if tablature is useless, they would look at you funny :slight_smile:

Lots of use of chord charts and so on as well.

The point is - all the tools have their place.

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This puts it nicely. It’s all about the communication of the music. All tools for this are helpful. It’s hard enough already without shunning forms of communication.

I do strongly feel that learning standard notation is a valuable skill - for this reason.

And this is also the reason that the online tab condescension really puts me off. You’re saying you think an avenue of communicating music to someone is harmful? Cool story :slight_smile:

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