Notation, tabs, or by ear?

[spikestevens]

Title says it all, really. If you come across a number you want to cover do you find the sheet music and read the dots, or download the tablature, or just play it by ear, go for the feel?

I always play by ear as I can't read music and I don't have the patience (sadly) to try and work out tabs.


Over to you, chaps - how do you do it?

[grip]

Hi Spike,

They don't write music with the notes I play ;D . I can read music to a very limited extent, and notes outside of the tramlines I have to pencil in the name, I just can't recognise them quickly enough, so the majority of what I do is played by ear.

We used to buy a lot of sheet music in the 60's/70's which were all too often written in a different key to the record and never had the middle 8 included.

I have looked at tabs, and find them a little confusing as to the choice of frets. I tend to play around chord shapes and some of the tabs seem to just pluck a playing position out of the air without regards for ease and smoothness of playing.

I think it's more rewarding to play by ear and easier to add your own touches to the piece.


Kind regards,


Chris

[zager]

Hi Spikestevens, There is good and bad in all the methods. I learned to read music when i was studing the classical guitar. Most of the shadows tunes i played at that time i learned from the sheet music. The problem was at that time it was the piano score that you got and nearly always not in the original key. Not only that but it never give you the guitar solo only the main theme. You still had to work out the guitar solo by ear. . I still have all those shadows sheet music and when i look at them now its amazing how inacurate they were. Nowadays things are as close to the original as you can get.Tabs are a lot easier to read but cant show the timing the way the notation does. If you happen to have a good ear i think this is the best way. The younger generation of guitar players have it easy compared to what we had. In them days there was no videos very few teachers and above all no internet and no forums like this one. regards tony

[martyn]

My parents were musically trained as my father sang classical stuff and mum accompanied him on piano. They were quite well known on BBC radio back in the 1940s and always hoped I'd learn to read music too as I gew interested in music in the fifies, but I did the inevitable stroppy stubborn child thing and refused to be bothered just because they wanted me to. I was way too impatient to sit and learn the boring stuff, as I saw it. The Shads had just arrived on the scene and as a youngster I was anxious to get playing Apache and certainly didn't want to learn scales or any of that other mundane old fogey nonsense.

I've always played by ear, whether it be guitar, keyboards, drums (a bit), harmonica - sounds pompous but in reality I know I'm just about 'adequate' using some of the above. For me the pleasure (and often frustration) is in discovering new chords, working out where to play what I'm hearing and I guess I'm a bit lucky having enjoyed a reasonable ability to do such things.

I cannot make sense of tab - it may as well be Martian as far as my brain's concerned and I wish I could read music too.
I knew several group musicians back in the day who could play by reading music very quickly and accurately, much as you see session musicians doing today, but if I asked them to freelance it and do their own thing, they'd grind to a halt. Without the notes written down they were completely stuffed. Of course there are many more musicians whose ability to do both is the norm and I envy them that skill - they can handle the technical art of sight reading and playing and go totally ad lib as well. Sadly I'm not one of them.

I'll keep having a stab at things though and posting the occasional attempt here for everyone's amusement. It's harmless fun and it gives me the greatest sense of joy and achievement if it comes out acceptably. Unfortunately the inevitable addled brain of the over sixties kicks in and I just as quickly forget where the notes are to be found, which is where learning to read music would have been so useful. Ah, the wonders of hindsight . . .
Cheers,
Martyn (I think).

[spikestevens]

Some good points raised, chaps.

I am in 100% agreement with Telstars when he says that youngsters of today have it so much easier than the rest of us. They have internet forums and guitar tab places to assist them when they want to learn a new song, most of us didn't.

I'm 53 and started playing in the very early 70's (1971/1972, something like that) and I remember having to buy the sheet music to Mud's 'Dynamite' because I couldn't work out the chords myself - yeah, not exactly rocket science, but then I didn't know much when I started.
Nowadays I can listen to a song on the radio and imagine the chords: I first think up the key it might be in (F for example), then I find I'm subconsciously imagining the chord sequence (F, Gm, C7 etc). I suppose it's good practice really.
Generally speaking most songs have a predictable enough chord sequence anyway so it isn't too difficult.



Like most on here I too play by ear. I have tried in the past to get to grips with reading but I find my concentration wanders after a while and I just get bored with it after a while.

[glyderslead]

There must be hundreds of gutiarist that can identify to some extent with the above comments. And yes, like so many others I had Bert Weedons play in a day book (still got the plectrum!) and took classical Spanish guitar lessons. Started to get to grips with the dots and lines - and then lost interst in that and forgot it all because you couldn't buy the music for what you really wanted to play.

Later I worked through the Nick Lucas plectrum guitar method and found that as I played the tune from the dots I didn't remember any of what I had just played!! So, gave that up again so as not to be dependant on sheet music. Perhaps I should have kept it up.

What we all need is the gift that "tabman" has. Tony can hear a note and write the notation down in either dots and lines or as tab. Yes, Really!

Tab has its uses and although Shadows material is available many older tunes aren't. So if any one has sorted out that brilliant middle eight in Lipstick on your collar, please let me know.
I keep meaning to do it when I get the time - not that I would ever play the rest of that tune!!!

Cheers,

Mick

[clivea]

Having not been playing too long, I don't think that I would have succeeded without tabs. I find them relatively easy to read and learn, but I have often wondered how you guys learn a piece by ear.

Is it a 'gift'? Where do you start? Is a piece initially centred around a chord?

I do realise that a lot of this stuff is down to experience and some of you guys maybe have more than 50 yrs of playing behind you compared to my 20 months, but I am a great believer in 'it's never too late to learn'. Rgds - Clive

[rogercook]

Interesting thread. I tend to use a bit of all 3 methods. My sight reading skills are certainly not up to playing as I read but I can manage if I roughly know the tune.

Software like Guitar Pro or Tux Guitar (free ) produce dots and tab and will play the arrangement as a midi file. There are loads of Shads tabs and midi files available on the net - most of them are wrong somewhere though - but for me they are a decent starting point as I find I learn a tune best by checking out the tab and the dots and amending it as necessary

Roger

[abbeyroed]

Hi All: Strictly by EAR. Nothing against tabs and sheets (a lot of that is someone else's OPINION). I have always said; "when my EARS go, I'm done"; and when the wind blows and the sheet you're following disappears, YOU'RE done. So to be able to 'HEAR' the original and understand it (hear means to understand), in MY OPINION, is the way for me. Just my input to the subject. Cheers, Ed!!

[philphender]

Hi everyone,
good topic, I prefer to use a pick, sometimes my teeth!!, not my ear, if I use my ear it tends to get sore pretty quick. ;D ;D.
but on a more serious note so to speak it depends how you started out playing, having taken the grades in classical guitar sight reading was par for the course and I have never regretted the time taken to learn to read music. As for tab if you can get good tab with the standard notation it helps with the timing aspect. Reading music has it's drawbacks for me though because it has made me lazy, if I don't have the music I tend not to bother working it out myself.
Regards
Phil

[John Haldane]

Hi
I use tab as I cant read music, I can pick out a tune by ear but if it as twiddly bits as I call them, I am lost.
Take care
John H

[john44]

Hi All
what an interesting thread I learned to read music initially and have always used a combination of notation and ear . In the early days a lot of sheet music was inaccurate so you had to use ear as well as the sheet. Recently I gave my old rythm guitaris Nev an old copy of foottapper next time we had a jam he said I checked out that sheet and its a lot different to what we play but it gave us the basic arrangement. Tabs I find are totally beyond me particularly as it does not show any timing and unless you know the tune you have no way of playing by tab.
When playing proffessionally at pubs, clubs etc guest performers would show up with written arrangements and you had to be able to read their dots to back them or you didnt work.
Its ok playing your own stuff by ear but to work with and do numbers with different artists
you probably need to read I never had a guest performer turn up with tabs
In summary there is scope for all three methods depending what you want to do ,you can get by quite well by ear and reading music but tabs have their limitions
Cheers John44

[rjdupe]

Hi all,
Interesting thread this one.
There are brilliant guitarists out there who do not read a note of music , they hear a tune and can play it straight away.
There are also session musicians who, if you give them a sheet music arrangement will play it without any trouble.
I was taught piano many years ago and I still play by music although it can take considerable time to learn complex arrangements. Problem with guitar is knowing where to play the notation as there are many possible places to play on the fretboard. Knowing when to use open and fretted notes, also which position to play in. I think this is where accurate tabs are useful. However if a tune is not known then the only way out is by music or by ear. Like a lot of things in life it sometimes makes it easier if someone shows you and it definitely shortens the learning process.
All the best,

Robert

[kipper]

i would agree with all the replys in this thread. its what you get on with best. i use tab.pehraps in time maybe playing by ear might come for me, but i cant do it that way at this time wish i could. the most inportant thing is to enjoy whatever way you can do it. peter